I was putting away harvest and packing supplies in the packing shed the other day when a new bag of rubber bands caught my eye. The bag proudly proclaimed "RUBBER BANDS. Holding your world together." I dunno guys, I thought to the rubber bands, you might be over-promising a bit, in light of recent events...
But it got me thinking of all the businesses and community leaders and political leaders trying to offer confident and reassuring declarations about what our future holds, and how they can help, during and after we battle the coronavirus. What can Old Plank Farm promise its community? Vegetables! But what else? I don't want to over-promise or offer glorified messages about my outlook on the state of our world right now because I, like everyone else, have never been through a situation like what we currently face.
However, as a local farm that has been serving it's community for twelve years, it’s my belief we are already set up to be one of the safest and most reliable sources of vegetables for this season and in the future. And as farmers, we've seen and adapted to many crises and disasters over the years because we have to work with nature all the time. We constantly face uncertainty, and we learn to adapt and be resilient and grow from the challenges thrown at us. So I might claim, as the classic scene in the movie Dodge Ball goes, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball," and while we've never seen anything like Covid-19, Old Plank Farm has successfully dodged its share of wrenches and balls over the years.
For instance, there was Snowvid-12, the snowstorm in 2012 that collapsed our greenhouse. I watched it go down, as I was on my way out to it. Or Dryvid-12, the year of the deadly heat and drought (deadly to vegetable plants that is, not many people, so it didn’t get much news coverage). Then there was Castvid-17, when a tractor accident in 2017 left me with a broken arm that I dragged around in a cast for 5 weeks. And there was Torvid-18 when a nearby tornado brought winds that flattened a sweet-corn planting in seconds. And don't even get me started on Deervid, the plague of all plagues for our lettuce crop last year...this year all our lettuce will be planted in a field where we can be helicopter parents to it!
The universe throws us a lot of wrenches, but we're farmers and we keep going. We grow vegetables, we harvest them, we deliver them.
Of course, in the movie the poor guy gets hit in the face with a wrench...so make what you will of this metaphor, but I think of that scene every time something new is thrown at me! But my declarations for the future of Old Plank Farm are sincere. I don't think that a CSA membership can "hold your world together," but I do think you can count on our vegetables to help keep you healthy during whatever lies ahead.