Who brought the rain?

The day after my last post about rain and irrigating, we got 0.94 inches of rain at the farm.  I was at work during the day - where there was no rain.  Driving home I saw no evidence of rain until I turned down the gravel road that leads to the farm.  For the past few weeks while it's been so dry, the dust from the gravel road has gotten progressively worse, covering everyone's vehicles in a layer of dust.  That morning I had run my car through a car wash, even while I thought about what a waste of time & money it was, given that I'd be covered in dust again that evening. But then as I drove down the road Monday night, I realized that there wasn't much dust.  Then I saw a place on the edge of the road that had washed slightly.  Then I saw actual puddles.  Apparently it rained steadily for about 45 minutes - that almost inch - but there was a definite line where the rain had and had not fallen. The city of Faribault hadn't gotten any rain; our farm was, apparently, just within the northern edge of the system.  This is pretty exciting stuff for a farmer.

However, there is some contention about who brought the rain.  Farmer Bill doesn't currently have any way to water his apple trees with the irrigation system.  The long dry spell - and the lack of certain rain in the forecast - had him sending one of his crew out to water the trees manually.  They use a huge tank (500 gallons I believe) mounted on a small trailer; the tank has hose outlets and a crew of 1 to 3 people can haul the trailer to water anything not accessible by the irrigation system.  One of our guys was out giving each tree a drink - parking the trailer at the end of the rows and hauling the hose up and down when he felt sprinkles.  He called Farmer Bill to ask whether he should keep watering & Farmer Bill looked at the sky, looked at the radar online, and told him to keep going - the real rain was going to miss us.  So Michael kept watering.  Just like washing your car generally brings rain that day or the next, so does watering.

So, what brought the rain - me washing my car or Michael watering the trees?  We'll never know, but we'll always take the rain!

Musings on water

Another gorgeous sunny day, with hardly a cloud in sight.  It's been that way for about 3 weeks now.  There are few people I know who don't love this weather: dry, warm but not hot (upper 70s, low 80s), sunshine.  There are some who claim to like really hot weather (we haven't had much this year), but I have no sympathy for them since I definitely don't like really hot temperatures.

But not everyone can appreciate a long dry spell.  Farmers. Urban dwellers who cherish a green lawn.  My mother, whose yard is almost all flowers, shrubbery, and trees. Gardeners in general.  When I look back at our farm records, we've had a strange pattern of rainfall the past 3 years.  Lots of rain, much more than we need, in the spring, followed by extended dry spells in the summer.

The past 2 weeks Farmer Bill & his crew have spent a lot of their time irrigating the fields.  He uses overhead sprinkler irrigation and the Straight River is his water source.  The water pump is powered by the PTO on one of the tractors.  Water is pumped through 6-inch pipe across the river field to where the pipe goes underground.  The underground pipe goes up the hill and risers come out of it at various points.  Three-inch pipe is connected to the risers and strung out along the fields.  Sprinkler heads come up out of the 3-inch pipe and spray water in 60-foot circles.  Some of the crops also have an underground trickle irrigation option: the raspberries, blueberries and many of the melons. Trickle irrigation has benefits: virtually no evaporation when watering; less disease spread by water splashing spores onto the plants; not having to move pipe.  But several of our crops blossom when there is still possibility of frost, and overhead sprinkling is the best way to save those tender blossoms.  However, as any gardener will tell you, it's better to have rain. Rainwater just makes things grow better. There's a chance for thunderstorms today - it is August after all - but it doesn't feel like rain is moving in.  So the crew will continue to move pipe and pump water.

Spring farming update

It's another late spring following a long, cold, snowy winter.  I have a memory of winter being long and cold when I was growing up - and usually snowy.  In the past decade it seemed that winters had gotten somewhat milder - sometimes snowy, sometimes not.  But this past winter felt cold and snowy.  If -15 degrees kills powdery mildew spores on the plants and in the soil, we shouldn't have much problem with that this summer - with all the nights below -15 we had over the winter.

The apple trees are just past full bloom - the early blooming varieties are at petal fall - the earliest strawberry varieties are blooming like crazy - and the tomatoes in the hoop houses are also blooming.  Of course, the dandelions, shepherd's purse, creeping charlie and other plant pests are also blooming.  Farmer Bill and his crew are working long days, when the sun shines, trying to keep up with it all.  On rainy days, they work on equipment and try to take a little time off.  [Personally, I wish they'd work more on straightening up the chaos of the equipment shed - it's a bit tricky to find things in there these days.]

Every year during this spring time, Farmer Bill insists that he's going to start dropping crops from his plans next year.  I've long suggested to him that just the strawberries and the apples would keep him plenty busy - without adding 5 other crops in as well.  Last year he swore he was dropping the sweet corn in 2014, but shortly after the first of the year, sweet corn seed appeared at the door... This spring he swore, again, that it was gone next year.  We'll see.

Raspberries may end up gone just because they may become too hard to produce, with the new fruit fly pest that has arrived.  We're setting out attractant traps to scout for the first of the SWD (spotted wing drosophila), and will have to use a spray on the raspberries when they arrive.  There is no effective organic treatment - spray or cultivation - yet.  But since this fruit fly is causing incredible damage to soft fruit crops across the country, I'm betting the chemical companies are working hard to come up with something that works and can be certified for organic production.  Another bet I'd put money on: the price of soft fruit - certified organic or not - will go up. So far, in Minnesota, the June-bearing strawberries haven't been greatly affected by SWD.  All of the other soft fruits have had problems: raspberries, blueberries, ever-bearing strawberries, etc.

We had a few blueberries last year - enough to need to pick them, not enough to make a decent display at the markets.  Farmer Bill sold a few, and I picked a couple of times for baking and freezing.

Most (maybe all? sometimes I'm the last to know) of the melons have been planted into the fields.  While we could, theoretically, have a cold snap and an overnight frost, it doesn't feel like we will.  Even better, the weather forecast from the NWS doesn't indicate anything like that for the next 10 days - which puts us squarely into June.  There were a few really early strawberry blossoms that got nipped in the last frost.  There may have been a few apple blossoms that got nipped, too, but mostly it's been an easy spring for Farmer Bill, frost-wise.  He hasn't had to set up the irrigation system yet (a several days to week-long process) and hasn't had to spend any sleepless nights monitoring the weather and the sprinklers.

At least one field of sweet corn has been planted - again maybe more.  Farmer Bill usually tries to plant sweet corn for early ripening so he doesn't have to spray for corn ear worms.  Also, he gets too busy with the melons and apples to be messing with later sweet corn.  We could quite easily plant enough for us to freeze and have corn at many meals with a bit of the time not spent working ground and planting fields would save.

That's about it. Lots of planting, weeding, mowing, repairing, sharpening, fine tuning going on.

On being everything to everyone

ALA, the American Library Association, held its annual conference in Chicago in 2013.  I am not a member of ALA, but I pay attention to who the speakers are, what the themes of the conference are, and I try to read some of the reports and reviews that come out of the conference each year.

I read this in a list of 'takeaways' from the 2013 annual conference:

‘Doing good’ is not the same thing as ‘making a difference’.” Public librarians need to find out where they can make the most difference and concentrate on those areas instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

Those of you who get email from me will see this as my signature line for a while.  I have been saying essentially this very thing for a number of years now.  No, we don't carry postage stamps, envelopes, writing paper, tag board, glue, markers or other art supplies, supply a notary, give legal or medical advice, or babysit your children (well, yes, we do babysit your children, but not intentionally & if someone flashes them - or worse- while they're here unsupervised, it's on your head).

We do supply books, DVDs, music CDs, audiobooks, free computer use with free Internet and productivity software access, newspapers, magazines, database access to materials not available on the open Internet, and electronically downloadable books, audiobooks and magazines.  We have literacy-based storytimes for parents and children, special music and art programs for all ages, author talks, tax-preparation help, and beginning computer, resume writing, and online job searching workshops.  One thing public libraries do well is provide a starting point.  Technological literacy becomes more important every year, and public libraries have the opportunity to excel at helping people gain that knowledge.

To be a Librarian in my library you must have a professional degree, which means you have advanced training on searching and sorting through sources and resources.  I can't count the number of times a patron will say "I spent an hour looking for - fill in the blank - and couldn't find anything on the internet" and I can find it in a 5-minute search using search techniques that come with my education and experience.  Need materials to support your 4th-grader's science project? Guess what, there aren't books at a 4th-grade level on the chemical composition of laundry detergent.  But there are general books on chemistry, including explaining what biodegradable means.  Need help explaining how and why a solar hotdog cooker works?  There isn't a whole book on a hotdog cooker, but let's go to the books on solar power, and camping, and voila, there's the support you need.  I help people think outside the box, more broadly, to the subject rather than the specific.  And sometimes I help people think more specifically.  Doing a high-school paper on the Holocaust?  It's a broad topic, so maybe you want to think about focusing the thesis of your paper on a specific aspect: one specific camp, or one specific survivor story, surrounded by the larger theme.

The Librarians in my branch were recently told we need to do more outreach. Outreach is not a bad thing; despite being an extreme introvert, incredibly shy, I actually enjoy going out to talk to groups about the library.  But I really think my bosses want us to do more Outreach just so they can say we've done it.  I don't believe they think much about whether the outreach we do makes any difference.  One of the suggestions made to me was to run an off-site book group, in a senior center or residence.  I currently run a book group that meets at the branch library monthly.  That entails finding discussion-worthy books - for which there must be a minimum of six copies available, compiling discussion questions, emailing the group with said discussion questions and meeting reminders, and reading the book.  The reading is done on my own uncompensated time. Adding another book group would add approximately 10 more unpaid hours to my work load every month. I asked whether I could get comp time for any additional hours and got a blank stare with an "I don't know, I don't think so..." reply.  It was apparent that my boss had never thought about the hours I spend reading as work time.  And I do, in fact, already help choose the books for a local senior book group.  The group needs 4-5 large print, 1-2 audiobooks, and 2-3 regular print copies.  Finding titles worth reading that meet those requirements can be a challenge so I asked our book selector about getting a list of large print titles being purchased and I keep a spreadsheet of possibilities.  This is a helpful thing I can do within the confines of my paid work week and the list I've generated can be used to help other book groups and other librarians.

Farmer Bill is often the sounding board for the hard parts of my job. He is always supportive, sympathetic, and on my side, for which I am truly grateful.  I'm going to end this post with two stories about the positive parts of my work, because he mentioned once that he doesn't get to hear enough of those.

On a Thursday in May 2013 a local elementary school had a literacy night at the library.  About 200 parents and children converged on the library for a 2-hour span of time. Spanish- and Somali-language translators helped us explain what the library could offer visitors.  Several dozen brand-new library card accounts were created and many lost cards were replaced (with a waiver of the normal $2 replacement card fee). As each family got cards, we explained that materials were loaned for set amounts of time. If they aren't returned or renewed on time, late fees are applied.  I helped one Latina mother and her children choose some books to read and fun movies to watch, and explained again about movies needing to come back in one week (movie overdue fees are $1/day each and add up quickly for many families).  The following Wednesday afternoon that family came into the library with all of the materials while I was on the public desk.  Recognizing them, I walked with them to the return slot, assuring them that they were completely on time with the movies - and could keep the books longer if they wished.  No, they'd read the books. We returned all the items, and I asked if they needed help choosing more materials.  No, thank you, they knew right where to go because of our session the week before.  And they have been regular visitors to the library ever since.

Just last week, an African-American mother came in with her three children.  The youngest, a 2nd-grader, needed to do a project on our solar system.  Mom applied for and got a library card, we set them up on a computer, taught Mom how to search for, copy, and paste pictures of planets into a Word document (it helped enormously that Mom was reasonably comfortable on a computer, although very shy and a bit insecure of her abilities).  Mom and daughter spent about 2 hours creating a project.  When they finished, nearly at closing time, there was a bit of a rush to get it printed before their computer time ran out.  Mom was concerned that changes would need to be made and wanted to email the project to herself so they could work on it again if necessary.  This was my chance to be a hero & I took it.  USB drives are regularly left behind at the computers.  We keep any we find, or that are turned in by patrons, for a month. Those not claimed after a month come to me.  I clean all the personal information off them, keep a batch of 12 for our computer classes, and the rest go in a drawer to be given away.  I quickly grabbed one of the drives, plugged it into the computer and saved the girl's project on it, all the while explaining what I was doing and how I was doing it. After it was saved, I showed them how to find it again.  When I unplugged the drive and handed it to her, saying she could take it home & the children could use it for future projects at home, at school, or at the library, Mom was briefly overwhelmed.  They took their printed project and the flash drive, checked out some books, and went home very happy patrons who will almost certainly come back to use the library in the future.

Those are 2 stories about what public libraries and librarians can do best: make connections and help close the digital and literacy divides that exist in this country.