Dropping a "Wire" from the Farm!

Widowed farm woman in Oklahoma.
Source:  Library of Congress

I'm beginning to understand why farmers and ranchers are so stubborn and so patient.  Mother Nature is immutable, inscrutable, intractable, and all of those other fancy adjectives that mean stubborn and confusing.  Mother Nature does what she wills, reinterpreting "the rules" as she goes along.  Just when you think you've learned "the rules," she throws a metaphorical sabot in the whole thing.  Which brings me back to how I realized why farmers and ranchers are so stubborn and patient.




This is our fifth spring on the farm, and I'd expected it to be fully in cultivation and self-supporting by now:

Beginning of pasture,
but it has 70-year old fences!

• Double-pasture for a few grass-fed cattle?  Nope.

Currant tomatoes

• Acres of vegetables selling briskly at the farmer's market?  Not yet.
• Large blackberry bramble with large clientele?  Um, no.
• Pick-your-own blueberry farm thriving?  Define thriving.

Blackberries mulched with pine needles

But we are making progress.  We had 3 blackberries until dear friends cleaned out their bramble and gave us the extras--12!  We brought those home and planted them in the late spring.  Well, by late spring, when the ground has dried, that was like digging holes in concrete.  But, we--my husband did the digging--got it done.

Trellis post

After exhaustive research, we decided to build a two-wire vertical trellis as described in Grape Growing in Tennessee (University of Tennessee Extension Publication 1475) which would also serve our muscadine vines, too.  Great.  More holes.  We managed to put 4 end posts in the ground before the heat and my illness stopped the digging.  Besides, we did not have the trellis wire anyway.

Blackberry tied
to trellis wire

With the advent of spring (or, at least, a few warm winter days) we decided to work with Mother Nature and dig the remaining holes while the ground was still soft from the winter rains.  (Yes, it sometimes takes us a while to figure things out.)  This worked well until we went to string the trellis wire when we discovered that the posts set last summer, which had been solid by the end of the summer, wiggled in the soft buckshot.  After only a few minutes of discussion, which consisted mainly of, "We really don't want to do this when it's dry and hot," we decided to string wire with only minimal tension.

Mulched
blueberries

With cartoon-like precision, we wrestled 9 ga. galvanized wire that seemed determined to, alternately, tie us together or poke us in the eye.  The tiny crimps seemed to pop out of our hands like jumping beans.  Eventually, all the wire was strung and tightened only enough to hold up the blackberry canes.

Three trellises.  Three Navaho, and twelve Triple Crown blackberry plants which seem to be growing well.  It's a lot of work.  It's a lot of research (University of Tennessee Extension Publication SP 284-C).  It's a lot of persistence.  It's a lot of hope.

Idaho farmer
Source:  Library of Congress

Maybe that's why farmers and ranchers are so stubborn:  they believe in the power of hope.  In the face of economic uncertainty, weather challenges, insect onslaughts, they believe in hope enough to stake their futures on seeds, dirt, and livestock.

I'm trying to join them.  Here's to putting my hope into action.

What about you?