Farming mishaps

     "Hail the size of quarters."

My melons may be a total loss.

This week I am up closer to agriculture than to politics. There was a sharp reversal of fortune on Tuesday evening in the course of one hour. 

We had a thunderstorm, lightning, wind, and hail. By "we" I mean the area of my farm between the two Table Rocks in Southern Oregon. There was no wind, rain, or thunder at my primary home in Medford nine miles away as the crow flies.

The hail mashed my melons, both cantaloupes and watermelon. Melons are delicate. They rarely bounce back from leaves and stems being damaged. 

By chance I photographed my melon field shortly prior to the thunderstorm, at a time of blissful ignorance of what was in store. I had just weeded the crop, so I felt good about how the plants were doing and how the field looked.  I took the photo to show off.

The hemp being grown on my farm--by a licensed hemp grower, not by me--looked like this just prior to the wind and hail. I took this photo for the purpose of showing agricultural employees, not to show the state of the field's moisture. My timing is just dumb luck. It is another iteration of the value of being there--the theme of my up close observations of presidential campaigns. You are there to see one thing, but it turns out the important thing is something else. 

The same field, after a half hour of torrential rain:

I had observed and noted Hillary Clinton's stamina while I was at events intending to pay attention to her policy speech. I observed and noted Chris Christie's sense of personal space while intending to get a selfie. I observed that Trump's events were organized as grand spectacles. In the photo below Trump's helicopter is circling overhead as the announcer booms out that Donald Trump is arriving! The theme music to the movie The American President accompanies the announcer. Policy-oriented people under-estimate the power of Trump's show-business orientation. Trump rallies are events. 

You have to be there to understand it. Trump is a rock star.

Farmers experience good luck and bad luck. I commented two days ago that Klamath-area alfalfa got the worst of the drought, so it was our advantage this year in growing profitable alfalfa. Then, I got a freak storm. The alfalfa wasn't hurt one bit by the hail and rain. It liked the moisture. Cannabis, to my observation, got damaged, but will come right out of it. Some leaves were torn, but branches and limbs are intact. The crops were stabilized inside wire cages and plastic netting, so the wind didn't destroy them. The wind that accompanied the hail was fierce, and from an unusual direction. Two mature trees on my farm were destroyed by it. The dumb luck of having cannabis supports put up early, bamboo and trellises placed in anticipation of supporting branches laden with heavy buds in October, served the second purpose of protecting them from the June storm that knocked over this tree.

W

The weather event that was so dramatic eight miles from the office of the local newspaper in downtown Medford didn't get a mention in the newspaper. It was an isolated event. My wife, at home in Medford, was surprised to learn anything at all had  happened.

Yesterday I mentioned "mishaps" that might take place while a near-finished product--dried but untrimmed cannabis flower--awaited trimming. What bad things could happen to a crop harvested, dried, and safely indoors? Theft. The product is valuable, portable, and untraceable. If it gets stolen, it is gone.

This vehicle was left behind at the scene of a theft last October at the cannabis field of a legal, registered, taxed cannabis grow-site near my farm.  A group of people in trucks came onto a property after midnight and stole a portion of a cannabis crop. Fortunately for the victim, one of the thieves' trucks, probably driving without headlights, drove off the farm road and got stuck in an irrigation ditch. They had to abandon the vehicle. 

What wonderful evidence of the identity of one of the thieves. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. 

The police came, observed the ravaged crop and missing plants, saw the stuck vehicle that suddenly appeared the night of the theft, ran the plates, and said the car's owner lived six miles away. Then--and this is the unfortunate part for the victim--they said they would not bother driving to the owner's residence, nor in investigating where the stolen cannabis went. We don't investigate cannabis crimes, the deputies said. You are on your own, sorry. They said as far as they were concerned, this wasn't a robbery. It was an abandoned vehicle  problem, and they don't bother with those. Oh.

A cannabis crop is closely regulated. It is licensed, measured, reported, and taxed. But one of the farmers' risks is sudden loss. There is no more recourse against thieves than there is against weather. Or bugs.

A crop can be stolen by bugs as surely as by thieves. So far, my melon plants had not attracted cucumber beetles, nor had the cannabis grown on my farm attracted russet mites. This is a close-up photo of a cannabis leaf from last year. The yellow banana-shaped things are squirming and voraciously eating the leaves and buds of a cannabis plant. In organic farming, the remedies are slow and inadequate, but one does what one can. The best defense for an organic cannabis grow is not to get the bugs in the first place. So far, good luck--no aphids, spider mites, or russet mites. The season is early, though.

This is farming. A million things go wrong. I realize I am unusual here, but when I visit the produce section of a grocery store, my attitude is one of dismay that all the beautiful food is so beautiful and so very inexpensive. 

Note: To subscribe by email for delivery mid-morning Pacific time, go to https://petersage.substack.com  The blog is free and always will be.