Holy radish leaves thanks to our new residents, the flea beetle.

We had a hard week. It was a few weeks ago now, but it is still emblazoned on our memories like it was yesterday. Various pests came a marching through, our water pump stopped working (in one of the hottest, driest May/June’s on record), we over-fertilized with biodynamic fish fertilizer, our chickens were misbehaving (such odd creatures) and well, things just weren’t growing. And to top it off, I awoke one morning to inspect the 5 cabbage plants simply disappeared. Could the cabbage looper have eaten it up that fast? Are there that many of them, I thought to myself. Then I saw the tell tale ungulate hoof prints. Deer.

A couple of weeks have moved on since these hard times, and as nature has a habit of doing, she turned it all around so quickly. We have taken measures to lessen the beetles’ impact (row covers), fixed the pump, the over fertilized plants are coming back and thriving (honestly they looked like death) and cabbage looper and deer……I fear it is only the beginning of the problem, but all we can learn right now is to let go, stop trying to plan so hard and control nature. We can only do what is humanly possible, the rest is not up to us. Things are growing well now, mainly because we have been able to give the plants a drink with our pump working again and we have a strict watering regiment.