Reflecting on Farming 2023

Reflecting back on 2023 on the farm has been one of the more interesting things since we started farming. We originally moved back to the family farm in 2011 and spent the early years helping my dad (Dave's), doing work around the farm. We had to deal with some weather events the first few years with the worst being a really bad winter in 2015 and drought conditions in 2016 but they were one of the situations that were challenging but only lasted a few months at a time. This past year was a full year of extreme weather challenges for the entire year. 

Coming out of a fairly mild winter, we had optimism to spring and summer months. The previous year had been one of the most productive years since we began managing operations after dad wasn't able to continue farm work. We sold 1500 bales of hay which was the first year in memory where we had hay to sell instead of buying hay (which was a long-term goal of ours). Christina had a very prolific yield of dahlia's and garlic, giving her amazing crops for her workshops and general sales which was amazing. We also had a very average year for rainfall and temperatures which created great growing conditions for crops and hay and kept the fields and gardens in good condition to be able to get on them and harvest. 

This past year was the opposite of 2022, with early spring being extremely dry, to the point that the province experienced wildfires. We often "joke" now that we talked about a fire escape plan while Christina planted her dahlias, only to deal with record rain 7 days later. The quick and extreme shift saw drought conditions turn into record rainfall that saturated everything in the ground, to the point where things like her dahlias rotted in the ground to roads being washed out. The ground continued to get saturated with rains all in the month of July and August in record amounts, causing hay season to be significantly delayed. Not only was haying delayed but we lost somewhere between 500-800 bales of hay in the field that was cut but the ground was too wet for it to dry. That's left images like the one below where we still have remnants of hay in the field that we couldn't bale up. This meant instead of selling 1500 bales of hay, I only sold 53 so far and I'm done selling until spring to make sure I have enough. 

We are hoping that this extreme year ended this fall with more mild conditions going later into November and fingers crossed for another mild winter. We are also hoping we received 10 years of extreme weather in one year so the next number of years will be mild but with global warming only getting worse, we worry this is the new normal in farming.