Hi y'all! I just wanted to post a little farm update here, mostly for my own records. I also wanted to show you what farmers go through to bring you beautiful local products!
This past weekend, we saw historical flooding across Western Washington all along the Snoqualmie River. (We call the Snoqualmie River Valley "Sno Valley" for short). Sno Valley includes places like Carnation, Fall City, Snohomish, and Monroe. If you watch the news, you definitely saw the flooding! Kids were out of school, and roads and bridges were flooded. Of course, my own farmland was also flooded.
A wide-angle view of the flooding, from the newly created creek bed.
My landowner Philipp sent me this photo on Sunday. You can see my black tarps in the background. You can also see the water moving into the field and to our neighbors' place.
A newly created creek bed where grass used to be. You can see where the creek is splitting into the field.
Here you can see the newly created creek bed where there used to be grass. The normal path of the creek is to the left of the treeline. But to the right of the treeline, the water is now flowing into the field. Basically, the creek has split itself in two.
The view from the old fence post, facing away from the creek.
That water continues into the field and beyond, into the neighbors' place to the right. The fence line and everything past it used to be grass. It's pretty wild how much water, silt, rock, and debris has washed up this weekend.
My high tunnel was stored between two trees that used to be about 15' from the creek bank.
Yesterday, I went out to try and find my high tunnel, which I had stored between two trees. Those trees used to be about 15 feet away from the creek bank. Clearly this is no longer the case! Thankfully, those two trees provided a buffer from all the debris you see to the right of the blue tarp. And after a little digging, I was able to find it and start pulling it out. As far as I can tell, nothing washed away. I'm still working this week on digging out the pieces and moving them to high ground.
I should be starting seeds right about now, but clearly my high tunnel is not up yet. I need some kind of protected space to grow baby plants. I'm not sure what plan B will be, since it's going to be too wet to till for some time. I've asked my fellow farmers to see if anyone has extra greenhouse space to rent, or used greenhouse plastic so I can make an inexpensive low tunnel. We'll see what happens!
In the meantime, if I am slow to reply to things, this is why. I'm digging hoops out of a creek bed, trying to figure out covered space for transplants, and remapping my fields. Never a dull moment in farming!