The risk of growing food

We have a garden to produce some of our food, and have a share of a small Community Supported Agriculture farm for much of our fresh food during the spring, summer and fall.

Last year we loved coming home each week with 1-2 reusable grocery bags loaded with organic vegetables that had been picked just hours before.

The intense storms Monday night produced a remarkable hail storm, centered over the small town of LaPorte Colorado (which is just North West of Fort Collins about 3 miles). Our CSA farm is in LaPorte. We found out that it hailed for 45 minutes, and left 3 inches of hail on the entire crop. Everything is shredded.

So the status of our farm share is unknown. We are not at all concerned about the payment lost. We knew that having a share of a crop meant that we are taking the same risk as the farmer. We could have a wonderful crop or a sparse crop, and are at the mercy of nature. This year we seem to have lost everything.

Our home garden is not in quite as bad of a condition, but we will likely only produce a fraction of the food we did last summer. Heartbreaking times. Sometimes it feels as if the world is just making it hard to walk out our ideals/

On a good note, Blondie has found a good home. We posted an offering on CraigsList, and had two offers of adoption by families living out in the country. One in particular appealed to us because the family has been showing poultry of all sorts at the 4H fair for 20 years. They have a polish hen (the breed that Blondie is) who is 4 years old so he will have company. They actually thought that Blondie may be beautiful enough to show at the fair this year, so we will keep you posted! We are just relieved to send him to a good home.