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Tips for Avoiding Burnout on the Farm
- Stage harvesting and be flexible in when you can harvest. Try to harvest stuff when it is ready versus having one huge, rushed harvest day.
- When it’s really hot. Start early in the day and shut it down when it gets too hot during the midday.
- Work in the early evening when it cools down.
- Do as much physical labor early as early in the day as you can.
- Taking a short 20 minute nap, or closing your eyes for 20 minutes can help you to physically and mentally reset.
Tips for Harvesting Crops in Hot Weather
- Harvest greens early in the morning, or the early evening. Avoid harvesting when it’s too hot if you can.
- You can get away with harvesting root vegetables when it’s hot if you have to.
- You need to have adequate cold storage to get the field heat off your crops.
Cropping Planning As We Enter The Fall
- Determining your best last planting date for each crop can be tricky. Keep track of your planting times and harvest dates over time, and you can use that to determine your last best planting date for each crop. In the beginning this involves trial and error until you see how it plays out in your location over a few years.
- Since crops mature slower with less daylight hours, you may need to slow down your successions and plant large areas of each crop.
- Experiment some, but go with what you know.
- As day lengths get shorter, it’s also getting cooler. Think about what happens if temperatures cool off quicker than expected. Can the crops that you planted handle it? Do you need some extra infrastructure to protect the crops?
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