As Brett Grohsgal points out in his winter cropping article that begins on page 1, this hardly seems like the time to be thinking about winter. Yet you must, if you are going to try some frost-tolerant crops. Now is the time to figure out where to plant and what to try. It’s time to determine if there will be a market and, if so, how much to plant to fulfill the demand. It’s time to buy seed, figure out days to maturity and get plants started on the correct date.

The planning process goes on year-round on a market farm. Well-articulated plans are the mark of the experienced – and successful – farmer. The ability to look ahead, to set deadlines, and then to meet them is one of the plethora of skills required for successful farming.

Here at our farm, we are in the midst of the heaviest flower production of the year. At the same time we’re dealing with this bounty, though, we are also looking far ahead. We have ordered fall-planted bulbs and will soon order our plugs. We’re figuring out how to have bouquets at Thanksgiving. And this year, we’re going to grow something all winter in our heated greenhouse.

Winter growing is something new for us. We have always assumed that it wouldn’t pay to grow flowers in winter because of the cost of heating the greenhouse. But we’re going to test that assumption. Over the years, we have found that our assumptions are not always true – for example, we assumed our most valuable crop was tomatoes because that’s what we had in the greatest quantity. But when the numbers were crunched, it turned out that lettuce was just as important. Similarly, we need to know if we could be making money from greenhouse flowers. It’s not that we need more work, just that we want to continue our horticultural education. One of the greatest joys of farming is that there’s always more to learn. We are on a lifelong adventure, on a path that branches and meanders across a vast field of knowledge.

When my husband, Dan, talks about his decision to stop growing vegetables last year, he describes the decisive moment: He was washing beets and it suddenly hit him that he had been washing beets every summer for 13 years, and the fun had gone out of it. There just wasn’t anything left to learn about washing beets.

But there are plenty of opportunities beyond beets. Dan followed an interest in fruit, and now we are harvesting our first crops of plums, peaches, pears and apples. He also got excited about propagating woody plants, and now we have a small field of hydrangeas, viburnums and lilacs that we will be cutting in a few years. We call it our Exit Plan – when we get too old and decrepit to bend over to pick flowers, we at least will be able to harvest from those tall shrubs.

The best farmers I know have reinvented themselves many times over during their careers, changing crops and markets as opportunities presented themselves. The best , and happiest, farmers are always looking ahead and trying something new.

Although I know you will be frantically busy this month with the demands of your farm, I hope this issue will give you a few ideas to carry around with you as you drive to markets, harvest tomatoes and wash beets. Maybe you’ll decide to grow something new. At least the thought of snow-covered kale might help you keep cool during the dog days of August.