Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

Another snowstorm, come and gone. It snowed steadily all of yesterday, with pretty high winds, but most of the accumulation seemed to be overnight. Today, azure skies, brilliant sun, tons of snow in drifts piled high. Looks like we’re one more heavy fall away from all-time records. I heard there’ve been over a dozen school snow days, compared to three or four a season in recent years. Here on the farm, no extreme hardship so far (knock on wood!). In the barnyard, we’re running out of room around the edges to pile up more snow, and in the field, it’s a couple of feet deep, but snow has kept off the Milkhouse roof, and the main worry, a flattened hoophouse, hasn’t come close to happening. The wind built up the drift on the south side (both photos), and just to be safe (and for the first time ever), I scooped off the new stuff, down to the harder-packed, more permanent base. Luckily, the side walls are inflated (a fan on a looong extension cord continually blows air between two layers of plastic), so the surface is quite taut and doesn’t sag or hold snow easily. And that’s it. Back to waiting for the snow to go…

If this first half of winter is any indication at all, the upcoming growing season could be a really crazy ride. After the extensive one-day melt-off, just four days ago, followed by an immediate plunge into bitter cold, the snow came back just as quickly with a one-day storm yesterday and through part of last night. I deliberately don’t watch much news anymore, but I did catch the weather report of this massive, North America-wide blizzard and/or ice storm, depending on where in its path you happened to be. (At the same time, I saw reports of weird heavy snow stranding millions in China, and freakish winter tornadoes somewhere else.) Well, here we didn’t get that heavy a blast, maybe six or eight inches, but enough to instantly restore classic winter conditions. The photo below is snow plowed aside in the barnyard this morning, the rail fence peeking out from behind is 5′ (1.5m) high. Now, it looks like 50°F (10°C) and rain for at least a day or two mid-week. If that happens, IT’LL ALL BE GONE AGAIN! This is the THIRD major full-snow-no-snow cycle so far this winter, and it looks like more to come. I know this extreme weather is a global thing, we’re ALL feeling something wild, but I figure, keeping a daily-or-so journal of what’s going on on THIS tiny farm, I ought to get it down anyway. For the record! :)

A full day of snow, probably about a foot in all. It started overnight, this pic is early afternoon, over 12 hours in. The winds were pretty high, guess it qualifies as a blizzard, but overall, not bad! The main concern is snow load on the greenhouse and the Milkhouse roof, but the wind has kept the snow moving, and there’s no big build-up so far. For storms in general, the worst non-disaster situation is the power going out (especially in the winter when there are seedlings in the electricity-heated Milkhouse). Outages aren’t a big problem here, but when it goes and it’s cold, things can get miserable. Here on the farm, this storm seems like no problem!