Here it is on a gloomy evening after a few days of meltdown. A cold snap with a couple of inches of snow is forecast, and then, it’s back to the warming by the middle of next week. So the weatherpeople say.
Weather
Checking on the garlic
Today was the first walk around of the field of the year! The ground is still mostly frozen, but some spots have melted into a thick clayey muck that’ll take a while to dry out. So, you stick to the hard spots. Here, the fall-planted garlic beds are showing up. The row markers are there to prevent tilling accidents. The straw mulch is supposed to protect the cloves from heaving up during any quick freezing and thawing, by evening out the soil temperature (I doubt that would happen in this soil, it’s a just-in-case). The mulch does keep down weeds and hold in moisture during the spring and early summer, which alone is worth it. Garlic will be the first in-field veggie greenery of the season…if all has gone well.
Melting from the edges
This is the fourth day of steadily rising above-zero daytime temperature, and melt-off is well underway. It’s a messy time of year underfoot, and totally fun. Here at the gate to the garden field, you can see it melting down from the edges.
Monitoring spring melt-off
When the base layer of ice and snow finally slides off the roof of the barn, Spring Melt-off is truly underway! This sheltered east-facing roof is the official monitoring device. Without much snow build-up this winter, the satisfying crash of massive slabs falling 40 feet to the ground was absent. Still, a good deal of icy snow cleared in the last 24 hours, and warm weather is forecast for the next few days at least. Excellent! (Guest snapshot by C.)
A beautiful day
A beautiful day in the snowy field, looking back at the outbuildings from the greenhouse. I used the Kubota (the trusty compact tractor) to clear the path, more to take it out of the shed and give it a little run than because the snow’s too high to trudge through. The temperature’s around zero C, the sun is getting higher in the sky and warmer as she climbs, snow is melting at the edges and through the thin spots wherever you go… Is spring in the air? Sure feels like it!
Roof is working out
Here’s the barn with the new milkhouse extension, doing fine. We were slightly concerned that the slope of the new roof might be too shallow for snow to slide off, particularly with roll-off from the roof of the barn. The starting point was determined by an existing heavy cross beam in the barn, while the next beam is halfway up the wall – sloping the roof from there would’ve required tons of extra work and materials. As it is, it seems to be working out. Not having much snow or much of a winter at all helps. I doubt the sky will be falling in!
As winter as it gets…
This is, I guess, the new look of winter. The barrels in the field are barely half covered, compared to the three or four feet of snow that accumulated by this time only a few years ago.