Looking out the side door of the Extended Milkhouse, this is what I see. The mighty tiny tractors don’t seem too formidable under a little snow. A good old fashioned blizzard and they’d be…gone! A few years of crazy short winters, and it’s easy to forget how different the seasons used to be around here. Not that long ago, 15-20 years, winter meant a whole new ground level, with permanent snow at least two or three feet deep settled in for the duration wherever it wasn’t plowed. Now, it’s practically a novelty. I can hardly believe I’m not exaggerating… Well, there may not be as much snow, but winter’s still coming, and I’m still going to have to soon finish cleaning out the drive shed to put the machines away…
snow
Kale under…snow
Another installment in the snow-covered series: Winterbor kale! I’m so used to rollercoaster weather and the new winters that never really get started, it’s kind of a shock to have this much snow for three days in a row in November. And there’s no melt-off in sight, with the 15-day forecast predicting little sun and day temperatures hovering under 0°C (32°F). Picked a few pounds of the kale today, it’s still holding up, particularly the young new growth. It won’t last long if it stays frozen day and night. All this watching of cold-weather crops is bound to come in handy…sometime!
Rosemary under snow
The rosemary’s looking quite fresh and perky, buried tip deep in snow. There are many cultivars, some apparently able to overwinter in quite brutal cold. I have three types here, two without names (one a survivor of last winter’s rosemary greenhouse debacle), plus a new Barbecue cultivar. How hardy are they? Are they as happy as they look in the snow? Will I eventually take them in (as planned)? Or mulch them where they stand?
Buckets of snow
Woke up to a world of snow. Unlike the heavy dusting a few days ago, this was a serious snowfall, looked like 5-6″ (12.5-15 cm). This will stick around for a while. I didn’t finish mulching the garlic, and there are still carrots out there, but no worries, I’m SURE it’ll melt off in the next week or two, and meanwhile, snow is a great insulating mulch!
The goats have no problem with snow. It’s eating and looking out as usual!
First snow comes and goes
Even a section of fence sorely in need of clean-up and repair looks kinda interesting under a little snow. We’ve had the lightest of powder trickling down for a few minutes here and there over the last couple of days, but overnight, it finally snowed enough to stick around for a bit. This was about 9 a.m. Within a couple of hours, the sun was out and the first snow was gone without a trace…
Ah, the weather
It looks a lot different than it did yesterday! This overnight dusting of snow didn’t stick around for long (the ground’s still warm enough to melt it off), but the zero days and way-below-freezing nights for the next week or so, and nearly as cold temperatures forecast well towards the end of April, aren’t the greatest. Totally unlike the warm and workable Aprils of the last four years. Is this latest extreme another result of global warming, or simply…the weather (after all, cold Aprils aren’t anything new)? The lifelong farmers I’ve asked all agree that the consistently wild swings of the last three-four years is something they have never before seen. For me, going into only my fifth year of farming (my fifth year of paying real attention to the weather), extreme weather is all I’ve known! It’s…normal!
Second day of spring
It’s pretty close to all-clear in the field, with the temperature well above zero and a steady rain on this second day of spring. I can feel the next stage of weather-watching coming on. At the end of winter, it’s all about snow being gone. No sooner than that happens, the watching turns to the day and night highs and lows, amount of sun, amount of rain and the trend for the next couple of weeks. Beneath all that is wondering what type of season it’ll be overall. With freaky weather now the norm, we could have a cool, damp, sun-less summer like three years ago (no two consecutive days of sunshine all season!), a spring time drought like two years ago (no rain from April into July, with heatwaves to boot), or just extreme ups and downs for two-three weeks at a time like last year. What weather will the season bring? (One month ago…)