Seedlings, and seasonal confusion.

Despite the very strange weather that continues to be very unpredictable, and perhaps because of it, seedlings are our focus right now. This weekend was the seedling swap, so you may notice that a lot of our seedlings are gone because we gave them away at the seedling swap this weekend. I'm always happy to be able to share the wealth with seedlings, especially given that it isn't like we came home empty handed. You can see some of the more sensitive seedlings still inside in this photo, but we also came home with a basically full herb garden.

Happy Spring! Time for cleaning and snow.

Happy Spring! As you probably know there's been some significant snow fall up here. It was quite a transition for us since it was warm and rainy on Saturday followed suddenly by snow on both Sunday and a Monday.

The scale of life.

This weekend we went for a walk together in the woods on a lovely warm Friday. Of course, we turned back relatively quickly when out of the nice clear warm sky hail started, but that's New England for you. Either way, I wanted to share the really lovely photo the Lady of the House got to give some scale to our woods that is often missing from a lot of the photos that I post here. Obviously a lot of the trees around us are young, and most of the oldest trees are no more than 50 - 100 years old just due to the realities of how thoroughly the area had been cleared. Even so, everything around us towers over us and the house which can be really wonderful.

Outside of our environment being impressive, the weather is very . . . March in New England is probably the best way to put it. Snow overnight and in the morning, 50s mid day. This is honestly exactly the kind of weather I expect day to day at this time of year, I just usually expect there to be snow cover on the ground rather than grass and leaf cover.

Unexpected help, and learning from the sun.

Well, to say it was a bit windy last night would be an understatement. The Lady of the House described it as sounding like a hurricane in terms of wind. The tarps over the wood piles blew off, and some pieces of wood were 30 + feet away where they'd been catapulted off the tarps. That said, this tree at the mouth of the driveway isn't the one I'd expected to go down. As you can see, it covered the entire base of the driveway. I started off by clearing the chunks of wood, and branches

off the driveway. As I was set to deal with the trunk, one of the folks who lives in town stopped and helped out. I guess he saw me working to clear the debris, and backed up to stop at the base of the driveway. He grabbed his chainsaw, cut the trunk into pieces and helped me clear it out of the driveway. It was amazingly helpful, and definitely reminded me of the really good things about living where I do. I probably could have gotten the tree cleared out of the way, but it would have taken a long time, or I'd have hurt myself in the process. Dean stopping to help out made all the difference in the day, and took him about 3 minutes because he had the right tools for the job.

Fast moving water all over.

"Tis nothing but a sprout, but well budded out . . ."
Always a line that stuck with me from Alfred Noyes poem a May Day Carol. Of course, it's not May yet, or close to it. The pear tree doesn't seem to know that though. We will see if that works out to good or ill. It also reminds me it's time to learn how to prune fruit trees since we had one survive the winter. Though it's always worth remembering, winter isn't over.

Bracing for cold amid snow.

It's continued snowing on and off for the past few days. The kid and the dog love it, the rest of us, not so thrilled. The up side about the snow is that if it's snowing it's not bitter cold. That's going to be changing shortly. We're expecting temperatures to drop into single digits over the weekend. Fortunately we're going to be home, but I'm concerned about the animals that are outside with highs in the singles, and lows in the negative double digits.

Mother Nature reminds us it is winter for some time still.

So one of the problems with talking about how mild the winter has been in late January is, there's a lot of winter yet. She heard us, and has delivered the missing winter. We'll see how long it stays, but She seems to be aimed to drop enough snow for us to remember right quick. On the up side, the Critter still loves every moment of snow.

Spring thinking, and sick critter

Most of what we've been focused on over the past week or so has been inside the house more than outside, and we'll get to that in a moment below the cut. Right now though we're watching the rapidly melting snow covering the last areas of the growing areas, and thinking about the strangeness of the weather. We have predicted snow in 7 days, but instead of waiting for Memorial day for anything the way we normally would, we are considering planting early plants such as radishes, lettuce, mustard greens, and cold hearty beans. Given that the weather has been so strange all winter, and we have a bit of a glut of a few varieties of seeds it seems like a situation we can either get something good, or just have to re plant later.

Wood considerations

So, what I'd intended to talk about yesterday was the wood piles, and our wood situation in general. We're doing very well in terms of wood level this year which is a nice place to be. Of course, with the wood stove out of commission we'll be using even less than expected. With it being a warm winter we haven't been burning as much as we normally would to begin with. What that means is we're going to have a lot of wood left over.

There are better uses of a day, and worse.

Today has turned out a bit frustrating, but not a total waste of time. It mostly just pointed out some of the differences in how we have come to see the world from others. We were schedule to get a stove delivered today. Now to us the driveway is totally doable. Especially with the extra sanding I did to prepare it for the delivery truck. To them, with this amount of sand, and getting through to the gravel beneath for much of it, it wasn't something they would even consider. They'll try again in a week, and if they can't deliver it then, I'll tie it to a hand cart, and haul it up myself. For all that I'm frustrated though, there are other things going on, and while I hate "wasting" time off from work, other things have been done, including rest my sore back.

Poultry on ice.

It's still very cold out there, and our poultry are for the most part doing well. The black tom is another story that I'll get to in a moment. The liquid water that we have around the property even when it's in single digits whether due to the seeplands North of the house, or the drainage ditch, or even the french drains under the parking area are important congregation spots for the poultry worth even dealing with braving the way up the icy slope, or the enthusiasm of the dog.

The worst kind of winter weather.

Christmas has come and gone, as has our strange late fall that felt more like spring. The turkeys of course, are still roosting in the trees over the rabbit hutches. Once the ice storm came they were less thrilled about it though, and have been reluctant to come down. I can't really blame them. If I didn't have reason to be outside I wouldn't be. Of course, with livestock we have reason to be outside.

We'll get to the snow shortly.

First, we are doing well, Christmas was lovely and many people were very generous to us and the Critter. We felt very fortunate, and feel extremely fortunate to have the friends both proximate, and connected through networked media. Thank you to everyone that reads this as we come in to the end of the year, and thanks especially to the Patreon patrons that have helped us significantly this year. That said, let's get on to what's occupying us right now. The weather.

A lovely March morning.

It's a lovely March morning today, the fact that it's December has changed this from being convenient that weather has held off while we weren't prepared to getting concerning. While I personally am not a huge fan of snow, it has a lot of benefits. Especially in regards to agriculture. Obviously it's not like there isn't plenty of winter to come, but I figured I'd mention why it is good to have a long snow season despite my personal feelings on snow.

First things first, the blanket effect of snow isn't just something that's said. When snow covers the ground due to the amount of air trapped in the snow it acts as a significant insulator. That helps maintain soil temperature. Not saying it isn't cold under snow, but it can help keep things like overwintering plants survive the winter. The temperature regulation also makes a big difference for trees. Evergreens in particular if their roots warm up enough attempt to draw up water. That isn't a problem right now because the ground isn't frozen yet. Once it's frozen if they try to draw up water they will potentially dehydrate. More relevant right now given the fact that it's warm, with the snow on the ground it helps prevent nutrients from being evaporated out of the soil. Snow is called "Poor Man's Mulch" by a lot of local farmers.

Second, snow pack helps replenish ground water and as long as there isn't a flash melt is much more beneficial for the ground. I don't know all of the mechanisms on the science side of things but I do know that without a good snow pack over the winter, drought is very much more likely. It can very much benefit early season crops to have a good snow pack.

Third, without snow anything like garlic that's planted to overwinter doesn't have protection from being eaten by birds, or casual consumption by other animals. This is particularly relevant for us because we like garlic, and actually provide the birds that would eat the garlic if it was planted right now. Until we get a projected snow I am going to be holding off on getting the garlic in the ground. Of course, that will require the ground to still be thawed for me to be able to plant. We'll see if that's an option.

So far I've only covered snow. Now we come to the cold. The most obvious benefit of cold, especially snap freezes is that it kills bugs dead. Without a good hard cold winter it's likely to be a very buggy year next year. That of course has benefits for our chickens, but for crops that's not a good thing. What it will mean if we don't get a hard winter for the rest of this winter we're going to have to think about using something for pest control. Probably some combination of neem oil and co planting insect discouraging crops.

Just figured I'd voice some thoughts about my concerns about the lack of winter so far.

Splash's litter, snow, and a chicken in on the game.

It's nice to have lots of babies on the ground again, especially at this point where we're watching them get bigger day by day. These are the three that Dawn's Daughter gave birth to.

 I'm actually going to be soliciting everyone for input on naming Dawn's daughter. We've mostly stuck to lighting phenomenon for naming our rabbits, but we're happy to branch out with Dawn's daughter. So far her babies are doing incredibly well. Today at 5 days old they are 116, 111, and 106 grams. That's an average weight of 111.00 grams, and an excellent growth rate of 113.65%. For 3 babies an excellent growth rate is to be expected, but we also have Splash and Dorado's litter on the ground right now, and some time soon we're expecting Twilight and Streak's litters to hit the ground which should be good. There's a lot more baby rabbit photos below the cut.

Lady Nature isn't done with us yet, delaying plans.

The Lady Nature has decided to remind us once more that she's not to be ignored, and that things will be as they will be. The thing that is a little harder to tell from this photo is that this isn't snow, it's a mix of snow and hail that's about boot toe deep. Mostly just an inconvenience, and if I admit it to myself, somewhat pretty. The real problem is that we still haven't been able to do any spring cleaning, and the area is a mess which needs to be rectified soon.

Starting the first seeds, inside.

I'm going to start by giving a shout out of thanks to our first patron on Patreon, I promise I won't say something every single time someone sponsors us on the blog, but I'm very happy that our first day on Patreon we have a patron.

So, now that spring has sprung, it's time to get started with planting, well, not out here yet, but let's take a look at our planting areas and what they look like at the moment before starting the first plantings. Above is where the garlic is right now. As soon as the snow melts we're going to have to pull up the paper we put down to protect the beds. There's also a few other random beds down the slope that had tomatoes and peppers last year, so this year they are going to have radishes and the like.

A real taste of spring, preparing for melt.

Spring has shown its first signs as far as we're concerned, believe it or not. How do I know? Dorado is drinking from a water bottle that was out overnight. Not all of the water bottles stayed liquid over night last night, but most of them did, and had been liquid all day. Yesterday hit almost 40° F, and it stayed just below 30 last night. Of course today it's dropping all day, and it's going to be below 0° F overnight so we won't do the water outside thing again, but it's still nice!

Quick Hit: Bread success, goals, and wintery mix

Today is just a quick hit because I'm unprepared for today in general. The Critter was up and down all night very happy, and wanting to talk about it. I didn't get nearly enough sleep, and forgot to get photos for the blog this morning. All I have right now is the photos of the bread that I baked Sunday that I was happy with. I got tired of the stuck bread bottoms, so I just went with parchment paper that I reused from having baked cookies for the Lady of the House's birthday.

The Top pair of chunks of bread are actually intended to be bread bowls, I thought they turned out picture perfect, unfortunately the lighting did them no favors. They're slightly over large bowl sized, and I hope they work out well for bread bowls which is what the Lady of the House wanted them for. The other bread I baked this weekend, also sourdough, is more normal loaves. I tried making slicing shaped bread for sandwiches, and that turned out beautifully. The slightly smaller cross section has lead to darker colored outsides, but a good solid crust has nothing wrong with it in my opinion. I'm glad to feel like I'm finally getting things good and settled in making sourdough. Now the trick is going to be making the sourdough more sour, and it sounds like setting the bread in a cooler area of the house is actually going to be good for increasing the flavor. To do that I'm going to rise the bread in the kitchen instead of near the stove which is what I have been doing. We'll see how that works out.

For the time being, there isn't much to report, we didn't get seeds started this weekend due to this being a lean time, and not having starter soil. We're hoping to do that not this weekend but next perhaps. Thursday, I'll have more of a post, if nothing else on getting out from under our next snow storm, which promises to be the worst of all storm types, snow and rain mixed.

It's hard to imagine that in 3 months the world will be so different

In 3 months there will be growing plants, growing edible plants in this front slope garden. It'll probably be Kale and Radishes, but still. With the greater than dog depth snow (dog for scale) it's good to remind ourselves of that from time to time given the seemingly interminable winter.

Down a chicken due to our previous visitor.

Remember our not so benign visitor that we were concerned about, well, an overly adventurous chicken experienced why we were worried about it the hard way from what we can tell. On the up side we only lost one of the chickens which is a lot better than our previous predator experience where all chickens died at once. That said, this is most certainly not the end of the season of predators being a major threat. In fact, as breeding or birthing season comes up for the various predators in the area the concerns about depredation are going to increase not decrease. After all, foxes, owls, and weasels do have babies to feed. To that end we're going to just need to try to keep the chickens out of the woods. In this case a couple chickens decided to fly out of their run and explore in the snow. I wonder if they were startled out of the run given that there's nothing out there that's really worth going out to get at. Especially not where I found the one live, and one dead chicken.