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tuesday, take two...

2/24/2015

Well, this was a surprise.

Especially in the winter, I usually check half a dozen different weather forecasts before sending the week's newsletter on Monday afternoons. The week's temperatures and precipitation have a huge impact on what can get accomplished throughout the week, and what can be harvested. Not one forecast predicted snow for today. Even heavier snow now seems likely Wednesday night into Thursday. Temperatures don't look like they'll get warm enough to do much melting until late this weekend, and what little does melt will just re-freeze into a sheet of ice every night.

(Hooray!...return of the 600-foot ice-covered luge run to chicken yard while lugging water buckets...someone should turn that into an Olympic sport!!)

I've already had a number of cancelled orders for this week, and reports of nasty road conditions out there. For everyone's safety, and the fact that the snow's already deep enough I can't find the carrots or the driveway (and still falling), I am cancelling all pick-ups/deliveries/markets this week. Again.

For now, next week looks significantly warmer. I'm praying the weather forecasters are even halfway right, and that I haven't completely lost my marbles thanks to two solid weeks of cabin fever. I'll be back in business next week?

I also found a listing for a gorgeously green 500 acre farm in Costa Rica. If anyone has a cool $700,000 to spare, I'll ship all the coconuts and papayas you can eat to your doorstep in exchange ;)

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winter stockholm syndrome

2/23/2015

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My big slip-n-slide last week: from here at the back door, the chicken yard is a 600 foot luge that-away.

Winter Stockholm syndrome: I reached a point on Saturday morning where a damp 18 degrees didn't really feel that cold anymore. Only one wool hat necessary, not two. Sunday morning felt almost sort of sweaty, the first morning in I-don't-care-to-remember that I didn't have to lug buckets of warm water all the way across the farm at daybreak for the hens. I did a little dance of joy, then made myself a big hot breakfast, trying to melt muscles that had been corkscrewed up against the cold all week.

What fresh produce can survive a week of sub-freezing temperatures, encased in ice, under collapsed row covers, and record-breaking single-digit temperatures? Not much, I learned last week. Snow would have made for better insulation than ice; it can actually keep buried crops warmer than the ambient air temperatures, and is easily brushed off where necessary. Ice can't be chipped off of row covers or greenhouse plastic without destroying it, and doesn't provide the same insulation level.

In an average winter, we might bottom out at 10-15 degrees once or twice. I plan for that, then pray it doesn't go there. We went well beyond that point last week, and so our selection is going to be slimmer than planned for a little while. There are still a few crops that may pop back when it warms up. Either way, a whole lot of warming up and drying out is going to have to happen before I can start planting out any spring crops in earnest.

Not a big list of available eats this week; please don't exhaust yourself trying to make any impossible decisions ;) What winter sometimes takes away in variety, it makes apologies in quality. As plants brace for colder and colder weather, the water and starches in the crops turn into sugars, which lowers the freezing point of the plant's cells. Nature's antifreeze. This week will bring you the sweetest greens and carrots we'll have all year...I hope. If it gets any colder than last week, I'll be shopping for a nice little coconut grove in the tropics.

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the wonderful chickens of oz

2/16/2015

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I had quite the surprise Sunday morning. After listening to the wind howl all night, I went out as usual at the crack of dawn to open the chicken coops and bring the hens their breakfast...to find one of the chicken coops had vanished. I stood there like an idiot in the cold and the wind for a good long while, dumbfounded. Where on earth did it go?

Saturday night's fierce winds blew one of our chicken coops (which weigh well over 200 hundred pounds each) right up over the fence, Wizard of Oz - style. Somehow the thing blew across our farm, over our tree line, through the neighbors' yard and into the road. Most of the chickens that had roosted down for the night in that one coop were huddled together in a pile against the wind-less side of the other coop. I found a hen and one of our two roosters fluffed out, perched in the trees on the edge of the farm that morning. (I don't usually name the chickens, but those two poor birds have now been dubbed Dorothy and Toto). Those were some very cold and startled-looking chickens early Sunday morning, but all the ladies are OK.

I suppose it's a minor miracle that the heavy airborne coop didn't smash into any of the neighbors' houses or cars..."Late-night motorist struck by flying chicken coop in rural Johnston county" ...that would have made for one of the oddest news headlines and/or insurance claims ever filed.

Sorry folks, no pick-up, markets, or deliveries this week. Everything froze solid on Saturday night, and given the week's forecast it will all remain frozen until sometime next weekend. Temperatures are predicted to stay at or below freezing all week, with snow, sleet, and ice likely tonight, which isn't going to melt anytime soon. The power has been touch and go (and neither the ice nor the worst of the cold has even arrived yet), which means keeping an armada of 5-gallon buckets full, to make sure there's unfrozen water available for all creatures big or small. The high winds on Saturday night also blew most of the protective row covers off of the winter field crops, leaving most of it exposed to the elements on a 10-degree night. I won't be able to tell how much damage was done to the vegetables until things get significantly warmer - which is going to take a good long while.

I am sure there are a few hardy farmer-heroes out there who will manage to brave the cold, and scrape up a little fresh produce even through this unusually long, intense cold snap. I won't be one of them. You can call me a wimp if you want to, but my one and only big goal for the week is simply to try and remain a mostly unfrozen wimp :)

Stay warm, stay tuned, and we'll see what next week brings.

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so begins egg season

2/9/2015

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Just a few more days of warm, breezy, sunny weather like we had this weekend, and I might have been able to get out there and get the fields tilled up in preparation for the spring crops. The showers are starting to move in though, then it looks like it's back to wintry temperatures for a while. Ah well, that little 'spring break' was nice.

The soil condition is always the limiting factor in when I can start spring planting: if it's still cold, it's easy enough to create a warmer microclimate for the seeds or seedlings, but if the ground is still a wet, mucky mess, well, I'm back to waiting again. It's always a relief to feel like I'm getting a jump on the earliest bed preparations (and good to let the soil settle a bit before planting). It'll get there eventually. Much of the time farming's just a hurry-up-and-wait game, especially this time of year.

The hens are thinking about spring, too, laying an ever-increasing number of eggs. For the next few months, the ladies are also laying their best quality eggs. A few of you noted that the eggs are suddenly much richer and creamier than usual, with super dark orange yolks. Getting the hens over onto a new, fresh green pasture further boosts the seasonal jump in quality and quantity. Egg fans, this is your season!

We start eating a lot of eggs now, and will continue to do so until the hens start to slow down a bit in early summer (or you start eating more eggs). Eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch, eggs for dinner. We like 'breakfast for dinner' now and again, but not every single day, so it helps to have a number of recipe ideas on hand that feature an egg on it. It's not hard...what's for dinner? Just put an egg on it - sauteed greens with a soft-cooked egg on top is particularly yummy!

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carrots = winter color!

2/2/2015

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Carrots at last! Yes, the winter carrots were much later than usual this year...or you could think of them as being very early spring carrots? We could not get our winter beets and carrots seeded until about the first of October last fall, a good two months later than ideal, and I had no idea if carrots planted that late would ever materialize. (Didn't work out for the beets). I know many of you have missed them these last few months, but on the other hand, now I know that I can plant carrots that late, and most importantly get a second crop of winter carrots coming in by the time we're usually running out. February and March are the most difficult months of the year to keep a nice variety of fresh produce available; it's always good to have another crop to add to the late winter roster!

Some full-sized head lettuces available again; red leaf lettuce and butterhead (also known as bibb or boston lettuce) for now. The hens are slowly starting to earn their keep again as the days get noticeably longer. We are not quite yet at the "all you can eat" stage (that begins next month), but I think we are collecting enough eggs every day that we no longer need to limit eggs to one dozen per order.

In the meantime, the greenhouse is beginning to fill up with flats of spring starts, while we (somewhat impatiently) wait for warmer and drier weather to arrive. Our local groundhog, Sir Walter Wally, should have a hard time finding his shadow on this wet and windy morning, so hopefully we'll see an early spring!

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tuesday, take two...

winter stockholm syndrome

the wonderful chickens of oz

so begins egg season

carrots = winter color!

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