Andy Williams was wrong when he said Christmas was “the most wonderful time of the year…”
It really isn’t.
Mud season on the farm is!
Spreading compost down at Putnams on February 25. Certainly an unusual and early activity for this time of the year…
What are we to make of the weather thus far in 2024? I am personally torn. I feel for my skiing buddies, but as a person whom is no longer skiing, I have enjoyed the relatively ice free footing and the temperatures that have allowed me to cut brush and indulge in an occasional bike ride, say nothing about economizing on the firewood.
Spring fast approaches, maybe a little too fast. There is a palpable level of tension in the Macs Maple Sugarhouse as to the uncertainty of the weather and that its impacts could spell a very short sugaring season. Climate change has wrought some real havoc with the trees as we lost not only the tree fruit in most of New England in 2023 but most of the leaves on the hardwoods got burned off as well. This is abnormal stress that they can once endure, but they wont do well if it becomes a normal event.
Let’s shift to to greenhouse season and early considerations about vegetable growing.
We pretty much adhere to a chronological schedule for doing things in the greenhouse. Things are timed as best we can to provide flower and vegetable starts for our farm and customers in May. This plant material is all grown in a controlled environment, so it is a mostly weather independent schedule. However, what we do in the field and gardens out in the real weather and the timing of when we do it becomes a whole other bucket of fish. We time the first plantings of our spring vegetables starts for early to mid May, especially the field crops that take a long time like peppers and tomatoes. The first part is easy: seed and grow in the greenhouse. Then there is a general planting date (mid May) that is adjusted and affected by temperature and moisture. You can’t keep transplants in the greenhouse forever until all threat of frost has gone, because the quality of the transplant diminishes. Maybe you cant (or dare) plant because it looks like a cold front coming at you in 3 days. Or perhaps the ground is too dry and the supplemental irrigation has not been set up. After planting, the frost sensitive crops will need protection in the manner of row covers….and a bit of weather related luck by avoiding late frosts. Weather can affect the successive planting of vegetables. In 2023 we had all manner of vegetables backed up waiting for transplant, couldn’t get them planted in a timely manner because we couldn’t get into flooded areas or the ground was just too saturated.
Lets forget about last year….not a minute too soon…
The question in my mind (and every other farmer) is this : Are we to expect a drought like in 2022, or a wet year like 2023? From what I am seeing today, I put my money on a drought this summer. Loggers are complaining about the water running in the woods, but down here on these well drained sandy soils I fully expect dust clouds in May when we go to work up planting ground. There is no snow pack to keep the brooks and streams flowing full bank into May. There is no ice in the brooks and rivers and I would say by the lack of fishing huts on area ponds is that there isn’t much ice there either. That is not to say we could not have a wet spring. We certainly could, after all, don’t we live in New England? The Connecticut River across the road looks navigable in a kayak today (March 3, 2024) without much water in it. Thirty years ago (back in the Old Days…) we worried about “ice out” in the river resulting in ice dams and flooding. The river rarely skim coats ice now, and didn’t at all this year. So it will be pretty easy to get things pretty dry around here pretty quickly with a strong spring sun and some breezy April days.
Other than the regular weather concerns we think we are ready (mostly) to hit the ground running. We will put in our first two houses of tomatoes by the end of this month. Jenny and Ray are busily grafting the later plantings of tomatoes and seeding vegetables and herbs for later vegetable tunnels and outdoor planting. Ali, Aly, Sarah, Holly and Anne are already cranking out hanging baskets and transplanting seedlings. We have passed the annual housing inspections by NHDOL for the H2A crew, and we have a good start on family firewood for the upcoming winter. Youth hockey season is wrapping up and winter vacations are over so there are a lot of bodies here working already. With Jenny and Ray busy grafting tomatoes, Steve is seeding onions and I am seeding annuals and tying up the latter part of vegetative propagation of ornamentals. The warmth and relative dryness has been very nice to work in, a silver lining to all that is potentially dangerous about a warming climate. By week’s end we will have 8 greenhouses up and running.
Game on.
And finally we should mention the turnover in some of the farm team members. During the 2023 season we lost two of our favorite team players. Ray and Jenny lost Sugar, the benevolent dog beast with a sweet disposition and a firm advocate at Edgewater for a Woodchuck Free Zone. Anne and I saw our old pal Dixie leave the building. She too had a nice disposition, an un paralleled love of riding in a car and intently scrutinizing my cooking at dinner time. But there are a few new recruits that have come with the advent of the new growing season, With Walter and Mina the senior dogs, the new trainees are getting acquainted and we are learning names. There also seems to be a new breed of farm dogs showing up. They are very nimble, quick and are small. They look a lot like small goats, but I am assured they are not…….
