Spring shouldn't be Springing...

We've been enjoying the strangest weather here at Tanglewood. This week has offered two days hovering in the mid-to-high 50's, and the rest of the week has been and will be in the 40's. My usual February activities are almost exclusively house-bound, apart from the occasional slogging of hot water to the barn if the hydrant has frozen again. 

Last year on this very date we were recovering from a snow storm that dumped feet of snow on us; I had to climb fences to get to my horses, as the gates wouldn't open in the deep snow. This year is in stark contrast, as yesterday I spent almost my entire day in a sweatshirt and muck boots, dividing berry bushes and digging holes for the 87 berry plants I've just ordered (Yikes. That number looks bigger when I type it here...) 


Today I intend to spend my time doing the same, taking a break in the mid-day to grab lunch with my brother and then slogging out to tap some Box Elder trees in the hopes that this year produces at least a little sap run despite the bizarre weather.

The crazy thing is, things are actually starting to break hibernation in this heat wave! The peach tree buds have the tiniest bit of swell to them that, if I hadn't inspected them closely last week, I would never have noticed. I have to wonder how this is going to affect our fruit production state-wide, this year. I can't imagine it's going to be good.

Crazier still, when I went outside yesterday morning and checked the pussy willows, they were tightly closed, the buds showing only minimal swelling. By noon, however, six of them had begun to swell so much that they were bursting open! This weather is strange, indeed.

Are you experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures where you live? How are the plants and animals taking it?

(Also, has anybody ever tapped Box Elder trees? I just learned that they produce a delicious sap for syrup and our place is literally plagued by them!)

Picking it back up again

In case you hadn't heard via my twitter/facebook selves, I was lucky enough to lose my entire hard drive right before the holidays (note sarcasm). Apart from a few photographs still on my phone, I lost every photograph I have taken digitally in the past six years (the span of my relationship with my now husband, the span of my bakery, the span of many things...) I also lost passwords, programs, financial records, business contacts (like the 100+ addresses we mail camp flyers to each year!) ... oh geez.

It has been really discouraging, and I've hard a hard time coming back to the blog to do anything other than open a blank window and stare, realizing I have no pretty pictures to accompany my posts.

Still, this morning I found myself inspired to pick everything back up and get into it again. I transferred my photos from my phone, and while I'm left without much in the way of garden photos, I can still type your little ears (eyes?) off in a meandering deluge of scatterbrained thoughts and notions. Voila!

The weather has been bizarre lately, and from what I hear it's been strange everywhere in the country. Yesterday we had sun and it was a fair 56º F. It's January, for chrissake. I found myself digging the thawed mess out of the chicken and duck coops with a vengeance, and realized that this means I'll only have half a winter's worth of mucking when it thaws again in spring! Of course, this is assuming it ever truly freezes.

I also spent my morning putting up some new step-in electronet fencing for the sheep to graze in. Step-in. In January. I shouldn't be able to so much as bend a blade of grass, let alone shove fence posts into the ground! Very strange. It feels like I should be planting bareroot plants and setting seedlings out to harden off. It feels like I should be sitting beside the firepit out back, dodging waves of steam as they roll off the maple sap vats.

Obviously this is pre-thaw. I wouldn't be able to put in fencing when there is snow on the ground like this!

That's another thing; what are the maple trees doing in all of this? If we don't get a true deep-freeze when we need it and the trees are forced to lose more moisture, are we going to have a sugaring season at all? I can't imagine much sap will rise if the trees have spent half their winter in a groggy daze. Hm.

The weather is supposed to linger in the low and high 40's for the rest of the week and I suppose I'll make the best of it. This warm snap has reminded me that I need to order my bareroot fruits asap to make sure I get them before the nurseries run out this year. Did I mention I've decided to focus on fruit this year? I love to grow vegetables, and Jeremy and I are teaching ourselves to enjoy them more and more, but my true love of eating fresh fruits reigns supreme and I've decided to give in to my urges and turn our entire south garden into fruits this year by adding another 10-15 blackberries, 12 gooseberries and 10 currants (not to mention a variety of dew berries, boysenberries, and any other bizarre cultivar I can find). I was even considering putting in an in-ground, lined bog to grow cranberries in... Hmm...

I feel like I have to have things all planned and ready to go asap, but honestly I still have approximately 140 days until last frost so.... Wah wah.

Rain, rain, Go Away!

I was able to finish tilling the North Garden this past week. I was so excited to have a few days to work outside in the sun. I planted all of my beans in this bed - eleven varieties in several rows with various trellises and structures. It was hot, but it was dry enough to till so I really didn't have room to complain, especially considering what was in store...

 

 The North Garden is flooded and I seriously doubt my beans are going to germinate where I planted them.. This photo was taken around halfway through yesterday's rain. We actually ended up with 4" of rain, and our driveway was impassable. Lucky for us we have access to the neighbor's driveway, or I would've been swimming to the house from the road.

The area that I just planted in fruit trees is under water. Six fruit trees and three hazelnuts, submerged- in some cases with only a couple of inches above the water. I know this photo is terrible, but I was snapping photos with my phone while dodging raindrops.

This last photo is the best example of how intense the flooding was. Within only a couple of hours, the entire Northwest corner of the orchard was completely flooded. At it's deepest it was at least five feet deep. This is the same water that extended across the driveway and out onto the golf course next door. We really need to get a canoe. 

Were you affected by any of the wacky weather that swept the nation this week? How did your gardens hold up?

My Mother

Gosh, I've been so bad about posting daily, but I've had a good excuse this week!

My mother has been in town all week and we have had a great time together. We hauled compost, met dairy goats, ran errands, filled raised beds, made granola, smushed a tree and an entire car-load of irrigation hoses into her small car, ate good food, laughed a lot... It was so much fun, and I was really sad to see her leave early this morning. She is spending the entirety of today driving herself and her dog, Abbie, back to New Hampshire where she lives with my Father.

My mom has become one of my best friends over the years, and it was really relaxing to spend a whole week with her. She may not believe it (nor will she like that I'm posting it here but too bad!) but she is a beautiful, strong woman that I have looked up to, on so many levels, my whole life. The ultimate rolemodel.

I know she'll be pissed that I posted these photos of her here, but I blog to share my life with others, and to tell you all about the things I love. She can just deal with it. 

 

 

She left early this morning, before the sun came up, amidst this ridiculous Michigan snow we're having. After she left I tried to stay up for a while but after getting a better look at what was going on outside I flopped back into bed. Gardening in Michigan can be frustrating and, seeing as the whole yard is blanketed by rapidly falling inches, yes inches of snow, I went back to sleep this morning. I kept thinking the snow was all a bad dream, but now. It's still there, falling, and worse than before... inches. I'm just glad the only thing I've planted so far this year has been potatoes. Everything else will just have to wait. 

Michigan Weather Strikes Again: Flooding

The weather has been strange again. I suppose it's not really strange for Michigan, but it is strange for weather. When discussing strange weather, the "strange" aspect of it is automatically negated if you're discussing it relative to Michigan. Our weather is never steady, ever changing, and always full of surprises. Between Friday and Saturday's rains we have had serious flooding in our area. The rivers Rouge and Huron are beyond their banks, the Rouge overtaking the roads and parks in many local areas.

It's not atypical around here to have spring flooding, but I admit I've never seen it come so early. Because the ground is still frozen the water has nowhere to go so it collects in vast pools wherever it can. The farmer's field in front of our house is graded to flow right into the old orchard, and so it wasn't long before the water began to add up.

A quick walk to the edge of the water showed me that my location for the muck pile is definitely less than ideal if this is how our springs are going to be. All of those wonderful nutrients were leaching right into the water, flowing down into the orchard to fertilize the weeds, I'm sure.

By late Saturday, the water had formed a small lake, nearly encompassing our driveway, and I estimate that it was at least 48" deep in some places. It was hard to keep the dogs from venturing out into the water, but they're terrible swimmers so I managed to convince them that the freezing cold water was not a good idea.

Sunday produced freezing temperatures, and it was especially cold overnight night, and so this morning I ventured out to find a frozen lake of ice, ripe for exploration. The water has fallen by at least 24" at this point, so there is little chance of me falling in to a dangerous depth.

I wish I'd been able to snap more photos, but my camera battery chose this morning to go all wimpy on me.

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Has the winter been typical where you live, or have you had some interesting surprises?

A Year of Learning: 2010

I woke this morning to a new dusting of snow, though it's really only a translucent veil over the grass, it has made the roof tops into pristine geometric shapes again and has made it feel like winter is justified in it's cold.

The year 2010 has finally ended. The champagne has been drunk, the ball has dropped and we have jumped that final hurdle of the holiday season, into the doldrums of winter 2011. I've decided to post highlights from my year in photo form.

January - We found "the kitties" on the side of the road and fostered them, keeping and began raising Harrison (right) into our own little mischief-making-mouser.


February - We had our wonderful engagement photos taken by my brother, in the dead winter of February.


March - This was the month I almost didn't make it through. I hate waiting for the ground to dry up enough to work in! I did however revel in the fact that I had the presence of mind to plant pussy willows the previous season, and I managed to began starting seeds for the 2010 garden


April - I began work on taking out the large box elder tree that happened to be growing where I needed a fence to be. I also planned, prepped and planted an 8 bush blueberry patch and 35 raspberry bushes and put together a few additional random flower beds around the property.


May - Our ducks hatched their first duckling, Neville! He was such a runt, and I'll never forget the phone call I got from Jeremy while I was teaching. He was SO excited to be the first to see the duckling. This was also when I prepped the 2010 "new" veggie garden in the first field and planted peppers and tomatoes out WAY too early!


June - My very close friends over at Roheryn Farm had their first foal, Minya. They had to spend so much time teaching her to suckle, and she was still trying to suckle off of the wall days after birth! lol. June was also the month that I had to pry a baby deer out of Connor's mouth and carry it out of the orchard fencing while it called to it's mum. Weather was weird, and we experienced a plague of intense Michigan thunderstorms and tornadoes and felt the Ontario earthquake shake the arena while teaching!



July - Harvesting began with squash and currants, and I spent a good deal of time lounging around the yard coming up with new tasks and endeavors. Late July brought horned worms, but it also brought tomatoes. This was also the first month I made cheese, and had a blast serving it to my family.



August - We began work on putting in the fences, beginning with the wooden post fence out front. I also got to try my first attempt at splinting a duck's broken wing at a friend's house after a visiting dog used it as a tug-toy. August was the biggest month for tomatoes too, and I discovered the black krim tomato is, so far, my favorite.




September - The garden was in full swing, and we were finally able to do some wedding prep including pumpkin purchasing and mass baking. This was also the month that the house was so humid we had a tree frog try to move into Jeremy's studio!




October - The wedding day came so quickly! We had a wonderful time with friends and family, despite the cruddy weather, and the whole thing was beautiful. Afterward we went camping in the upper peninsula for our honeymoon.




November - The mad dash to prepare for the sheep began in November. I thought I'd been preparing all summer but when it came down to it the biggest job of all was the fencing! We put up all of the posts and woven wire in just a few short days and I cleaned out the barn and bought hay so that I could be prepared to bring them home the first week of December. I also discovered in November that I can fit over a cubic yard of compost in the back of my station wagon, and used it to prep my veggie bed for spring 2011 and built a new raised bed out front!




December - The sheep came to their new home in early December and autumn came to a close with a massive snow storm leaving everything covered by a blanket and leaving me with a blank canvas to think about for next year's farm and garden planning.


Happy 2011! Only 123 days until last frost date in Plymouth, MI. :)

I'm pretty sure Gertrude could care less, as long as she continues to get alfalfa mixed in with her grass hay each morning!

Not quite winter, but certainly close enough

Alas, Michigan has thrown us for a loop. Often our Decembers are full of false alarms, snow storms and freezing rain, but southeast Michigan rarely gets a good freeze before the winter solstice. This past week has taught me never to assume Michigan's weather predictable! The snow started last Sunday, which wasn't terrible. Snow is always welcome this time of year, but the rest of the week proved to be absolutely frigid! Tuesday was littered with gusts of 40mph winds and wind-chills of -16 degrees. The actual temperature reached a whomping 14 degrees.

Of course it was Monday night that was the real problem. Monday night the overnight low was only 4 or 5 degrees and it was on this night that I forgot to put the thermostat up a bit before bed to keep the house warm enough for... well... habitation. It was set at a reasonable temperature for your average Michigan December night, but the terrible cold managed to lick into our crawlspace and freeze not only our pipes but our boiler as well! Tuesday morning was full of nerves and crossed fingers. Renting can be a bonus at times. The maintenance man here is fantastic. He's an older gentleman who is pleasant and very competent. We managed to get heat blowing into the crawlspace with a space heater, and after some time things began to thaw out it became apparent that one of the seals on the boiler had broken. Lucky for us it wasn't a major repair, and the boiler itself was unharmed! Baseboard heating is so inefficient it drives me crazy. Our plan for the future is to find a way to keep the boiler/water heater area on the porch nice and warm, while heating the bulk of the house heated with wood.

I've been sealing the front porch with plastic all morning. We've got to get the house cleaned up before holiday company, and so far I've made headway on pretty much every room in the house, but really none of them is up to my standards yet (which are pretty low to begin with) which means I'm feeling wholly unproductive. Hah.

I'm taking a break now to blog, munch a bit of lunch, and watch the first bit of the BBC Pride and Prejudice... I'm such a fan of this series! Of course I'm a huge fan of anything Austen.

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The same day as the frozen boiler fiasco, we had various other troubles around the farm. I had noticed a huge red-tailed hawk scoping out the area a few days before, and I'd screamed and flapped her off knowing she would be back soon. Last winter we had a hawk attack on poor Tonks but she survived after a few days inside, a bandaged wingbase and a serious puncture wound to the chest. I'm hoping to avoid another attack this year, but I never figured the hawk would be so desperate so early in the season. I'm pretty sure a combination of the foxes' emigration back into the orchard, and the harsh early freezes, is responsible. The cottontails are scarce and the squirrels even moreso. Last year the orchard was full of life through the beginning of January, now it's just a skittering of birds through the trees, and the squirrels never show themselves unless the sun is out. The hawks are obviously having trouble adjusting because Tuesday afternoon we had a very close call between the ducks and the hawk. I think she fumbled when the ducks scattered and so they all made it to their coop in time. The ducks will be spending the remainder of their winter in their fenced and covered pen, much to their dismay.

Unfortunately this wasn't the only mishap to befall the ducks on Tuesday. Fleur is the one of our ducks that I generally consider intelligent. She has a great personality and is by far my favorite feathered farm animal. Well, I was pretty sure she was intelligent, but on Tuesday afternoon, after the hawk attack, Fleur decided to bathe in her water bucket. Any other day this would've been fine, but with the air more than twenty degrees below freezing she was quickly coated in thick sheets of ice. Jeremy heard her flapping about and looked out to see her frozen to her water! He dashed out to grab her and brought her quickly into the house, where we bundled her in a towel and sat her by the wood fire. I wasn't positive she was going to make it. She was shaking and fairly unresponsive, but after some time she warmed up and started looking around. Within an hour she was on her feet and demanding to be let out. This is the same duck that regularly sneaks into the house whenever I leave the door open for more than a few minutes. Huh. Anyway, today she is happy and bathing in her water again, but the temperature is a balmy 19 degrees so she's doing A-O-K!

Tucked in, nice and cozy

Jeremy and I bundled up and trundled into town to the Saturday farmer's market yesterday. Our mission was simple enough: to get a small Christmas tree. We found one quickly enough, after falling in love with it's odd Victorianesque shape. I had hoped to find a few other things while we were there, but aside from buying another calendula lip balm from a wonderful local bee farmer, we didn't pick up much. We came home and decorated the tree while listening to some of Arvo Pärt's Berliner Messe. After hanging our assorted ornaments I realized that for the most part our tree has either native bird ornaments, or star wars ornaments. Hahaha. I guess that seems about right.

Our tree has the most adorable homely shape to it.

I also began warping my table loom in a simple white wool. It's been a long time since I've woven, and I'll admit it would be easier if I could find my sley hook instead of trying to fumble the various plies of the yarn through the metal heddles. I didn't get as far as tensing the loom, but that's fine by me. Once I get it dressed and tensioned, I'm sure the actual weaving will fly by quickly - it always does. My goal was to finish dressing it today, but after the snow storm slowed everything down I didn't really get much of anything done...

The table loom has been a great loom for the house we're in now, but I miss my floor loom which is still in storage - and dressed - at a friend's house.

This morning brought a four inches of wintery surprise for all of us. The weather forecast had been correct, for once, and the old North wind had dumped a blanket of white over us during the night. When I awoke, the snow was still falling fast and I managed to stay in bed an extra hour or so before the lady-ducks' cries finally drove me to get out into the cold crisp air.

This is a shot from the window that is level with our bed. I roll over and peer out over the barnyard every morning.

My first chore was to hay the sheep. They seemed more polite today than usual. I think they're developing a distinct pecking order and there is a lot less shuffling and headbutting in the morning when I feed them. It's fun to watch their excited faces as they root around in the hay pile to find the bits of alfalfa that I mix into their grass hay. Spoiled much?


After the sheep, I trudged over to the duck coop amidst quite a racket. If the sheep have become more polite, the ducks have become less so. I swear each morning, Fleur and Tonks get louder and louder. Poor Fleur has the squeakiest voice, too. She had an upper respiratory infection earlier this year and, while she seems to be over it, she still has a squeak when she quacks. Poor dear sounds like cleaning an oboe reed!

The ducks are finally acclimating to the snow. They are Khaki Campbells, and, well, they're pretty wimpy when it comes to bad weather. I know some people who have ducks that revel in the snow. I have to put their food across their pen so that they get out into the snow a bit, or else
they'd never leave the coop!

The ducks despise the snow, and would rather stay inside than venture out.

The blanket of snow has coated everything now. It was peaceful and quiet in the gardens, and I was grateful for the thick frosting because for once I was able to focus on the accomplishments of the last year, rather than the unfinished jobs and projects now masked by the snow.

In 2010 I managed to:

• put in, and adjusted the soil of, a bed of eight blueberry bushes
• plan, prepare and plant a raspberry patch of 34 plants, and prepare the bed for 2011 expansion
• build two large raised strawberry beds, one small wild strawberry bed
  
• build four raised beds by the front fence: two for vegetables and two for strawberry propagation
• build my fantastic garden bench and raised veggie bed
• install three concrete cinder block gardens, using lasagna soil methods
• prep plant and harvest a new veggie bed, and then double it in size for next year
  
• Etc, etc, etc

It's amazing to look at what I've accomplished. I often feel like I'm behind in what I'd like to be doing around the garden, but this morning I was able to finally feel like I've caught up. The season of planning is truly upon us, though I am still trying reeeeeally hard to keep from planning veggie varieties until January 1st. It's healthier that way, I think...

Here, I close with a few additional photographs.

The blueberry bushes are tucked in for the winter...

The Raspberries are cozy and sleeping, though the deer fence has collapsed under the first snow- not a good sign...

The orchard is thickly frosted and only the occasional skittery steps of the voles and field mice show that life exists beneath the snow.

Basil loves the snow and drives us all crazy with her frantic yapping and bouncing and nipping and... you get the picture.