Weather Watchers

It may not be a hundred percent true, but I think Scott Chasky, the director/head farmer of Quail Hill farm was right when he said that farmers are never happy with the weather. A year can be pretty darn good but there is generally a little something along the way to quibble with mother nature about.

For instance, here we have just avoided a major flood; one day last week it was supposed to be sixty three with some rain and we got about fifty five and little rain and a lot of wind and we dodged a bullet. Not only no 15.5 feet of river, no 11.5, which is when we start to flood at OHF. It ended up at about nine feet. Sounds pretty good right. Yeah, but this would have been the best time to flood if it has to happen, and now I'm looking at a week of some sixties, should be pretty happy, but I'm wondering if we got rid of enough snow to avoid flooding this week, which if we do, by the end of it, I might get my first plowing in.

Hence the continual checking of NOAH, which stands for something and has fun graphs like this:

If you want a case of maybe some early season-too-much-time-on-my-hands over-reading I look at this chart and I see an ice jam that is going to let loose in concert with some high temps and get us our flood. Also might be a case of as John Ashbery said, "saying things to keep them from happening."

In more normal news: I finished the cold frame for this year. Cold Frames are a little mini-hoophouse designed to hold three or four additional degrees so the plants can harden off, ie get reading step by step for the real outdoors. The tomatoes and Okra have shown themselves quick, so I'm getting excited.