All posts in category weather

The Best Laid Plans

Planning the farm usually begins in November. Well, I start talking about it in June, but the real action happens after we’ve cleaned out the garden beds and stacked wood for the furnace. We have to consider space, planting times, relationships to previous years’ crops and next year’s crops, favorite plant varieties, new ones, and materials to purchase.

But our success relies on something we can’t control: the weather.

Today, it feels like a crisp October morning with the promise of rain. The air is chilled, the breeze is moist, and bed didn’t want to give me back to the world. It’s a stark contrast to the last few months. In June and July, we suffered through a string of 95-103F temperatures, and some nights, the thermometer didn’t dip below 80. I say “suffered” because we don’t have central air conditioning on the farm… and we’re still feeling the effects in the garden.

Our tomatoes didn’t flower because of the hot temperature. Spinach bolted before it even developed baby leaves. We couldn’t sow new seeds because the soil temperature was too high for germination. The ground has cracked from the lack of rain. Today will be 10 weeks since our last measurable precipitation on the farm.

This week, we took advantage of the cooler temps and sowed some leafy greens seeds. When I tilled the rows, I noticed that our irrigation tape had left a trail of mineral deposits along the rows.

The weather has left us struggling to meet our CSA commitment. Our friends’ farms post photos of their tomato harvest on their Facebook pages, leading us to wonder what happened on our place and if we could have done something differently.

If you’ve read to this point, I should tell you that my life is not all doom and gloom. We took a short vacation to a state park this week, and enjoyed the break. The boys went fishing, we tooled around in a paddle boat, and enjoyed a dinner at Main Street Cafe in Louisville. (We recommend the chicken and noodles and the onion rings, both house made.) It was great to get away for a couple of days.

Every year brings challenges. We have to face facts and adapt. But nothing has scared us off yet.

-Brian

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by blacksheepfarms on August 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Seed Starting, Tomatoes, weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on August 18, 2012

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2012/08/18/the-best-laid-plans/

Signs of Spring

No matter how mild or severe the winter, we always look forward to Spring. It’s a time of anticipation. We’re on the edge of enormous change, but we have to temper our excitement with the pace of Nature. Things happen when they happen, and no human can urge them along.

Weeks ago, we planted seeds in the greenhouse for our upcoming plant sale. They sprouted and stalled, ignoring our pleas for growth until the sun sent the expected signals. Then, the tiny stems thickened and reached upward. Plants know when the time is right.

Our chickens huddled together, refusing to lay eggs. Just two weeks ago, we found one a day. Yesterday, there were 23.

Even roadkill has its seasons. In February, it was skunk. Now, rabbit.

We have spotted flies winding their way across the sky and heard the early morning birds greeting the day. The sprouts of garlic and tulips are pushing their way up, as are the lily-of-the-valley. These changes give us hope for a healthy growing season and many hours of playing in the dirt.

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by blacksheepfarms on March 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Animals, Seed Starting, weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on March 10, 2012

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2012/03/10/signs-of-spring/

Bad Jr.

Not many of our animals have names. Sure, we have named the dogs and cats, but the food animals are a different story. Even at the beginning of our farm adventure, we knew that these animals weren’t pets. That’s an important distinction. We still care for these creatures and respect them for who they are, but we don’t get attached the same way.

In the normal course of life, however, some animals get named. With the pigs, we had Ranunculus, the boar we bought from Pandora Farms. And, there was Number Two, named for his ear tag.

Here, you see a photo of Bad Jr. He has the distinction of being the only chicken who has hatched on Black Sheep Farms. He is the combination of a Sumatra black mother and our Rhode Island Red rooster, Big Bad Rooster. This gives him a beautiful combination of beetle green and feiry red feathers. In his youth Big Bad (also called BB), would chase our boys around the yard, flapping like mad. He was the biggest rooster of the bunch, so the kids started to identify him as the Big Bad Rooster. Clever, huh?

Today, with the first snow of December, Bad Jr. finally moved into the chicken coop. His mother had laid her eggs in a corner of the pig hut, and they spent the summer and fall following the pigs in their rotation around the alfalfa fields. No chicken likes snow – at least none that I know – so he reluctantly hopped up the concrete step and joined the rest of the flock inside. It was a big day for him.

-Brian

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by blacksheepfarms on December 3, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Animals, weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on December 3, 2011

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2011/12/03/bad-jr/

Beating the heat

Who am I kidding?  No one is beating the heat these days.  We’re all just trying our best to wait it out until we see a break.  Here in Nebraska, we’ve seen higher than average temperatures for several weeks now.  Not to mention unbearable humidity!  So far, the farmers around here look a bit more wilted than the crops, but I wonder how long they can hold out before we start seeing the negative effects.  

These days, we are taking breaks during the hottest part of the day and we swim or play in the water quite a bit.   But even with shade trees and a breeze it’s still 90 degrees inside the house!  Sometimes it all gets to be too much.  Today is one of the those days.  So today you can find me holed up in my bedroom next to the window air unit, dreaming of snow!

Later this week they are talking highs in the 80s!  I can’t wait!

Stay cool everyone! 

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by blacksheepfarms on August 1, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on August 1, 2011

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2011/08/01/beating-the-heat/

Entering peak season

Life on the farm is about as busy as it can get these days.  The early spring crops are being harvested and the rows are being cleared to make room for new seeds.  The summer crops are growing like crazy.  Work here is a flurry of weeding, composting, planting, harvesting, canning, and more weeding!  On top of that, it’s incredibly hot and humid.  It’s so rewarding to see your hard work pay off in the form of delicious produce, but at the same time, I get burned out pretty quickly and constantly feel overwhelmed.  We are taking a short family vacation next week and joining our family in Colorado.  We are very fortunate to have Nicole, my mvp of the csa, to farm-sit for us.  The last time we went, Comet was a baby so he has no memory of how beautiful it is there.  Since his lifelong dream is to be a nature scientist, he’s excited about the prospect of seeing new and exciting creatures and plants.  I’m excited to see it all through his eyes, but the part that excites me most?  Cooler temperatures and NO MOSQUITOS!

We hope to return energized and ready to tackle the second half of the growing season!

 

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by blacksheepfarms on July 11, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Kids, weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on July 11, 2011

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2011/07/11/entering-peak-season/

Weather

It can be a farmer’s best friend or worst enemy.  I love a cool rain as much as anyone (especially just after I’ve planted several hundred plants in the field), but I feel for all of the farmers whose livelihood has been destroyed by tornadoes this spring.  When we first started farming, my mother was worried.  Worried about the unpredictable nature of farming.  Being raised on a farm herself, she knows that things like high winds and hail can wipe out a summer’s worth of work.  It’s a gamble, for sure.  In the few short years we’ve been here, the weather has been mostly good to us.  We’ve been lucky.  Our hearts go out to all the farmers out there who haven’t been so lucky and we hope they will have the ability to pick up the pieces and keep doing what they love.

I’ve spent some time cursing the weather this month.  I want it to be warmer. I want it to be dry so I can actually get out there and work.  Oh, and I want to wave my magic wand and make the weeds disappear, but that’s another story.  Unfavorable weather slows down production.  I want to have twice as much produce available right now as I do.  But really, we are the lucky ones.  There are so many who have nothing.  And then I look again what I have, and I am thankful.

~Kelly

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by blacksheepfarms on May 25, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in weather

Posted by blacksheepfarms on May 25, 2011

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2011/05/25/weather/

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