Snow Again

About 8:00 this morning the NE wind slammed into us and it started to snow. Again. We are right on the Canadian border with lots of water north of us and the cold winds from the Canadian interior come down the Fraser River Canyon, across that open water and slam into us. Noone is going anywhere for a couple of day. There'll be no mail. We'll just hunker down.

Lots of Rain

It has been raining hard for about the last 24 hours and the low parts of the garden are inundated. First the freeze and now the floods.
So are the lower parts of the fields. Joel has been out opening up ditches directing the water toward the pond.
Which is now full and flowing out the overflow. We'll be grateful for all this water net summer when we need it for irrigation.

Windy Night

It was a windy night last night. the weather station on Saturna Island north of here registered a gust of 75 mph and a steady wind at one point of 60 mph. At about 2:45 AM I woke up to hear a huge gust of wind coming through the trees followed by the crash of a big tree falling close enough in the nearby woods that we felt it when it hit the ground. Next morning Joel and his brother were out clearing the roads. If you are planning on driving anywhere on the island after a windy night it's smart to toss the chain saw into the back of the truck. The tree above will go to one of the sawmills on the island to be made into lumber.

Most of the wood gets cut into stove lengths and left by the side of the road for anyone who needs it.

A Start at the New Year

Vacations are all fine and well but I have to admit that I start getting twitchy if I spend too much time not really doing anything. So today I dragged out my boxes of old sheets and started designing new rugs for the new year. For rag rugs I put on warps that will make 7 rugs at a time so I have to find a bunch of sheets that will coordinate with whatever colors I make that warp. So I pile lots of them up on the bed (I developed the habit of using my bed as a workspace in college in a very small room and still do it) and start selecting similar color combinations. The first warp will be stripes of green and dark blue and that leaves a lot of leeway. The above pile is one combination that I think will work well with those colors. I wound that warp today and tomorrow will start on another one of aquas, bright green, lavender and pink. It is exciting to get back to serious work at the loom.

While I was playing with piles of fabric in the bedroom I was running back and forth to the kitchen where my batch of Delia's Dark Chunky Marmalade was simmering on the back of the stove. It came out lovely, dark, rich, tasty. And it set up perfectly.

Such a nice day. Meanwhile it was pouring outside. In spite of which I donned my Wellies and went for a walk. The ditches along the road are full and flowing (the closest thing to a stream we get on this island) and the fields are full of puddles.

Cold

It's one of those spells of cold dry weather. The temperature was down to 18 degrees F last night and never went above freezing today. Wonder what will be left in the garden when it finally thaws which isn't predicted to happen until the weekend. Oh, well, at least the pond is full. All the rain in the previous weeks is responsible for that.

New Yarns, New ideas

With the Thanksgiving Crafts Fair in Friday Harbor over with and the Waldron Crafts Fair as well, the pressure is off. I don't really have any serious selling opportunities for fiber arts until next May. Oh, my hats especially are in a couple of galleries in Friday Harbor and LaConner, and I will keep them supplied, but in essence our time of vacation has started. The winter garden more or less takes care of itself and I don't have to hurry up and make anything. So this is a time to think of new ideas, try out samples, read seed catalogues and weaving magazines and put our feet up and drink hot chocolate. In pursuit of that I bought a sampling of new 20/2 mercerized cotton yarns in 12 color wheel colors (I know there are only 11 in the picture, I got backordered on one of the purples). I want to explore some fancy twills in fine yarns in hopes of having some new scarves for next season. This is a good time of year even if the temperature never got above freezing today.

The cold is coming

It's cold and clear and more cold is predicted for this week and next. That means get the dahlias mulched, dig the last potatoes, mulch the carrots, dig the beets. The dahlias are particularly tender and the only way to get them through even a moderate winter is a good deep mulch. 'This way I can leave them in the same bed for three years until the plants are too big to work around and the deep mulch not only protects them from frost but suppresses weeds and feeds them. They don't get any further fertilizer than just the rotted down mulch.

Grey November Days

We have been besieged with wind and rain and typical grey November days. But when I go for my more or less daily walk the roadway still glows with color. There is always the greens of salal and evergreen, but the edges of the roads are strewn with rust colored needles and golden leaves. Most of the maples have lost their leaves but the willows are later to turn and their little tiny yellow leaves create a misty look in the woods.

I like to take a walk in the afternoon down to the beach and back, a little less than 2 miles to be outside and get the kinks out of my body. I am a pretty active sort but a lot of what I do involves hunching over a loom, or my knitting, or a weedy bed of vegetables and at the end of the day I find a good brisk walk reviving.

Today the water was grey. The wind was on the other side of the island so the waves weren't impressive on this beach but if you click on this picture to enlarge it you can see them coming around the end of Sandy Point. Out there it was rough. Not a day to go anywhere by boat.

Rain

It is finally really raining. Real, wet, measurable rain. We really haven't had more than occasional sprinkles since May. It has been so very, very dry. I can just feel all the plants soaking it up.

And the sheep chose the first rainy day to escape out onto the road. Thanks to friends parking their vehicles in driveways and at intersections we got them all rounded up and back home, everyone, sheep and us very wet.

Summer is over, the booth at Roche Harbor was closed on Monday and now I am going to sit in the house and knit.

Dry Weather

We are in the midst of a major dry spell in the Pacific Northwest. We had a cool, wet spring which got things off to a slow but steady start but now our irrigation pond is empty. This does happen most years but not usually this early. We now have to irrigate from our well, which although having plenty of water, has a very low flow rate and we can't water the whole garden all of the time. So we start deciding which crops can do without water, which ones are mainly over anyway, which ones, like the winter vegetables, need to be kept well watered. We've pulled the water off the onions and potatoes, they're pretty much mature, off the statice because it will keep going for a long time even if really dry. Tomatoes can do without much water as long as they are maturing fruit. The fruit will be smaller but actually tastier as a result. Although it has cooled off this week the hot weather has been great for the melons and winter squash and corn, you can practically see it grow. Which speaks to one of my main philosophies about market gardening - grow everything. No matter what the weather throws at you something will like it.

Rain and Our First Tomatoes

I got rained out of my Roche Harbor booth today and as Joel was in town giving a talk on winter gardening grabbed a ride home. On the way home we passed Nob Island looking romantic in the rain. We came home to harvest the very first tomatoes out of our hoophouse from a variety called Stupice (stoo PEACH ka).
Joel made a great salad from those two tomatoes, Green Ice lettuce, Red Candy Apple onions, basil and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

The garden is loving the rain.

Violets

My violets are finally blooming. They often bloom all winter and I have seen one or two flowers off and on in this unusually cold season. A friend who keeps records of bloom times of native plants says that the flowering currant is a month late this year so it hasn't been my imagination that everything is cold and late. I am eager for the weather to warm up for a change.

March Market

We just came back from our once a month winter Farmers Market. With the help of our neighbors, Nootka Rose Farm, we managed to scrounge up a couple of dozen bags of various greens, kale, chard, mustards, spinach, a half box of carrots and 50# of leeks. Needless to say we sold out really fast. I also took my latest rag rugs and sold one of those.

Coming home we ran into a major snow squall. The sun was still shining when we left Friday Harbor but as soon as we got out in San Juan Channel we could see this huge black cloud and sheets of snow blowing up from the north. Most of the way home was cold, windy, wavey, and in blinding snow. As we rounded Pt. Disney on Waldron, the sun came out again. As we were unloading at the dock I looked to the west and there was this magnificent cloud dragon. We are now home, warm and comfortable and eating grilled cheese sandwiches. Quite a day.

Spring Snow

It really is the light that tells the birds and plants that spring is about here. My snowdrops and crocuses and early anemones are in bloom, the Filbert tree has lovely catkins on it and everywhere I look there are more and more birds every day, here at my feeder and out on the water. They are on the move to where ever they will nest and breed. I heard a high up flock of geese heading north the other day. The chickens have started to lay again which is stimulated by increasing daylight. Nevertheless in spite of that it snowed hard for several hours today. It finally turned to rain and all disappeared but for a few hours the herb garden look so pretty
In the middle of the snowstorm I looked out at the feeder and saw twice as many red-winged blackbirds as we've had for the last month or so. There are at least a dozen here now, they must have arrived today in the middle of the snow. All males, the females aren't here yet. They usually arrive a month or so after the first males.

Enough Water

Okay, enough with the snow picture. The last little bits of leftover snow from where we'd piled it up to open gates, etc., have finally melted in this onslaught of warm rain. I can't believe that just last week we were looking at the pond and despairing that it would fill up this winter. Every once in a while we get a dry winter and the pond doesn't fill up and then we run out of irrigation water too early. Well, not this year. As of this morning the pond is up above the outlet where it flows into the adjoining marsh. Alright, now that the pond is full it can stop raining.

And Still More Snow

We woke up to about a foot of snow this morning. This doesn't happen in this neck of the woods very often and we glory in it when it does. It is so beautiful. Last night we walked a couple of miles to a friend's house for dinner as we weren't sure we could get the truck out our 1/4 mile long driveway. It was snowing quite heavily as we came home and was silent except for a couple of great horned owls hooting in the woods.
We aren't going anywhere for Christmas. All of our family will try and get together later on when the snow has gone, maybe next week. Meanwhile we are just going to hunker down and cook a - from the farm - Christmas dinner just for us. We do need to get to town one of these days soon. If we can manage to get to the water there won't be any problem. That part of the trip isn't covered with snow. And we can walk uptown to the grocery store. Until then we will improvise with what we have. Joel will make fudge and a pie and I will cook a roast with potatoes, parsnips, onions and carrots from the garden. As long as we don't run out of cat food we'll be alright!

Snow

It started snowing after dark last night and snowed and blowed all night. This morning there are several inches on the ground. It's hard to measure because it is light snow and blowing all over the place. I know we are sort of wimps as there are lots and lots of colder and snowier places in the world, but this doesn't happen all that often here. So it is always exciting and a bit of an adventure when it does.

Last night I wrapped a hot brick in a towel and put it in the bed. I woke up in the middle of the night with three heavy cats all on top of the spot where the brick was and no way I could get my toes down there.
We run a small fan from the house into the greenhouse where a lot of our harvested vegetables are stored and this makes the snow on the roof melt and creates wonderful icicles.

Hunkering Down

The wind is starting to howl, the temperature is slowly dropping as is the humidity and the barometer is rising as the cold arctic air blasts down upon us. We've been out putting row covers over normally hardy things like our purple sprouting broccoli and overwintering cauliflowers because we really don't know how hardy they are. We also hope that it will help a bit to keep the plants from drying out. In this kind of weather, the ground freezes and the wind with the low humidity keeps taking moisture out of the leaves. Sometimes plants die from drying out instead of from the cold. The wind is blowing so hard that it is hard to keep the covers on the plants. We haven't had cold as low as they are predicting since we started growing a serious market garden. We will learn a lot from this storm. These storms seem strange to a place like the Pacific Northwest where we are mainly known for being rainy. They are a little spooky as you watch them come in. I remember one year out mulching something. It was very quiet and all of a sudden I could hear the wind from the NE hitting the trees and then I looked down and ice crystals were forming in the ground under my feet. This kind of weather almost seems alive. It makes you understand old superstitions about weather gods.

So far no snow which would be a bit of help in protecting plants. But clouds are coming in now, it was sunny and clear this morning, so who knows.

Joel is out doing the last minute things, draining the water from the washing machine and bathtub on the back porch, wrapping an old sleeping bag around the top of the well, filling buckets with water, digging a bunch of root vegetables because even if they don't freeze it looks like the ground will still be frozen by market next weekend and if we dig them now we should have them to sell. I've filled the bird feeders and tomorrow will try to set up some sort of source of water for the wild birds after the pond freezes although I don't know how I am going to keep it open in the really low temperatures. I'll do my best.

We will put extra blankets on the beds, expect all the cats to show up as soon as the fire dies down a bit to huddle next to us, James under the covers, his preferred spot. I have lots of knitting yarn within easy reach so I won't be bored. A friend loaned us her set of The Blue Planet DVD so we can watch that on our laptop and drink hot chocolate in the evenings.

November is Recharge Month

It's been pouring for the last two days, so hard that our satellite internet connection has been down. You know you are an internet junkie when you're unhappy when you can't get to your email and blogs.

In the islands, where unlike the mainland we don't look to the Cascade Mountains snowpack for our water supply, we have to depend entirely on rainfall to recharge the wells and ponds and underground aquifers. Studies have shown that if we don't get a normal amount of rain in November we usually can't make it up before March when the trees and grass start to grown again and suck up most of the water as fast as it falls. Then if we get a dry summer we start running out of water in August. This year we didn't have to start watering until July so our little pond which supplies most of our irrigation water, wasn't pumped totally dry as it often is. With all the rain of the last two days, close to 2 inches I understand, the water is muddy from running down the banks. When it is full the island in the middle disappears.

So although fretting about no internet I have been spending the rainy days knitting more hats and weaving more placemats and potholders for the big Thanksgiving weekend sale in Friday Harbor and making a big batch of apple catsup while listening to the rain fall on the roof. There is something so very cozy about being warm and dry and listening to the rain and being grateful for all the water that will be available next season.

Hot Day

I am not a fan of hot weather. Both Joel and I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and have come to realize that we have about a 10 degree temperature tolerance. Below 65 degrees and we whine and above 75 degrees we whine. We have no desire to go to hot places for vacations. Iceland sounds great. And we particularly hate it when the temperatures go from the 50's to the 80's over night. Actually the trouble with our climate is that it never stays hot long enough to acclimatize. By the time I've stopped feeling faint a cool air mass comes in from the ocean and the temperature drops. So today was pretty miserable. The thermometer at home says it got up to 85 while we were at market. Sheesh!! But it is supposed to cool off and rain in a couple of days. Typical.

So I thought in aid of cooling I would post a picture of our pond. It is so pretty this time of year. By the end of August we have pumped all the water out of it to irrigate the garden and it is a mud hole. It is our main source of irrigation water as our well doesn't produce enough water per minute to water the gardens. We are set up with a drip irrigation system that maximizes our water use and it works great.