Hello Winter.

6 AM and it is 2 degrees above zero. I came downstairs to stoke the wood stove and decided to take advantage of the deep quiet of early morning and have a little time to myself. Logs are popping and groaning in the fire and the old dog is warming his aching bones on the heated floor just in front of the stove door. His long list of healed injuries are apparent in the stiffness of his gait in the cold. Winter is hard on him.

After harvesting a trailer load of peat from the peat pit, my son and I stopped to look at the ice starting on the pond.

Yesterday it was 19°F when I got up and the high temperature of the day was 25°F. It was the first day since last spring where we did not warm up above freezing even in the bright sunshine. The lower arc of the sun just hits the top third of the garden this time of year and it has lost its warming power even at full strength with nary a cloud in sight. The nights have been pretty chilly this week, in the 20s, and the lower garden started freezing up, and not thawing out during the day, this past week. In mid September to mid October we lose significant day length as well as the amount of above freezing hours you can work with the ground outside. Each day the amount of time the ground is workable shrinks until you finally get a day like yesterday when it does not thaw at all.

October 13. The lower beds in the garden are freezing up.

It took just two days of cold for the ground to form a frozen crust. The puddles are solid ice and the water buckets for the animals all need to be filled daily. or several times a day for the pigs who like to tip theirs over. Imps. The small ponds are freezing up and the lake will not be far behind. The annual fall rush can be defined as working like a madwoman outside up until this day when I finally have to throw in the towel and be done with the garden until next spring. You just never know when it will happen. There have been years when I have looked around and stated “I will hate myself in the spring” because far too little prep was accomplished when the ground froze by the first week of October. In spring, there is an even narrower window to get everything in the ground for our short growing season and the more prep you do in the fall, the better. This year despite the extra hours spent indoors with homeschool, the garden is actually looking pretty good. Sure, I would love to have done more but it is not a total disaster. A lot has been accomplished in this last two weeks of fall.

The cold hardy plants still in the garden, the cabbages, leeks, Brussels sprouts, and kale, were harvested and brought to the house. My son ran the big woody plants through the chipper/mulcher for composting and my daughter helped harvest. The voles have taken up residence in force this fall so I am removing plant debris from the garden to the compost pile so there are not as many places for them to hide. Hopefully an ermine or pine marten will pass through and clear some out.

I crimped the cover crop row of barley and alfalfa down with an old poplar board so the plants would protect the bed over the winter.

And I discovered a surprise at the end of the row. Last year in 2019, rosemary and thyme were planted in this bed and a thyme plant survived the winter, survived weeding and planting, and survived being neglected all summer. What a hardy plant! I probably should have dug it up and saved it or left it be but I was in a hurry so I harvested it and moved on.

We moved the sandbags off the silage tarp that had been on unused weedy lower beds since it was shipped up here this summer and I drug the giant black tarp to a new position for winter. I had had an order in for two more tarps in the hopes of covering the majority of the beds for the winter but the order was postponed until spring as apparently the factory where the tarps are made had delays due to the hurricanes. My thought, or hope, is that when the sun melts back the snow in the spring and all the cold hardy native plants begin to grow, that the section on the tarp will warm, the weed seeds will germinate, and then they will die of light deprivation by the time the ground is thawed and dry enough for me to get in there and start planting. I am always impressed by the plants that can start growing when the soil just thaws a half inch at a time during the day and refreezes at night. I do not like making the time to weed out all these plants before seeding.

30′ by 100′ silage tarp. Flat ground sure would be easier.

I am not a big fan of utilizing a lot of plastic, however, these reusable tarps can provide an enormous amount of saved time in the market garden through clever use. You can rapidly break down cover crops in the heat of summer, protect uncovered soil, and burn off the top layer of the weed bank in the top of your soil (I need this the most!). Nearly half of my garden is thick in native perennial horsetail and I am hoping a few years of occultation with the tarps will help me control this plant that takes far too long to weed using traditional methods (and then grows right back). When I moved the silage tarp last week I was treated to a lovely sight, weed free garden beds. So far so good. With our short season and cooler temperatures, the tarps will be less effective than on lower 48 farms, but I am excited to have this tool in my toolbox.

Several beds just uncovered and looking ready to go for spring (except for mulching with compost). Weed free!

Swans and geese have been flying over regularly heading southeast. I love to hear the honking and have an excuse to stop laboring and look for the flocks. Sometimes they are way up in the sky and sometimes skimming the treetops but always a happy sight to see.

Giant Vs of geese. Photo Credit Sylvia Nelson

The sky spit snow on Thursday, the first flakes I have seen this season. Every few hours the sky would open up and a short burst of flurries would come down. It all melted right away in Strelna but made the outdoor work damp and chilly.

You can not tell in this picture except for a few white streaks but it was snowing!

My daughter and I have been working all week on prepping the topmost 4 garden beds that have my low tunnel hoops.

It is important to get every last bit of compost out of the wheelbarrow! Though you can only tell by looking at the white steaks on my brown carhartts and speckled white ground, it was snowing when Sylvia took this picture too.

If nothing else, I wanted those beds ready to go in spring for early greens. I kept the plastic up for a while which kept the soil warmer than it would have been otherwise allowing us to weed and broad fork later than if I hadn’t. It was chilly work but we did it, finally finishing yesterday evening even with the soil frozen an inch on top. Luckily all we had left to do the last day was spread compost on 150 square feet, one half of one bed. The beds were weeded and then spread with compost and broad forked. I had hoped to spread even more compost on other beds but that will have to wait for spring.

It is only 5:45 PM but the sun has already gone behind the mountains. Time to go inside by the fire!

I still have at least 4 to do lists going. Now that I can turn my back on the main garden, I need to focus on mixing seed starting soil (a challenge with these temps) and getting the greenhouse prepped for spring starts. I should be able to work on it for a while as long as we do not get a large amount of snow. I can see light at the end of the tunnel though. Soon there will be more moments like the one now where I have time to watch the sky begin to lighten, to contemplate life with a cat on my lap (typing is a little challenging in this scenario…), and feel cozy by the wood stove.

And then she took over the whole keyboard and opened up several windows. I will put up with it because she is not often physically snugly so this is a rare treat. And her winter fur is so dense, soft, and warm.

Even though the sun will not be above the horizon for another half hour (sunrise is 8:28 this morning), it is light enough now to see frost covered trees on the other side of the lake.