Good News for Ducks

It's raining. I mean a lot. St Louis just recorded their wettest March ever, breaking a high water mark set in the 19th century. The forecast for northeast Missouri on this drizzly Thursday is for 1.5-3.0 inches. Since it's falling on totally saturated ground and the streams are already running full, we're talking about water over roads. It's a perfect day for staying indoors (and composing a blog entry, for example). [If it keeps raining at this rate, I'll start writing about cubits and boat designs.]

Some years at Sandhill we've already placed most of our frost-tolerant crops in the garden by this date—peas, onions, spinach, potatoes, radishes, and a wide variety of greens. This year only the poor, soggy peas have been sown. Most other crops are waiting patiently in flats, huddled in our new greenhouse, enjoying extra days of warmer, controlled-moisture conditions.

Some springs we fret over whether well have enough rain for the morels to fruit. Not this year. As we're only just now entering the traditionally wettest time of the year, the worry is when we'll be able to get into the fields to plant our sorghum.

On the good side, a cooler, wetter spring delays the fruit blossoms and that offers protection against damage from a late frost (last year we lost 90% of our fruit crop to this phenomenon, and we're really hoping not to repeat that experience). One of the truisms of homestead farming & gardening is that the weather is always good for something (though, of course, the obverse is also true).

Our average annual rainfall is 35 inches. If it came a half inch every five days, we'd never need a sprinkler, and there'd never be any flooding. Because Nature isn't that accommodating, we garden to conserve moisture (mostly by heavy mulching) and work the land in such a way that minimizes soil wash in heavy rains (mostly by only tilling ground with minimal slope and shaping fields on the contour; also, the mulch helps here as well, though this is only practicable in the garden). While we own 135 acres, we only actively farm about 15 acres—because only those meet our stringent requirements for what we feel we can farm sustainably.

Years ago, I recall walking down to a bridge on our property right after a heavy spring rain, to observe our intermittent stream (called the Sandhill Branch). While the branch tends to dry up in late summer, it reliably has water in the spring & early summer and small fish will work their way upstream to explore. The branch was full that day, and the flow was turbulent and heavily silted (hundreds of acres drain into the stream at that point, almost all of them not on our property). In contrast with the main flow, I was struck by the clearness of the water joining the spate from our adjacent field—which was tilled though not yet planted, meaning it was susceptible to maximal erosion.

Because we border our tilled acres with wide grass strips, and are religious about leaving sloped ground in grass or trees, we suffer modestly from erosion. This was in sharp juxtaposition with what must have be happening upstream on neighboring property, where soil was obviously being carried away—I was watching it merrily course downstream, essentially on its way to biggering the state of Louisiana.

The most lasting memory of that time on the bridge was observing one small fish, struggling desperately to swim into the unsilted outflow from our field, where it had a chance to breathe—without clogging its gills on the tailings of agricultural mining.

You can't just farm for the averages; if you want to be sustainable, you have to work the land in such a way that you can handle the predictably unpredictable ebbs and flows of the rain gods. Currently, it seems, they've decided to let it flow.

Ode to Parsnips

March is going out like a lamb.

There's a steady, moist breeze out of the South, promising fecundity. The frogs are happy and sing to tell you so. The temperatures have jumped into 70s today and we're having one of those weird inversions that characterize how spring arrives in the Midwest: yesterday morning we had the wood stove fired up to counteract the overnight frost; today we have the doors wide open so that the outdoor warmth can heat the house!

If the calendar and thermometer were not enough to suggest spring, this past weekend we experienced two sure signs at the dinner table: the last of the potatoes and first of the parsnips.

To be sure, we still have potatoes held back for seed (most years we can get some in the ground before Easter, but that holiday came early this year and the warm weather didn't), but there won't be any new ones available before June. There's sadness in that, yet the new crop tastes more delicious for being seasoned by a few months of privation. And besides, now we have parsnips!

March and early April are the best times to harvest these unpretentious beauties, just when you can discern their location by the surging growth of their green tops (after that they get too starchy and woody). While you can dig them in the fall, their flavor and tenderness are much enhanced by winter's cold (and March is when you are most interested in fresh food; in November the larder is full to overflowing).

Sweetness and peak flavor are unique to each crop. Parsnips are like persimmons, Brussels sprouts, and peppers—it's better to wait and let them fully mature. This is in sharp contrast with the best strategy for corn, peas, and beets—crops where it is optimum to pick them just when they reach adult size. For okra, zucchini, and asparagus it's best to pluck them while they're still adolescents—by the time they're adults it's too late.

As a child growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, we obtained our food at the local A&P. Parsnips there were pale, tapering roots sealed in wax. We never bought them and I couldn't understand why anyone would. But that was before I moved to Sandhill Farm and we started growing our own. Few things are so startlingly different in taste as freshly picked tomatoes, lima beans,… and parsnips. Sliced thin and fried in butter they are ambrosial. All the more so because they are the very first of our 2008 crops.

Winter is now officially over.

Global warning?

It's the first Sunday in January. Ordinarily, here in northeast Missouri, cross-country skiing is an option after morning coffee. Well, I've just finished my java and the outside temperature is already north of 50 degrees, merrily on its way to an expected high in the 60s. I saw a confused goose flying northwest—the direction from which the coldest winds ordinarily roar down from Canada. As a rule, January is our coldest month and because we heat with wood it's not unusual to wake up and have to labor a bit to get the indoor temperature that high. What's going on?

     As the snow cover of the last two weeks exits stage south, we are left with a challenge we generally don't have to face sooner than late February or early March: mud. While the balmy weather is easy on the wood supply, it's a complication in other aspects. Mark, from neighboring Red Earth Farms, had just contacted me about felling some black locusts from our property to use as poles for a barn they intend to construct this spring. We've got the trees and ordinarily we'd have made a date this week to harvest them. But you can't do that in the mud (you can cut 'em, but you can't haul 'em). We need the ground to be frozen.

     We're beekeepers, and the hives send out field scouts whenever temps rise above 50. Nature has hard-wired them to think that means it's time to start looking for food. While it must be nice for them to "get out of the house" for a bit, there's really nothing for them to do in January—no nectar and no pollen. But January flights take energy and that means they'll be consuming their precious winter stores of honey that much faster. If it happens too often, we'll have to feed them so that they won't starve before the spring honey flows commence. That's a worry and expense we'd rather not have.

     To be sure, January thaws are a normal part of the local weather cycle, and it's difficult to discern long-term trends in the midst of seasonal swings. Today won't set a record for high temperatures in northeast Missouri, yet it's way above the average high for this time of year, which is around 30 degrees. What constitutes evidence of global warming and what's just normal fluctuation?

     This is Sandhill's 34th winter. That means we've seen a lot of weather. I can recall a Christmas morning that started out at -24 degrees, and multiple days in a row where it didn't get as high as zero. It is definitely less common to see the thermometer dip into negative numbers than it used to be. Some winters it doesn't happen once. (And typically there's hell to pay the next growing season because without the hard cold we don't get good winter kill of grubs and other garden pests.)

     My wife, Ma'ikwe, has plans to be in Daytona Beach the last two weeks of January, and she's really looking forward to the warmer weather she's expecting. I just looked, and the forecast there is for highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s—just a shade cooler than what we currently enjoy here in tropical northeast Missouri. 

     Who knows, maybe this spring we'll plant oranges.