Winter Work

Grapevines

People often ask me what I do in the winter when I am not farming. The thing is, I am always farming, but the work is invisible. Underneath those nine inches of beautiful glittery snow lies work demanding to be done. Little pink flags poking from the snow remind me  that there are rhubarb plants that I will need to protect this spring, a patch that needs to be fertilized.  Twigs from tree pruning stick out from the snow.  A few more inches or maybe feet of snow and I could forget about them.  Good thing that I can’t do anything about this today. It will have to wait.  Winter work is about strategy and checking the weather, wait for a balmy 35 F to do some pruning, go in the high tunnels when it is sunny, stay in and plan the season when it is really windy and in the teens.

The snow  piled up  high against the plastic walls of the high tunnels does not let me forget the amount of work that is calling me.  Inside one of them, dead tomato plants are withering away. I will  probably choose to remove them on one good frozen day, so that they can crumble easier and avoid  the smell of wet dead tomato vines. But I will have to wait for the ground to thaw before I can pull the stakes,

In another high tunnel plastic mesh hangs tangled with dried up bean plants. I could just clip and throw it away, that is the easy thing. But in my world vision, convenience and ease are not good reasons to create plastic trash. So I will probably go in there and patiently remove all the dead vines from the plastic trellis. The challenge of untangling string, wire, plants, relationships, is a form of meditation and it relaxes me. After I clean the plastic netting, I will roll it up and tie it on the aluminum bars from which it hung. Tucked out of the way, ready to be reused easily when needed.

I know one tunnel is full of foxtails. I do not like that grass. When I pull the dead grass, the seeds, millions of them, gently fall on the ground getting ready to battle me again. They are a formidable competitor. I wonder if I go in there with my flame torch, will those seeds die? Maybe, maybe not? I will instead use ground covers this year, beat them with darkness. They will challenge me the following year.

But one high tunnel is alive and underneath those row covers gorgeous spinach waits for a little warmth, a little more sunlight to start growing fast and tasting sweet. It freezes and thaws in the winter cold but it does not get injured, because it accumulates sugar preventing the freezing damage. And the leeks, they are a little crushed under the blankets, but they are alive. I am not the only one that knows about the carrots as some tops have already been nibbled. The baby lettuce leaves are frozen stiff in the morning and miraculously alive in the afternoon when the sun warms the high tunnel.

Spring is coming like it always does. Hopefully the Covid-19 pandemic, like all good and bad things that have come will now go away when the sun shines, and the soil warms. Another year, another opportunity to grow and thrive.

Spinach waiting for spring in the high tunnel