It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens
This quote nicely sums up the weather today. In the last 2 weeks, the snow has shrunk dramatically and we are almost out of the worst of it now. Weather forecast says there may me a couple more minor snow storms on the way, but nothing much to get exercised about.
Since my last posting, I have come to the realization that maybe this weather here isn’t quite so bad after all. Sure you have to shovel it. The morning after a bad storm, the sun is usually shining and the roads are cleared early. Life looks not too bad in the sun.
Now, we are starting to see open ground, for the first time since the floods of December 13 and 15. 3 months of snow…
We have taps on some maple (I hope they are maple) trees in our bush. Two of the taps are actually producing some sap. We just have to see which are the best trees for the purpose, mark them for next season, and look out Aunt Jemima, no more maple-flavoured syrup from you! I think we will even plant a handful of real Sugar Maple (Acer saccharinum) trees on the place so eventually they can be tapped when they are big enough. Either by ourselves or by others after us here.
We are making active plans for gardens, vegetable, herb and other, for the upcoming summer season. Our hens made it through the winter. Right now, two are laying, the others are taking a winter break. Don’t blame them, they need to conserve resources to live in that cold. We have ordered more birds for later in the Spring.
We’ll be building a barn and a garage to get things stored **inside** next winter so we can find them. and where they hopefully don’t freeze solid to the ground.
Yep, things are looking up! Working one day a week at Kingsbrae right now, may be working a couple of days more at the Plant Center there in April, and then 3 days a week in the garden, and 2 days a week in the Plant Center (Garden Center).
Life’s getting better all the time! Now to file my last year’s Income Tax. With the move and all, it isn’t as simple and straight-forward.
Category: Winter 2010/2011
Baby, It’s COLD Out There!
Forgive my rant.
Soo here’s the wet coast guy, “Come From Away”, telling the Kingsbrae gardeners all about working through the winter. They don’t get me, and I don’t get them, saying they want to have their feet up by the fire.
No WONDER they gave me these strange, pitying looks. They’ve lived here all their lives.
We lived a bit north of the 49th parallel and here we are just north of the 45th!! How cold can it get?? So it gets a bit chilly! Deal with it!
Ahuh.
Well, now we know a little better.
We have a whole new appreciation for the term cold now, living here. At least I do… Marie has lived in really cold places in her adulthood. I don’t remember the cold from when my family lived on the prairies when I was a child. Probably blocked out the memory.
Here’s another rub: When we situated our home here, we put it at the top of the property. Awesome views. Spectacular sunsets. Nice, cooling breeze, keeps the heat down in the summer……..
Oh, did I mention the Nice Cooling Breeze? Keeps the heat down in the winter too! Roars around the trailer, parked beside the house, partly as a windbreak……at the WRONG side of the house, as it turns out! Next winter, it is not gonna be parked in the RV parking spot!
I’ve been down on the lower part of the property when it was kind of cool and breezy at the house. This was at the NORTH end of the property. I had to take off a layer of sweater to keep from overheating. It was sheltered and pleasant down there.
Of course, we have our well and septic field on the top of the hill. It would cost us another $18,000 to install another well and septic field at the bottom of the hill. HMM. Guess we won’t be moving house down there for a while, even though this is a “moveable” house.
Adding to this, is the following: At the top of our hill, we can watch the sun shine DOWN onto the lower portion of the land, a good hour or more before it even starts to touch our house. So much for Solar Gain first thing in the morning. The sun does shine on the house longer in the afternoon, so it partly makes up for this oversight. Down below, the sun sets a lot earlier too……I guess you just. can’t. win..
Now we better understand significance of the question, “Why EVER would you want to move HERE??”
I guess we will be buying snowshoes some time soon. That way we can walk around and see the various animal tracks in the snow before they blow away or get snowed on again, and not sink into the snow up to our knees or beyond and fill our boots with snow.
The Sun, the Golden Sun!
Sitting here in the afternoon, basking in the warmth of the sun that has been shining into our living room, while it is -10C outside, got me thinking. AGAIN. This is getting dangerous, this thinking!
Solar energy is such a wonderful thing that needs to be further harnessed in the winter while it is available……..Or isn’t it all solar energy?
On a cold day, the electricity heats our place. Others use heating oil. We are planning to install a wood stove soon to curtail the use of our electric heaters. What is it all but stored solar energy?
Think about it. The trees capture solar energy through photosynthesis and store it. We dry the cut trees –in that same sun– then, burn them to release the energy stored within.
The heating oil, drawn from the ground, was at some point in the distant past, produced by the influence of the same sun, storing its energy.
The electricity, however it is produced, is originally a product of –solar energy.
Even the materials that produce power from nuclear energy were originally formed in a nuclear fusion reaction, where, but in either our sun or another star that had the potential for making them.
We humans have developed the ability to make all that energy more readily, conveniently, and cleanly available to more people, at a cost.
We lament not being able to use the sun’s energy directly. But we are, we all are! It’s just how we do it and how much money it costs us. This doesn’t mean to stop trying to devise other, simpler ways of capturing the energy produced by the sun. It’s just that nature has already dealt with the problem for many eons and has perfected mass storage systems.
White-Out, and not the Office kind!
Here we are, experiencing our third white-out style blizzard so far this winter, in between several more normal snowfalls. I have been out shoveling the snow, playing with some snow fencing to learn what it does and how it directs the snow. Right by the front door, we have some “Bow Wave” drifts where the wind called a “Nor-Easter” hits the house first. I have moved some of these around a bit, and have cut through to make access, and also to attempt to redirect the snow. Interesting. It’s all light and fluffy and dry, not like our We(s)t coast slop.
Thinking about Spring, a lot. A couple of months ago, we had someone come by and offer to “Help us with the Blueberries” for 10% of the take from the harvest. “So..what do you mean by Help?” — “Mow, clean up, spray and harvest them” — “Just a second, you lost me at spray!” — “We need to control the weeds for mechanical harvesting and the bugs for quality” — Just what the other guys were telling us too…. Tests were done, apparently, that the pesticides did not go into the ground water…..I’m still not convinced.
Well, I explained to the gentlemen that I had done more than my share of pesticide application in my career as a City Gardener, and I really didn’t want to continue. Anybody bringing pesticides onto our land is in trespass. 
So we agreed to disagree. He indicated, likely in a form of “Sour Grapes–err–Blueberries” that an operation the size of ours didn’t really need mechanical harvesting anyway. I indicated that I was contemplating going organic, and he agreed that it might be a good thing, again, in such a small operation. He owns the field behind ours. That used to be part of the same property we are on, but was sold in 2007. I would so like to buy it back! But $13,500 is more money than we can bring to bear right now. Bills need to be paid first.
Life goes on.
January 2011—-Depths of Winter
Winter is much colder here than on Vancouver Island, even though we are 4 degrees latitude farther south. We have had snow on the ground since early December, actually since the week Marie had gone to Nanaimo after her sister Cathe’s unfortunate death. Except for the couple of days when we had the huge rainfall and flooding in the area here.
Mercifully, we do get more sunshine than on the Island, so that brightens it up.
Sunrises are not bad, but they are hidden behind a hill from our place. Sunsets, on the other hand, are truly spectacular.
We had a “Sun Spike” sunset a few days ago. Hadn’t seen that before.
Breathtaking! Apparently, this occurs when ice crystals in the atmosphere reflect the sunset light upwards into the almost flame-shaped spike.
Our hens seem to be doing well in their henhouse. Clucking and crooning, and laying eggs. They are 6, and they lay between 3 and 5 eggs a day. Some days, they even lay 6 eggs. Keeps us going, and they have paid for their feed now since we got them in mid-December.
The henhouse is build out of recycled pallets, new plywood and OSB strandboard. The walls and roof are closed in with plastic tarp and Particle Board Sandpaper Belting.. Makes for a good, solid and effective house. We light up the inside with an incandescent (GASP! How Old School!) light bulb from 7 AM until 9 PM. We need to change out their water 3 times a day at least so they can drink. We usually give them warm water so it lasts longer before it freezes again. Besides, they like it when it’s warm.
We are thinking a lot about the next growing season and what we are going to plant and grow, and where on our land we will do this.
We have been walking around and “surveying” to see where we want to make more trails, where to clear, and where to build bridges across our creek and “pond”. Bits of orange ribbon are beginning to appear all over trees on the place.
Time is stretching out…watching Star Trek TOS reruns on DVD, and Mythbusters on Netflix. HMM.
Work at Kingsbrae is scarce due to the weather and the money is getting scarce at the end of the month…
This too shall pass. The first winter is the most challenging.