Rain at Last!

One of the saddest facts about human-caused climate change is how easy it is, for urbanites and suburbanites, to ignore its effects on other living things. In Richmond, most folks seem to only notice our ever-more-common dry spells in early Fall when their monoculture lawns die off, or the city limits watering.

In the country, however, those not on deep wells began to fret this year about the time of our State Fair. That's usually when we get rains to break the dry, hot weather.

Not this year. Even our 2000 gallons of stored water did not seen likely to outlast this drought. As of last week, about half of that had been used for garden and perennials, plus some recently planted trees we were struggling to keep alive.

With a high-pressure system the size of a small nation parked over the East Coast, even tropical systems steered around it. That's a salutary side effect, with one aspect of climate change battling another. We living things, both animal and vegetable, got got caught in the middle of this clash of titans. And yet hardly a drop of rain fell in my part of Virginia for eight long weeks.

Now, thankfully, we have a real soaker, just in time to save the small trees that have been so stressed on our property. We've lost a few, but others we kept going with watering bags of various sorts.

I hope we see more rain like this, on and off and not in deluges, in 2020. This recent day of rain may have broken a pattern but it did not do more than dent the drought. I checked a six-acre field that I needs to till this weekend. Below an inch down, the soil seems as dry as the deserts of Mars. Yet there's more rain in the forecast for Sunday. Hope, unlike rain, does seem to come upon us through an act of will.

We need other changes, too, if we are to address climate change's pernicious and, ultimately, civilization-ending dark promise. Let's get busy on that and vote for sense. Virginia has an election in a month, an I plan to vote against the party of environmental destruction. I hope  you do, too.

Winter Chores

We did not have too much of a winter until last week, thanks to El Niño. I don't much care for warm Decembers, but some Fall chores did get done. My old friend Dominic and I began working to paint a barn roof and I was able to service some equipment that gets harder to do when the mercury drops below freezing.

It has been pleasantly refreshing to hear people note, usually at the cashier's station in rural stores, that this warm weather "just ain't right." In town, however, one does not hear as much of that. It's tempting to give someone a tongue-lashing, so instead I just say "enjoy the season for what it is."

Out in the sticks, my answer is to use the cold weather we finally got for that which is best done in the cold. On the farm that means clearing land for future planting or to prevent saplings from shading our garden out of existence. Winter means getting into places that will certainly be "snakey" in April and May. Having nearly stepped on a a basking Copperhead in 2012, I now appreciate better where serpents like to have a home, and I respect that as long as they respect my space.  For now, my resident and nonpoisonous black snakes are under ground or in a cozy barn-corner, waiting for mouse-hunting season to resume.  The barn, meanwhile, gets filled with additional firewood just in case March surprises us.

In our soggy low places, the ground often freezes nicely.  I can then tromp around and post no-hunting signs and clear an old road to get through the woods to the beeyard. Two junked cars block it for now, but they'll be gone soon. Lots of other junk gets pulled out of the woods to be discarded or reused (mostly, junked). We cut a road to an old run-in full of overly seasoned but usable firewood. It's a pile I dare not disturb after April Fool's Day.

The nicest accidental discovery of the season came via Nancy's looking online about blackberries. She discovered that they fruit best on second-year canes, and that fact provides a great method to keep two huge "patches" in production, yielding jam, pies, and cobbler for us and provender for the wildlife.  I will run a rotary mower (aka "Bush Hog," a brand name) over 1/3 of each patch annually.  That will cut in lanes for harvesting without stepping on snakes or getting tangled in thorny canes. One only picks blackberries at the edge of a patch, though the best ones always seem just out of reach! There's a lesson of something.

All these things and more are possible in the coldest months, as long as the snow does not fall too deeply. This week, as Dom and I put window panels in our new greenhouse, a flurry blessed us for a few moments with the wonder of the season. It hissed down and reminded us, as it piled up quickly, that the universe is both indifferent to us and, with the right attitude, lovely in its indifference.

And later there will be blackberries.