Today turned out to be quite the snowy disaster out here on the farm. We're not exactly sure how much snow we got, because of the wild winds, but it's a lot!
Late season storms are always unwelcomed by us, due to the back peddling it causes us to do. We had the driveway fully cleared, most the snow melted from around it, trees tapped and the syrup boiling spot clear. Well, now the driveway is full of snow, buckets and lids scattered from the wind and our boiling spot is buried under the snow. Once the cover of the snowy night lifts we'll begin to recover. Plowing the drive, searching for buckets and uncovering what was buried.
One may ask themselves, "What do you do on the farm when it's a blizzard?" Well, we jar up honey and plant seeds! Jarring up honey and planting seeds are both long tedious tasks, but they are enjoyable in their own way. For honey, it's oddly enjoyable slowly warming up gallons of honey over multiple hours, getting it to the point of bottling. Seeing that yellow pure raw honey glistening in it's bottle as the sunlight peeks through the window.
Planting seeds is a task we start in March and goes on for months. We must strategically plant our seeds so they'll be ready for transplanting at the right time and eventually ready to put in the earth. It starts off slow, a couple hundred Black Krim here and a couple hundred Paul Robeson there (a couple of tonight’s tomatoes we planted.) It's a process that takes patience and time. It's something that we have gotten down to what some would call, "The art of planting". Starting with the perfect amount of soil, evenly spread and slightly pressed. Then we make shallow even rows for the seeds. After that we'll use our seed dropper to drop in an even amount of seeds along the row. Once the rows in the flat all have seeds we'll carefully spread the soil back down to cover the seeds and finally gently water the soil to feed the seeds!
We enjoy our "snow day" as much as the next guy, but unfortunately a farmer never gets a true "snow day" off.
