High Winds.

I get nervous on days like today. The strong winds make the greenhouses shimmy in alarming ways. At the wind speeds we experienced yesterday and today, none of the houses were in any real danger of being damaged, but I like to keep an eye out. Every so often, Growing for Market will publish the photo of some poor soul’s greenhouse under which the wind swept, then lifted and crushed onto the roof of a nearby barn. These photos give me pause.

Of all the different kinds of weather we work in, I think the most irritating is the wind. Autumn’s cold and wet can be demoralizing, but when the wind flares out of the west, raising whitecaps on Maplewood Lake and scouring everything with the fine silt of the muck fields, stinging your eyes, infiltrating every seam in your clothing, filling your mouth with dust -- that gets old fast.

These winds are drying out the soil nicely, though. This week, our plan is to start planting in the fields, starting with fava beans and peas, and maybe some early salad greens.

Boon or Boondoggle?

After a short pause, we are back to seeding the CSA’s crops: early broccoli, the first round of lettuce, and the second of scallions. We needed to wait until the heater in the new greenhouse was hooked up, which happened this earlier this week. “New” in this case really means “not so new anymore,” since building this greenhouse has taken us over two years and no little amount of trouble. Finally, everything is installed, running, and ready to go -- electrical lines, ventilation system, air circulation fans, and, now, the new propane heater. Last spring, we used this house as an unheated space for hardening off seedlings before planting them out in the fields, and last winter we grew cold-hardy greens in it, but with it heated, we can now use it to start seedlings, which is a boon.