snow – Peacock Orchard

New Kraters First Snow

Snow blows. At least around here. I was unsure about how the rest of the property would handle being kratered. The current kraters are on a slight slope between two swales. They have a nice line of bushes blocking the wind. They’ve been doing well. Will all the property do this well? I just wasn’t sure.

It’s snowed and the kraters filled up with snow just fine. What a relief!

I’m excited to see how the seeds sprout and things progress come spring.

For now, it’s all good.

Springtime in Wyoming

Spring is in the air. A constant state of confusion lays heavy over the land. Will it be warm? Will it be freezing? It could be both, all in the same day. Summer clothes have already been donned this year. Now we’re back to snow suits and gloves. Back to animals too smart to leave the protection of the barn and me hauling water to them all.

Thankfully the barn is large and I’m healthy enough to be carting the necessary liquids. Solids too, since the pigs kept breaking into the food bins and I had to move them to the garage. Since we are currently in possession of an attack turkey the kids prefer to occupy themselves out of the barn while I’m feeding.

I’m particularly glad that weather has never stopped the kids from venturing outside. We are a tough lot, the kind willing to live in howling winds and unpredictable weather. A versatile lot as well. The wagon has been retired for now, in order to accommodate the snow. Strolls around the property have to be maintained, after all. Pictures must be taken! Trees checked.

Big snow!

Yes, another picture post of our snow harvesting.

The snow was deep. About 8 inches. The kids really loved it. Mostly

I was totally impressed with my snow collection though.

That’s a 3 foot deep krater filled to the top.

And the swales are even with the berms. So about 3 feet of snow collection there as well.

Earthworks are a total success!

The commercially farming neighbor isn’t keeping any of this moisture.

A different kind of snow harvest

Most moisture that arrives to us arrives in the form of snow. It also arrives at about 60 m.p.h. Blowing snow is what I set out to catch and the swales/berms and kraters have proven they are capable of catching it. The best part of that is that they then keep the snow melt in place as they were made for water harvesting.

The snow we had over Thanksgiving was not blowing. In fact it was a beautiful snow, soft, powdery and almost straight down. While our earthworks naturally filled with snow it was not anything that flat land couldn’t have done. So, what surprised me about this snow harvest is that the clover caught it. Acres of tall sweet clover that annoyed us all summer has done wonders at collecting snow.

Mowed contour with clover on both sides

We decided to experiment with this clover, which we did not plant but have in abundance. Husband mowed decently on contour. At least he was able to do some experimental lines, N, S, E, W and an X patter before a loose fence wire got caught in the mower. Then it snowed and everything was a mess. So some mowing was accomplished but not as much as we would have liked. We thought where he mowed would collect blown snow and the remaining, tall clover would assist in keeping it from blowing it away. We may still be right about that but what it did was show us how much tall plant matter can collect and keep at it’s base.

This clover has been interesting to us. It arrived gradually and now we have roughly 35 acres of it. It grows extremely tall. So tall in fact that our ducks often get lost in it. While hunting them down one day in the car we disturbed two deer, which we wouldn’t have seen if they hadn’t started jumping, as the clover was taller than they. This clover is a food for so many animals, our own included. I just hate how tall it is, how smothering it is to the plants I want and how it destroys our mower when we do mow it. Also, it hides those pesky rabbits from predator view.

We caught way more snow than the wheat field behind us.

Still, if it gathers a lot of snow and keeps it on our property I suppose this clover invasion is a blessing, though a mixed one.

This majestic and unintelligent dog certainly loves the snow.

I loved how the different outdoor elements were iced over. This is a clump of grass.

I thought the garden gate I made from a crib mattress looked beautiful all iced up.

Mini-Krater gardens first snow.

I’ve been intensely interested in how much snow our Kraters may collect. They’ve done pretty well with rainwater collection and I assumed they’d fill with blowing snow, but wasn’t sure. The results are in after our first snow.

Deepest Krater with pawpaw island. Had about a foot of snow all around.

Largest Krater in circumference. Snow only collected on one side.

Goji Krater, did the absolute best. For some reason this Krater is just in an ideal location. It always collects the most water, the plants here did the best and it collected the most snow. I’ll have to think and observe why this krater has done so well.

Just for fun here are a few more pics of our first snow collection and fun:

This is our newly renovated driveway drainage ditch. Filled about 3 feet with snow.

This is another driveway drainage earthwork and the path from the garage to the ditch filled pretty well with snow. Enough for the kids to enjoy fully!

As you can see from this pic the snow blows and sometimes we will have 0 snow on large amounts of the property as there is nothing to catch and keep it. We experimented with our earthworks, which work well, and also selective mowing of our incredible sweet clover sections. Selective, on contour mowing harvested a ton of snow. It was far from the house, and the kids were happy where they were, so I didn’t get pics of this. I’ll try to later on.

My kids are so adorable!

I convinced them to go to the barn to feed the pigs and they did this while I was busy doing chores.

Our akbash is such a weirdo. He doesn’t know what to do with the pigs. He just stood there wagging his tail and doing this high pitched whine that the pigs didn’t like at all.

Such cute little piggies! Getting friendlier every day.

Meanwhile, thanksgiving dinner keeps threatening me.

Gardening in winter- Outdoors

It may seem like there is not much to do in winter. That you can sit back and relax until it is time to get busy planting in spring. The opposite is actually true. I feel like winter is the busiest time for me, but perhaps that is because it is unpleasant work most of the time. When you do not have a high cold tolerance going out in freezing weather just sucks. You might be wondering what I could possibly have to do. Other than the animals, which require more intensive and hands on care when it is cold, plants need winter love too.

This winter has been rather stressful for me actually. This is the first winter with the orchard trees and a bad one as far as temp, wind and lack of moisture go. Our windbreak/tree line is in bad shape. I’ve been watching conifers die all over the place but I was hoping mine were established enough to persevere. They aren’t.

Dying pine

The tree line did help keep snow. That makes me happy!

We went out on March 1 to see how things were surviving. I think it is safe to say none of the black walnuts have made it. Between my lack of attention and rabbits, they all died. The fruit trees are looking very good though. The swales have done a very good job of collecting what snow we get. I bent a branch back on every tree just as a bit of a test and all but 1 appear to be healthy. The bubblegum plum that struggled last year does not appear to have made it through the winter. I suppose I won’t know for sure until spring.

The grapes, who knows. I made a lot of mistakes with the grapes. I planted them wrong, they caught every disease they could and then I pruned them badly and transplanted them worse. I have more grapes coming this year and I am going to do a lot better by them, I hope.

Helpers

Bend test

This tree….the wind just keep blowing it over.

The blackberries I’m unsure on. They did really great last year but they are looking a bit rough now. I’ve fenced them but the wind and rabbits keep getting through anyway. I can tell they’ve been really chewed up. I’m interested to see how they spring back.

I enjoyed seeing snow collecting not on our entire driveway but just in the swales we put in last year. Very refreshing! My little helpers enjoyed this trek outdoors as well.