O/T: Ideas about Spring Weather/Soil Conditions?

We've had rather a different winter from what we normally have, as most of you probably have. Since it is February here in southern MO, I usually start thinking about getting the early spring field work done and the first of the market garden crops in. I usually plant some potatoes under plastic a little later in the month so we can have new potatoes before anyone else at the farmers markets. I've tried to have the soil in our garden beds tilled and set up by the middle of March as it usually starts raining here later in March and then it gets tough to get things done without making a mess.

This year looks much different. I'm hauling compost out to the gardens when the soil is frozen, but otherwise I can't do anything. Even if the snow were melted and the soil thawed, it would be nothing but mud, mud, mud. I'm beginning to wonder about how we're going to get things in on time!

On a side note, this winter is the first winter we had our sheep bred to lamb in January. Lots of people around here do, but I've always wanted to hold off until March. Well, things have gone much better than I would have expected. Despite the cold, the little buggers have been holding up quite well.

Christopher

You been putting any manure down on the snow?? Most years I will be cleaning out the chicken house and goat house and putting it down so that the snow/rain soaks it in but not sure this year

Usually, at the end of winter, when all the animals are out to pasture again, I scrape up all the bedding, spoiled hay, manure mixture and make a really big windrow out of it. If I get the time in the summer I'll turn it once or twice and keep it watered down real well. Then spread it late in the winter or early spring. If it is looking well rotted, I'll spread and till it in when we put the gardens to bed for the winter. A couple weeks after we get it tilled in, we can plant rye as a winter cover.

Christopher

I have piles like that also. I have one that I piled up a few years back and have been using it to fill raised beds and it seems to be working well. I do screen it so as to get any big clumps out and also the Ozark mountain diamonds out. Now as for the goat and chicken manure I have found that if put on in the winter it will not burn your plants in the spring if not put on to heavy that is

I'm gonna be real surprised if this isn't the "new norm".

Well weather does a 40 or 50 year cycle and also a 100 year cycles so I'll almost bet we are going into a cold wet cycle for a few years maybe even a decade. I know I remember when I was a kid every year we had snow in late Nov. early Dec. and that was in Winfield KS and then when I moved to NE. we had snow in late Oct most years. I still have a picture of my brothers car in Oct when we lived in Leigh NE and his car was almost covered with snow and that was about 42 or 43 years ago

All I know is that the ground here will be hard as a rock for another 2 months, ice doesn't go off the lakes til about April 15. But am looking forward to puttin the old plow in the ground when it does thaw out.

I have a while to think about it. I dug a grave last week - found 20" of frost.

You know that"s the deal with farming. You can do all the plowing, planting, etc just right but if the weather doesn"t cooperate, it"s all for naught. You just have to come to acceptance that if the weather isn"t right for you, it won"t be right for the rest of you local competion.

We"ve had cool dry springs the past two years and that has affected our hayground. We normally get our first cutting onmother nature, i.e. no irrigation, but the past two years we"ve had to turn on the water and if you don"t get it on early enough, the yields go way down. My yields have dropped by 20% these . I"m hoping to recover but they"re telling us that we"re in line for a "perfect storm" with regards to grasshoppers this year. We"ll try some control stratgies but we"ve got to be ready for some loss in hay and pasture. I"m looking hard at the cows and the bottom 10% will, in all likiehood, have to go.

I do my best and take what Mother Nature gives me.

If you dug a grave here in NW SC, you'd have to put rocks on the coffin to keep it from floating out of the ground.
Richard

Here I just tamp dirt around the vault with the air hammer w/small foot in it.