By BECKY NELSON
If you are a gardener with spring bulbs planted, ready to cheer our world with bright blooms this spring, you probably had a few crocuses already in bloom and a mass of daffodils with bloom buds swollen and ready to pop when this last storm came. Here, I had my crocuses bloom and then disappear in last week’s snow, and they are gone yet again with this last snow. We got enough snow that I can’t even see my daffodil buds at the moment, but they were ready for a couple of warm days to show their colors.
Most experts say the snow and cold shouldn’t hurt the blooms, but the weight of this heavy snow has me wondering. Weather effects aren’t always seen right away. The storm also put a halt to some spring pruning in the raspberry patch I was working on and has put a halt on the apple pruning, as well. As we usually are, we are behind the eight ball in performing our spring work. Last year, we were all ready for spring, then a late freeze in May destroyed our apple crop. The following rainy summer put a damper on production, and the effects of weather were very evident in our year-end bottom line. Dollars have been very short following a really rough 2023 at the farm, so we are trying to spend as few dollars as possible on help, trying to tackle the jobs with family and volunteers. Feeling the pressure of the calendar and the workload, I have had to sit myself down and have a talk with myself to assure me that it is OK, and if things don’t get done “on time,” they don’t get done on time and that is not going to cause a disaster.
Weather factors into these delays as the No. 1 cause. This was another very challenging maple season to start off ’24. We worked hard to be all tapped in for maple early this year, completing the task on Valentine’s Day. We were down a major worker most of the season with the arrival of a new grandson, taking our son out of the equation for the maple season. We were down a full two quarts for the boiling process, with my brother opting to make some money working instead of volunteering his time with us, leaving my husband and I to accomplish the boiling ourselves. Our “kids” helped when available, but with a new baby in one house and a four- and six-year-old in the other, free time was not in the cards for either family very often. This left us old folks to shoulder the bulk of the maple production, which I must say went pretty smoothly for us. Perhaps it was a good thing for our old bodies that the sap runs were fewer and the production limited, though it certainly will negatively affect our business’ bottom line.
One of the biggest challenges this season has been the wind. We have had several days of intense windiness, with broken trees down throughout the sugar woods, making the season a challenge to repair breaks and problems in the sap lines all the way through the season. During this last storm, we had a tree break and take down some communications lines early in the storm, trapping us at the farm for a bit. The town road crew and a firefighter checking to make sure it wasn’t electrical wires had us able to access the outside world within a half hour of the discovery, however.
I would like to extend my thanks and admiration for all of the folks who work in emergency services and infrastructure maintenance. Weather affects them even more than it affects us, in many cases. Keeping us safe and able to use the highways and roadways during heavy storms like this last one is something we take for granted, and something for which we should be vocally thankful. From all of us who don’t say thank you often enough, thank you. Thank you to our police forces. Thank you to our fire services. Thank you to our ambulance and rescue services. Thank you to our road crews. Thank you to our electric services. Then you to everyone manning phones and keeping watch. Thank you to everyone thinking of others. Thank you to the plow guys and gals. Thank you to the folks who shovel out their neighbors in need. We realize just how hard the weather effects can be on all of you. Thank you.
Becky and her husband own Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, owned and operated by her family since 1780. You can reach her at [email protected]
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