What do we do during winter on Redrock Farm when all the paperwork is done? One can only spend so much time on the treadmill! Actually, much time this winter has been spent moving snow!
We constantly think about last year’s warm vacation in sunny New Mexico visiting parks with the remnants of our native American ancestors and dream of that day soon when we will visit sunny warm Arizona.
In the meantime, we do a lot of plowing and shoveling. The farm has a quarter mile of driveway to keep open and must continually clear the snow that comes off the greenhouses. Redrock Farm’s 3500 square feet of greenhouse roof space times several feet of snow makes a lot of big piles. I begin by pushing it as far as I can past the ends of the greenhouses figuring that will be enough space for the winter. NOT! Like I said, 3500 square feet x several feet of snow = TOO MUCH! Now I push it to piles at the end of the greenhouse and use the snow blower to blow it farther out. I also use the older bucketed Kubota tractor to move it to other places, but those places are all about full.
Although I feel for the people of Boston and Buffalo, we get just as much snow but it comes continually, whereas they get it all at once and can clean it up all at once (or twice or thrice, but not continually!)…except maybe Buffalo!
Deep winter is also the time we spend hoping that the hard work of lat summer raising seedlings will equate to a successful spring selling them. Are we advertising correctly? Are we growing the right species? Will the spring weather cooperate this year?
Blessings of this winter:
-the price of propane is way down…thanks for that since we use a tremendous amount!
-there have been just enough tolerable days to push back the snow banks in order to get ready for the next storm.
-I am still able to get on the roofs and push the snow off!
SPRING WILL EVENTUALLY GET HERE….
The picture below was taken just before we received 8 more inches of snow!!
VIEW OFF OUR DECK FEBRUARY 8, 2015
