Winter Blues

Did I ever say that weeding was fun? If I did or ever do, shoot me. I have still been working on weeding and bedding down my three field crops. Let's start with a blueberry update.

The good news is that I only have 6 more blueberry bushes to weed. Well, that's good news to just one farmer in the world anyway. My only problem now is finding enough free suitable mulch for them. I am looking hard to find old pine sawdust or fine chips to finish three 250 foot rows of blueberries. That's about 9 pickup loads. Anybody got a source?

I have recently finished mowing out my hop vines and I am looking forward, like a condemned man looks forward to the firing squad, to start weeding them and laying down the mulch for them. I have some composted cow manure that I am going to put down on the plants before I mulch them. I have to get on the stick, the really cold weather is yet to come.

I started tackling the insurmountable task of cleaning up my 1/8 acre of weeds that contain one weed that I want to keep, the milkweed. Man, that has been a real challenge. The use of chemicals might just be an alternative to this mangle of tangled vines, stickers, and stringy contagious assorted other rhizomes. I must say, the other day it was weeds 1, Van 0.

Next year, I will have an opportunity to get my milkweed in the production stage and try to keep up with keeping them a bit more organized in defense for the aggressive weed attacks.

I got my last installment on my AgOptions Grant last month and I am now working on another grant to help finance my last phase of the expansion here on the farm. It will be for the picnic shelter and bathroom facility. I am a firm believer that this is going to be the most critical part for the survival of my small family farm here. It will be the make or break it part of the puzzle. Ah, if it weren't for stress in my life where would I be. ( Without shingles for one thing!)

First winter thaw

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We will remember this winter storm for a while, much like remembering the blizzard of '93. The picture above, showing the Craggy and Black Mountain Ranges just above our farm here says it all. There was a lot of snow, and it stuck around for a long time didn't it?

Although my tractor did look like this for a while, it doesn't anymore. We have finally had a temperature above 50 and it was a welcome for sure. Since our 13 inches of snow fell on Dec. 18, 2009, I still have snow on the ground in places around the farm. With an average high of only 36 degrees for 27 days and an average low of 22, the overall daily average was only 29 degrees, hardly enough for a good melt.

The blueberry beds had a nice warm? blanket over them for quite sometime, about 20 days as the temps dropped to the single digits. I was still waiting though, and anxious to get some more mulch on them and I knew a good opportunity was staring me in the face as soon as a big ice storm hit the area around Christmas.

There were a lot of white pine limbs that broke out from that and coupled with the snow storm, I knew there would be a lot of chipping of the tree litter. Luckily, I was able to get some of those chips at Blue Ridge Assembly where I am working part time during the winter. A chipper was on sight and I just parked my truck right in front of the machine.

I loaded up with chips and managed to so far add around 4 inches of pine chips on 20 of 50 new plants that were added last fall. I anticipate to have enough for the coverage of the remaining 30 with no problem.


I believe that with the anticipated 50 degree weather that we are going to have today, that most of this snow will be finally out of here. I don't know about you, but I have been ready for it for a long time already.