Snow?!? Ugh, who wants to hear about that stuff ever again after this winter? I certainly don’t, but don’t worry this story isn’t about snow. It’s about snowLOSS and has a beautiful ending…
On April 1st, Ripley Farm was covered in an ominously deep layer of snow. Planting was looking very far off. Morale was way down. Very low. To be exact, thirty two inches of snow, complete with a thick layer of ice in the middle thanks to the December 2013 ice storm, had to melt away in order for us to be ready to plant in May. So on April 1st, 2014 Gene and I snowshoed out to our field to measure the snow and a challenge was born. Ripley Farm had to burn 32 inches in 30 days.
Ripley Farm’s snow loss challenge proceeded slowly in the early weeks of the effort… On April 14th, Gene again snowshoed out to measure the snow load. Here’s what he found on Ripley Farm’s Snowloss Challenge Day 15:
Fourteen inches to go with 15 days to go. Could we do it? With heads hanging low (Gene’s just looking happy for the picture), we begun to make plans for a delayed start to the season. Morale was sinking even further. Until…
This picture is of the same spot Gene was standing on April 14th, one day later on April 15. A crazy warm spring rain brought us the break we needed in our snowloss challenge and the inches just melted off effortlessly overnight! But would the snow be fully melted and the ground dry enough to get the tractor on by the end of April?
Yes!! We did it! On April 30, Gene was able to disc and do some initial cultivation to ready us for the huge planting that takes place on our farm in the month of May.
More spring rains and cool temperatures prevented us for planting right away, though, and Ripley Farm was looking like things would indeed be delayed due to the overabundance of water in the ground. But on May 8, the spring winds finally blew in and dried up the soil for our first outdoor planting, early carrots and peas.
Here’s Gene using his new toy: Earthway seeders bolted together to seed a bed all in one pass! Three rows for carrots and two rows for peas.
The next week (the second week of May) turned out to be fabulous weather and we were able to completely catch up on all of our scheduled planting. First we put in over 6500 onion plants. Here’s Mary Margaret holding a bundle of a hundred or so:
Planting at Ripley Farm is done small farm style! We transplant by hand, like Gene is doing in the above photo. We also have a hand pushed seeder as you saw for the carrots and peas. And we hand cut, drop and cover our potato seeds. 250 pounds of potato seed over five varieties (Kennebec, Red Gold, Chieftian, Satina, and Purple Viking) went in the ground this week which will provide us and our summer and winter CSAs with spuds from summer through March 2015!
By the end of this week, we have over 20 percent of our 2014 crops in the ground including beets, carrots, potatoes, turnips, onions, leeks, shallots, scallions, beet greens, spinach and tomatoes (in the greenhouse)! Ripley Farm successfully passed the 30 Day Snowloss Challenge and went from thirty two inches of snow to not only being ready for planting but being FULLY caught up in less than seven weeks!
Now, THAT’S a beautiful ending! Or rather, beginning to the 2014 season! Happy Spring to everyone 🙂