Old Man Winter

The old man looked at me through cracked, ice-rimmed glasses and wheezed, "I ain't done yet, or my name ain't Winter."

We wrote this and posted it on our Facebook page on March 9 along with a picture of Valhalla (our 'newer' high tunnel) and lots of snow.  With some seasonal temperatures, we have seen a significant reduction in the snow pack at our farm since then.  But, we still have some snow where the largest drifts collected this year.

It doesn't look like much in this picture, but trust me, there's lots of snow there.

The most significant drifting was along the North bush line on our farm.  I took a walk out there with a camera on March 26 (Tuesday) wondering if I got out there a bit late to record exactly how tall the drifts got out there.  While it is true that they had gone down a fair bit, there was plenty of snow mass out there.

I decided to climb up onto the drift, figuring it would do a bit more to illustrate how tall they were.  The snow was well-packed, so I wasn't worried about sinking in.  But, I was in for a treat in new perspectives on our farm.

You might need a little bit of information to fully appreciate what you are seeing in these pictures.  The bush line at the left consists of Wild Plum and Highbush Cranberry.  The bush line towards the back of the picture is Ninebark.  All of these were planted in 2006 and are well-established by now.  At a guess, the Ninebark are 8-10 feet tall.  The Wild Plum are probably 15-20 feet tall and the Highbush Cranberries...

Well, you can't see most of them here.  Because they are mostly under the snow.  And, they are easily as tall or taller than the Ninebark.  Huh.

As I walked down the drift to the East, I found many Highbush Cranberry bushes sticking out of the drift, bent over by the weight of the snow.  A few have finally been released and were slowly snapping back to a mostly vertical orientation.

Yep, these were some serious drifts.  Ok, they still ARE serious drifts.  

I turned around for a few pictures facing West and found that I was being escorted by the Inspector and Soup.  It is early Spring and they are both hungry for more human time than they've been getting for much of the Winter.  They will soon get their fill of us and will go back to mostly ignoring us when we're outside, as cats are wont to do.

This picture doesn't really give you an idea of how tall the drifts are.  In fact, if you do not know what you are seeing, you might be tempted to say that the bushes are only four to five feet tall and the ground is not so far down from our perch.  So, I made sure to get some other pictures that might give you more of an idea as to what is going on here.

Yeah.  My head was higher than the top of the high tunnel.

I mentioned a new perspective?  Well, here it is.  A view from a location that lets me see the top of our high tunnel.  This is NOT a normal occurrence.  I mean - yes, we have drifts out here every year.  And, yes, they often get quite sizable.  But, this year was truly exceptional.  Remember, this drift has been melting down for a while.  After all, you can see there is plenty of bare ground out there.

The oddest feeling was looking DOWN on the Ninebark hedge to the East.  This is also not my normal perspective as it pertains to life on the farm.   We are also not entirely used to seeing the bushes at the right buried entirely by the snow.

So, for those of you who are thinking Old Man Winter is done for the season.  He's still holding on.  But his grip is getting a bit more tenuous. 

Except where the drifts live at the Genuine Faux Farm.