Happy New Year to you all! A newsletter wasn’t even on my radar, but with weather like this, I can’t pass up writing about my favorite topic. With the current tropical conditions, it seems like that brutal cold stretch is a distant memory. A memory I’d like to wipe clean from my mind. It seemed as if that bomb cyclone detonated right up here on the hill, with the fallout (wind) from the explosion cutting through the walls like butter. As I dreamed of a tin man and munchkins, I felt the house shaking and ready for takeoff. If you think I’m exaggerating, spend a windy night up here sometime. And then multiply that by 100!
Fortunately, the house stayed grounded and the worst inconvenience we endured were on again/off again frozen pipes for a week. Even more fortunately, those pipes only cracked and we don’t (currently) have a puddle in the basement. That, however, will change if we get the predicted 1.5″ of rain tonight on top of the large mounds of melting snow, although I’m much more concerned about what that amount of precipitation will do to our fields, which are still frozen solid. With no where to soak in, that water will run on down the hill with our topsoil along for the ride.
If we extrapolate the weather from the first full week of the year, we’re in for a wild ride in 2018. Indeed, it seems the only thing more erratic than our president right now is the weather. For the record, in this wacky week of records, consider the following;
-it’s currently 23 degrees warmer here than in Houston, TX right now
-Just 5 days ago, we set a record low of -9 degrees
-We just set a record high of 62 degrees today
In case you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to on the farm besides fretting about the weather, below are some pictures to give you an idea. And planning. Lots of planning. And lots of Paddy Rose. Stay tuned to hear all about our big plans for 2018. And more pictures of PR!
