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| Hoophouse (Feb. 16) |
The tenacity of life is astounding.
While the rest of the planet was experiencing warmer than average temperatures, the northeast U.S. had one of its coldest winters ever. Outside Ithaca, NY, where we live, we had multiple nights with temperatures falling below 0 degrees F, even multiple nights with temperatures falling into the negative teens. We recorded a low of -2.7 degrees in the high tunnel (unheated hoophouse).
Fortunately, the deep snow cover and consistently below freezing temperatures helped prevent repeated freezing and thawing. But it was still a "zone 4" winter in a place that is typically "zone 5." And we didn't get around to providing extra mulch, doubling the row covers, or doing anything except waiting to see what survived. And while our March crops were nothing like the previous years, here is some of what we found:
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| High Tunnel Spinach (March 9) |
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| Carrots and radishes dug from the hoophouse (March 9) |
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| Low tunnels protected only by a single row cover (March 29) |
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Low Tunnel Tatsoi (March 29)
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| Low Tunnel Mache (March 29) |
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| Low Tunnel Spinach (March 29) |
The challenge will be how to farm in face of climate chaos. For years, the conventional wisdom has been to look to and learn from those farming one zone warmer. But our frigid winter resulted from the changes in the shape of the arctic air front -- a wave pattern with now greater amplitude (the high and low points of the wave) as a result of global warming. As warmer air pushes into the arctic, some of the colder air mass is pushed further south. But where it descends will vary unpredictably from year to year. So while we will have many zone 6 winters (and summers), requiring crops that withstand warmer temperatures, we will also apparently have zone 4 winters (and summers) with colder temperatures and shorter growing seasons as well. And so the experimentation with sustaining life continues.
