Between the rain, snow, hail, flooding and power outages, is there hope left for farmers to get planting done on time this spring?
Remember those tornadoic winds last Thursday that caused funnel clouds in Colchester? That weather was no picnic when it reached us at the border, either.
I was inside, searching for the missing farmers' market tablecloths upstairs in the house, and barely had thirty seconds warning of the impending storm - measuring time from the instant the daylight went out to the moment the wind started yanking at the open vertical windows. I cranked them shut quickly to keep them on the hinges, but not before rain started coming in almost as hard as it did the last time a hurricane passed through the area.
I screamed a little on the inside, and my first thought was to make sure the grills were against the building and not being blown from the porch, but after struggling to get the aptly named "stormdoor" open against the gale, I made an executive decision that a little (lot of) hail wasn't going to hurt them.
Not that anything could be done to remedy things, but my next concern was for the pastured chickens. Only a few are old girls that would know to seek shelter in the coop; the rest are pullets, and while not quite dumb as sticks, they slide in at pretty darn close.
They╒ve been out on grass for a few weeks and some still won't use the coop feeder; a handful had to be forcibly removed from the building in order to introduce them to the waterer outside.
I thought for sure I would see chickens pasted up against the metal mesh on the northern side of the pen. If the wind was strong enough to be moving rain sideways, it could easily toss chickens like tumbleweeds for hundreds of feet.
I couldn't see any laying hens at all. They had secreted themselves in the undercarriage of the mobile coop. Not so dumb, after all. None were spiraling upward toward Oz or being beaten down by the hominy-sized pellets of ice falling down from the sky.
Six hours later, the power went out and for once, we didn't have any day-old birds under heat lamps to worry about. Small grace that is, but I'll take it.
Never did find that tablecloth - the one that had inspired me to change all our farmer's market signs to match. On opening day last Saturday, I was forced to use one of the old hard-water stained ones with a poorly whipstitched patch on it. The shabby-chic shame of it all!
On Sunday, it snowed. Again. High winds too, and cold enough to make venturing out on Mother's Day highly unpleasant.
Every hour of wet from here on out, equates to delays in corn planting, which increases the likelihood that first cut of hay will overlap. That was quite enough stress to deal with without the weather pulling any more surprises.
There was a hard frost yesterday morning.
Worst. May. Ever.
Worst. May. Ever.
