weather and spuds

overnight yesterday's rain...

became very wet snow...

but not before the rainfall total for the month reached 4.5" by my gauges...eclipsing the "average" january rainfall by 3.01"...the "average" january snowfall is 8.94"...i will posit somewhere round three at the very most and it has not been long lived...the "january thaw" has encompassed much of the months so far and barring a fair blizzard the snowfall will fall short ( which is not going to do my winter wheat any good )...

that there is standing water out in the fields can be chalked up to precipitation and the fact that the ground is frozen below and inch or so ( at least in my yard )...still i am wondering just how rainy a winter this will be and how that will impact spring...last may was sodden and there are still fallow fields all over the landscape here...one wonders just what all this rain is telegraphing...if anything...so the rain gauge stays our for the nonce and we continue to watch...we are well ahead in terms of rain this year...we will see if the trend continues...

meanwhile the transplanted basadres downstairs under the lights are looking robust and a fine shade of green...

the larger of the two has some flower buds on one stem...the other had some as well however they fell off the plant spontaneously...clearly conditions were not right...one expects these will fail as well, although there is still hope while they are attached...blooms would be pleasing...

bread phase seven...rye ( project complete )

about the same time as i planted the winter wheat in september 2018 i planted the next bed over in winter rye...

and this past august i harvested it and did the work of threshing and winnowing ( which, incidentally, is much more tractable than the wheat )

when i milled the wheat into flour i milled the rye as well and it yielded enough for five full loaves...

there may be some among you few readers who are unaware that rye flour is gluten-free and so will not rise on its own no matter how much yeast you mix in...if you are going to make rye bread you need wheat flour as well...and in a ratio of about one and a quarter units to one not...and, not knowing what might transpire with my whole wheat flour, i used store bought bread flour to mix in...so much for actual "scratch"...i stirred the yeast into a mix of one hundred and ten degree ( farhenheit ) water and molasses and added that to the flour, salt, oil, and caraway seeds...

i let it rise for an hour and a half in a bowl...punched it down and let it rise another forty-five minutes in the bread pan...

i preheated the oven to three hundred and fifty degrees ( again fahrenheit ), put a pan of water on the second rack and the bread on the top one and baked it for fifty minutes...it is cooling now and has not been tasted...that will wait a bit...so the "bread from scratch" ( or, at least, "flour from scratch" ) project ends its fifteen month run...my bread making feels like it's just getting started however...there is more grain planted in the yard and there is no shortage of whole grain, organic ( at least allegedly ) flour down at the supermarket....bread-making is not all that complex at this level...a naturally started sourdough seems a bit more challenging and may be next on the list...we'll see how that goes.

spud transplant

both the basadres under the lights in the basement have pretty much reached the limits of what the peat pots can afford them in terms of growth...

and saying they had become pot bound would not be understating things...so i peeled off the peat pots ( and thus defeated one of their purposes entirely ) and roughed the soil around the roots to let them know it was okay to expand...

and gave them new homes in containers i brought in and cleaned out yesterday ( because i knew this was becoming necessary )...they are deep enough to allow for some back filling to stimulate tuber growth...we will see how this turns out sometime in march...

bread phase six...loaf

in september of 2018 i planted a bed of hard red winter wheat...it was an act of optimism since the crop from the year before had failed to survive the almost snowless winter ( winter wheat needs four inches or so of snow to insulate it from the cold...odd but true )...

in july 2019 i harvested it...

and threshed and winnowed it...

and four days ago i milled it into whole wheat flour...

today i mixed some of flour with salt, sugar, yeast, oil, an egg, and a cup of warmed milk...

mixed it ( by hand )...

kneaded it ( by hand again )

shaped it into a loaf...

let it rise...

and baked it into an actual loaf of "bread from scratch"...true i did not collect the yeast culture or raise the chicken that laid the egg...or produce the vegetable oil...so it isn't entirely from "scratch"...but it did serve the purpose of educating me to, at least a relative amount of knowledge about, how much work actually goes into a loaf...a bit more edifying than running to the supermarket...it leaves unanswered the "why" anyone would take up agriculture...there are lots of ideas about that...no one has a definitive answer ( betting some think they do...not buying it )...i know more than i did in september of 2018...which was what it has been about for me...let you know how it tastes.

2.8" ( so far )

the temperature in my back yard is a bit more seasonable today...only nine degrees ( fahrenheit ) above the "average" high for the day...

and, in a throwback to last may, we again find ourselves under a weather system that stretches from the gulf of mexico to the great lakes...

and which, by seven this morning, had produced 2.8" of rain in my back yard ( it has rained a bit more since then and there is more forecast...there may be an update )...so i decided to go have a look around...

the ground isn't frozen so you know all this water standing in the fields is there because they are sodden...

all but the largest of the drainage ditches are full ( the roads are flooded in places as well ) and some are creating miniature rapids as they run downhill...

there are numerous cuts in the berms of fields where there was more runoff than the drainage systems could handle...

and this field has created a waterfall where the runoff has over-topped an abutment for a culvert...deniers aside ( or ignored if you care to...i have no use for the willfully ignorant...denial is usually not a good thing ) this much rain in january at the south end of the inland sea in nothing like "normal"...the local evidence for a serious change in the climate continues to be reinforced by a growing number of threads...all we need do is look.