wake up call?

well...not for the ramps....that is a certainty...

and it may yet be early all around...still...warmer temperatures...

has the snow in retreat from the strawberries in the beds...

and in the bed of my truck...

admittedly the established egyptian walking onions and the ones coming in from last year's areal bulbs have stayed green all winter...which is why something has been browsing them despite the fact they are onions...

however stumpy's dryad/s saddles seem to be expanding...

it appears moles are on the move hunting mu worms...

there is clear movement among the maple tree buds...

and if those aren't daffodils coming up i will eat my hat with no salt...winter may not be over but they are collecting sap from the sugar maples at the county park down by the river...the signs are pointing towards the end of this particular edition of winter...plans are fulminating.

another shift

not as warm as the sunny afternoon yesterday...it is dead on the "average" high for feburary seventeenth hereabouts...

that's not melt water on the deck reflecting the maple trees...those concentric rings in the center of the photo are from a rain drop...

a tenth of an inch so far with another fifteen hundredths forecast...one may not expect rain in february...here it is...that makes seven and one tenth inches of rain ( let us emphasize that rain...not snow ) since the beginning of the year at a time when snow would be the expected form of precipitation...something may be amiss...

shapes change

change is constant...stasis is death...that is valid for people and for weather...and, at least in my back yard, climate as well...two days and the "sternest" had retreated from winter hereabouts...there is considerable standing water...

the winter rye has begun to emerge from the snow cover...no sign of wheat or ramps just yet...

while the egyptian walking onions...

the native berries...

and new york imports have remained stubbornly green through it all...

in defiance of the weather and the rabbits that have been criss crossing my back yard in search of something to browse...it is the second half of february and i would probably profoundly mistaken in thinking winter nearing its end...still...we remain on the lookout for crocuses.

sternest shape?

given what has come before in terms of weather and what is forecast to follow, de quincey's "...winter, in his sternest shape..." may be what we have going on her at the moment...and it seems to be a fleeting one...it was, allegedly, one degree below zero ( fahrenheit ) just before dawn this morning...it has warmed since and i am told will be in the mid forties by a week from tomorrow...winter is feeble so far this year...

one plus is the winter wheat and rye do finally have enough snow to insulate them from the cold...perhaps too little too late...spring will tell...

the ramps are slumbering for another month and a half or so...they will be up and running alongside the winter grains by early april...beyond that there isn't much to see out there...

the basement potato season is booming along...and there are plans for squash, spuds, beans, maize, teocintli in the spring to go along with the asparagus and strawberries that are wintering over out under all that snow...we will be on the lookout for crocuses and daffodils as soon as the weather breaks...they may be earlier this year.

potato flour

potato bread is the next item on the bread making list and, since we are trying to get a feel for the actual amount of work that goes into the process, i wanted to make my own flour...i grow potatoes every year...in fact there are a number of them down in the plant room under the lights right now...so i have a fair idea of what is involved in that...potato flour is new to me however...

so i peeled about a pound and a half of red potatoes...

cut them into fairly uniform chunks...

cooked and mashed them into what would pass as lumpy...

spread them out on dehydrator trays, plugged it in, and left them for about six hours...

after which they were pretty much hard, brittle lumps of starch...

i put them in the grain mill and set the timer for three minutes...

there were still some pieces that were apparently too hard for even the mill to handle..i could hear them rattling around in there as the mill reached the end of the cycle...so i sifted them out and let them go...

a pound and a half of desiccated mashed potatoes rendered something just over half a cup of potato flour...i paid $2.99 for three pounds of red potatoes at the store this morning ( to replace what i was using ) so a half cup of potato flour is going to run $1.495 just in feed stock...one rarely sees potato flour at the supermarket ( the one i go to has almond, banana, coconut, and who knows what else...but not potato ) and if this is an indication of cost one sees why...the kicker is the recipes i find for potato bread all call for minimal amounts of potato flour ( one calls for two tablespoons ) but all run heavy on "idahoan" mashed potato flakes...one senses a marketing ploy...i will continue to search fro real potato bread recipes so i can get a fair grounding in how much it will cost me in flour, time, and energy to produce it...i have not looked into the cost of mashed potato flakes...and i may not...seems a cheap out when you are trying to quantify work.