weather – Page 4 – grouchyfarmer

A Strange Spring

While we have tulips coming up here in the house and we’ve started flats of seeds in preparation for warm weather, outside it has been decidedly odd. We’ve had more snow now in the first week of April than we did in in most of the winter and outside it currently looks like this:

Screen Shot 2018-04-07 at 6.47.08 AM — Ah, spring in Wisconsin! The warm weather, the April showers, the… the snow…

Not exactly what you expect to see when you look out the window on April 7. Tuesday and Wednesday we had winter storm warnings all day long and ended up with about 6 inches of snow here, with some areas getting up to 10. Most of that melted but then we got another couple of inches a couple of days later and there is more snow in the forecast. We’re looking at near record low temperatures in some parts of the state today.

Indoors, though, we’re proceeding on schedule in the hopes that maybe we might get some warm weather. Someday.

Screen Shot 2018-04-07 at 6.44.56 AM The tulips MrsGF potted up a few weeks ago are still going strong with new blooms popping up and it certainly improves my mood when I walk in the room and see those brilliant yellows and reds. I’m really glad she came up with the idea of potting up some old bulbs. It really brightens the place up.

We sat down the other day to sort through the “Bag ‘o Seeds’ we got for Christmas and figure out what we wanted to plant this year, what had to be started indoors and what could be direct seeded, etc. Then we brought up the little portable greenhouse thingie from the basement and set that up.

Screen Shot 2018-04-07 at 6.46.08 AM That’s this thing over here. It’s a folding metal frame with three racks in it with a vinyl cover over the top. It provides an ideal environment for starting seeds. It stays warm and moist inside and lets in enough light to keep things grown and nice and warm in there. Also prevents temperature fluctuations inside the house from harming the plants.

We found a floor pan for a shower that was the ideal size to fit under it to protect the floor. MrsGF already has it filled with flats with seeds, and we already have some tiny little seedlings peeking up through the starter mix.

It works great and was pretty cheap, too, under $40 if I remember right. It’s easy to set up.

It has the added benefit of keeping the cats out as well or you can be sure they’d be in there digging around, nibbling on plants, tipping things over, etc.

Strange Weather and Stuff

Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 4.48.41 AM The weather has been a bit odd of late. Over the holiday season and for a few days after, it was bitterly cold, with temperatures down in the -20 range. Then we got a warming trend and it was up to 57 here yesterday. This morning at 4:30 when I got up it was 15 degrees. So yeah, the weather has been strange.

We’ve had wild temperature swings like this before, but it’s pretty rare. It usually doesn’t get that cold, that early in the season. We generally don’t see long stretches of frigid temperatures like that until mid-January, not before Christmas. And we usually don’t see a mid-winter thaw like this until, well, mid-winter.

It will be interesting to see what the rest of the season is like. As of right now the predictions are we’re going back to more typical temperatures in the low teens, with a chance for heavy snow on Monday.

So, why am I up at 4:30 in the morning… Can’t sleep again. It’s more than a little frustrating. I don’t know if it’s age, the medication I’m on or what, but for some time now I’ve been going through bouts of insomnia. I’ll sleep for about four hours, then wake up and can’t get back to sleep again.

There doesn’t seem to be any kind of relationship between the insomnia and any kind of specific behavior or medication or food or anything like that. And it doesn’t happen every night. But it happens often enough that it is very, very annoying, maybe twice a week. It isn’t like I have to worry about going to a job or driving when I’m tired. Being retired does have it’s advantages. But even so, trying to run on about 4 or 5 hours of sleep is a pain in the neck.

Last Harvest

Well, this is it, the last harvest of the season. Huge basket full of bell and poblano peppers. They were predicting frost for last night, and I decided to just pick all of the peppers that were remaining in the gardens and not try to keep the plants going any longer.

Ironically, the pepper plants are doing better now than they were during the height of the growing season. They really seem to like cool, fall weather. The dopey things are still blossoming out there.

The peppers are easy to deal with. Just wash them, cut off the stems, take out the seed pods, then dice them up, stick them in containers and freeze them. No blanching or anything else is necessary.

I don’t know if it actually froze last night. It’s still dark as the inside of a cow out there even at 6:30 AM. (Why in the world do I get up this early, anyway???) The remote thermometer says the low last night was 37, but it’s in a sheltered location near the house and out in the yard it’s often colder.

It’s really time to start prepping for winter. I need to rearrange the stuff in the garage, get the motorcycle put away so I can get the snowblower out. This semi-annual game of shuffle board is a pain in the neck, but that’s what happens when you have more stuff than storage space.

I’ve been hearing the “S” word popping up in the weather forecasts. Yes, snow. The chance of us getting any are close to zero. It looks like it’s going to be mostly in the far north of the state, but you never know.

It’s Been Too Nice. We’re Getting Paranoid.

It has been suspiciously nice out the last few days. And it’s going to keep being nice. Daytime temps have been up in the high 60s to low 70s, sunny. The weather people are telling us it’s supposed to stay like this. At least for a while. And even get nicer. It could hit the low 80s in some parts of the state over the next few days.

We are suspicious of this. Up here in Wisconsin, Mother Nature has a long track record of lulling us into a false sense of security with ridiculously nice weather right before she dumps about 3 feet of snow on us. We still remember back in the 1980s when she hilariously dropped 11 inches of snow on us on May 10th. So whenever the weather is too good to be true we start getting paranoid up here because Mother Nature has a warped and twisted sense of humor.

{I screwed up. So what else is new, right? I set up a new email address for this blog, and then immediately after doing that wrote down the wrong email address in the blog. Sigh. The email address is actually old.grouchyfarmer@gmail.com }

I’ve been taking advantage of the pleasant weather and have been out on the bike. Even when I’m on a route that I’ve been on dozens of times before, I never know what I’m going to find. I discovered these guys sprouting up along the trail I sometimes take.

Mushrooms are, well, they’re just weird, okay? Bizarre shapes and colors. Some are delicious while others will kill you. I suspect they’re a plot by Mother Nature to kill off those of us who survived the May blizzard.

Screen Shot 2017-10-19 at 6.56.35 AM — Not a mushroom.

Then this guy showed up. Funny looking mushroom, isn’t it? Friendliest mushroom I’ve ever seen, really. Never had a mushroom slobber all over my face before and want me to scratch his ears.

The pleasant weather has also meant I’ve been procrastinating terribly about chores I should be doing, like cleaning out the rest of the gardens, tearing down the radio room so I can move the new desk in, and meeting friendly golden retrievers out on the road.

Speaking of biking, why in the world am I sitting around here babbling along like this when I could be out there right now?

I Like Autumn But…

Screen Shot 2017-10-15 at 7.03.55 AM I really do like autumn, but even I have to admit it gets a bit dull around this time of year, visually speaking. The rich greens, the brilliant flowers, the bright sun of summer is rapidly fading into the dull browns and dreary cloudy skies of fall.

It’s been very cloudy and rainy here of late, which hasn’t helped much. That means I can’t get out on the bike as much as I’d like. Biking in temperatures in the high 40s and icy cold rain isn’t exactly my idea of fun, you see. I suppose it’s time to dust off the treadmill and start pounding out miles while binge watching Netflix or Amazon. It’s exercise, yes, but it’s not really the same as biking through the countryside.

Screen Shot 2017-10-15 at 7.01.00 AM I am fortunately not one of those people who suffers from Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) but I know quite a few who are, and it’s easy to tell who they are this time of year. They tend to start to get grumpier and more irritable as the days become shorter. But even so I still find myself digging through my photos and lingering on things like bright, sunny scenes and and brilliantly colored flowers. Especially on days like today when it’s 7:30 AM and it looks like it’s going to be another one of those dull, cloudy days with rain. Ick…

We’re currently ramping up to the annual insanity that is Halloween around here. I have nothing against the holiday. I rather enjoy it. But it does seem to have gotten totally out of hand. Mrs. GF and I are convinced that they’ve started bussing kids in from the entire midwest and releasing them on our little town every Halloween, because we know there aren’t that many kids in town. Heck, the entire school district doesn’t have that many kids as we get running up to our door.

Anyway, I was at the local Walmart to get a prescription filled and while I was waiting I thought I’d see if they had some deals on Halloween decorations. It’s a little over two weeks away and I figured they’d be running closeouts on the stuff.

Screen Shot 2017-10-15 at 7.00.24 AM — Let’s stick another flower in. No real reason why. Just feel like putting a flower here.

I was wrong. The entire Halloween decoration section was gone. It was replaced with Christmas decorations. The only Halloween stuff they had left were those massive bags of cheap, crappy candy that is apparently made out of flavored chalk.

Christmas decorations? Really? It’s October 15, for heaven’s sake!

I really should have expected that, though. Retailers don’t live in the same universe you and I live in. In their world time is a strange and mysterious thing that has no basis in reality. A couple of years ago I needed to get a winter coat. It was January, it was -20 degrees out, and I’d just ripped my heavy winter coat by snagging it on something. So it’s January. In Wisconsin. It’s -20 out. You’d think that here in Wisconsin you could buy a winter coat, right? Good luck. Swimwear? Yes. Shorts? Yes. Sandals? Yes. Winter clothes? No. I finally made the 25 mile drive to the “local” Fleet Farm and got one there. Sheesh…

I suppose I should wrap this up and go do something. We’re still in the process of cleaning up the gardens. The non-producing peppers got yanked yesterday, I need to take down the old sunflowers outside the kitchen window. The birds have pretty much gotten all of the seeds out of them and they’re looking pretty bad. It’s raining right now but maybe the weather will cooperate later.

Oh, almost forgot. We have email now! If the nice Mr. Google cooperates and everything is working, you can reach us at ~~wis.grouchyfarmer@gmail.com~~

Oops – it’s old.grouchyfarmer@gmail.com. Sheesh, can’t remember my own email address. Sigh.

If I remember to ever actually check the account. If it actually works because I haven’t actually tested it yet.

Yes, you really need to put the “wis.” part in there.

Beautiful Mornings and Silliness

We’ve had some breathtakingly beautiful mornings here recently, and I took full advantage of it, getting out on the bike whenever I could.

We had some very odd weather here recently. Well, to be fair, the weather all spring and summer was a bit odd. The summer was remarkably cool and wet, and when fall finally hit, that’s when it seemed summer finally arrived. We had mid to late September temperatures well into the high 80s and flirting with the mid 90s here away from the lake. We ran the air conditioning more in late September than we did in July and August put together.

But then things started to get back closer to normal with daytime temps around 60, and night temps down in the low 40s, which makes for great biking weather.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the weather starts getting really cold and the snow flies and I can’t get out on the bike. Back to pounding the treadmill I guess. Ick.

Banging Your Head On The Table Dept: Windigo Fest

Screen Shot 2017-10-02 at 6.58.03 AM The city of Manitowoc, in its never ending quest to try to get someone, anyone, to come to town and spend some money, is putting on a Windigo Festival on Oct. 6-7. It looks like it could be a good time but I doubt if I’ll get over there because I have stuff on the schedule for both days.

But in a classic example of “why we can’t have nice things”, someone, of course, had to take offense at the town’s attempt to have some fun and drum up some business. Why? Because of, well, Satan apparently.

This person, who owns a very small and utterly insignificant shop in downtown where the festival is going to be held, has gone totally ballistic over this thing. Apparently the person harangued the city council for a considerable amount of time about how this festival was evil incarnate, was a satanic plot to corrupt the youth of the city, how it would lead to the evils of witchcraft and plunge the city into the corruption of sin, bring a host of demons down upon us, God would curse us and the Chicago Bears would beat the Packers…

Oh brother…

It gets worse. The “windigo” is, supposedly, a Native American monster of some sort that would run around and eat people. This person claims it is actually satan himself, and went on and on about satanic worship, demons, etc. for quite a while.

According to this person, pretty much everything about the fest is “satanic”.

The parade they’re going to have is running north to south down the street. That’s “satanic” because normally traffic runs from south to north. Exactly why having the parade route go in that direction is “satanic” is something I’m not really clear about. I mean I’ve read the Bible and I don’t really recall there being any verse that says “And lo, the City of Manitowoc shall route all traffic on Eighth Street from south to north, for routing traffic from north to south is the devil’s work”. And since 10th street two blocks over runs from north to south, does that mean 10th street is satanic and everyone who drives it worships the devil? They weren’t real clear about that one.

Even the dates of the festival are “satanic”. October 6 and 7? Yep, that’s satanic too, it seems. Six plus seven is thirteen, you see, and thirteen is the devil’s number.

The only reason I know about this is because the local paper decided to spend way, way too much time on this nonsense. And while I admit I found it mildly amusing, come on, really? This nonsense should have gotten exactly zero press coverage.

Anyway, if you go to the festival, make sure you say “hi” to Satan. He’s supposed to be hanging out over there. Haven’t seen him in a while. Last time I saw him was when he was in his guise as a state legislator and he sat down next to me at breakfast at a local restaurant.

Strange Weather

It may look like early fall, but it doesn’t feel like it. Temperatures are running into the mid to high 80s

While Wisconsin is known for it’s occasionally odd weather, this past year has been a bit much. Tomorrow is supposed to be the first day of autumn, but you sure can’t tell from the weather. Yesterday’s high here was 84, today’s high was 87, and it could push into the 90s with heat indexes approaching 100 by tomorrow and Saturday.

We take a perverse pride in our weather extremes. This is a state where it can be below zero one day, and in the 60s just 24 hours later. We rather like that. Gives us something to talk about because, when it comes down it, we’re rather boring people up here and we get kind of sick of talking about the Packers all the time.

We got lucky. Storm damage was mostly limited to blown over plants and a lot of tree branches down.

We had nasty storms roll through here last night, too. I braved the heavy rain and wind to get outside with my wind meter and I was seeing gusts of up to 62 MPH. Nothing compared to what those poor people who’ve gotten hit by the hurricanes have had to endure, true. But for us this is pretty extreme. Especially at this time of year.

Then we got nailed by the rain. Here at the house we got 4 1/2 inches of rain in just two hours. It was very spotty, though. A short distance away they got almost nothing.

And the poor pear tree… Well, so much for the pears this year. We had a small yield to begin with. The storm seems to have stripped every single fruit off the poor tree. Nothing can really be salvaged, either. When they hit the ground they hit hard, and the fruit is generally ruined, smashed, burst open, and immediately the insects move in. So all we’re going to get this year are the couple of dozen we picked already. Seems like such a waste, but there isn’t anything to be done about it.

The great nutrient collapse

The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. Source: The great nutrient collapse

I don’t lead off these epistles with links to outside sources very often, but this one at Politico, of all places, is a wee bit scary and it’s something that effects all of us because it’s about our food.

So here’s the background: We’ve known for some time that the nutrient density in the plants we eat has dwindled over the last century. Concentrations of minerals, vitamins, etc. in plants has been shrinking. Our produce, on average, now has fewer nutrients per kilo of plant material than it had when the measurements first began. It’s been assumed that there were two reasons why.

First, our farming techniques have changed drastically over the last hundred years. We’ve moved to “industrial” farming, which relies on heavy applications of artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. By dramatically altering the environment the plants grow in, we’ve also alters the chemical composition of the plants.

Second, over the centuries we’ve bred plants to grow faster, produce more fruit or grain, and to produce fruits that last longer after picking and which are tough enough to tolerate rough harvesting and shipping conditions. When selecting plants for these traits, we’ve often ignored things like the nutrient content of the plant and flavor. So we’ve ended up with plants that produce fruit that can be stored longer, is easier to harvest, etc. but which is lower in nutrients and flavor.

But that isn’t all that’s been going on, it seems. Apparently increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere seem to have played a significant role in decreasing the nutrient levels in plants.

Maybe… The thing is, this is difficult to test for. The testing requires extensive, difficult to accomplish, and rather expensive experiments, and while there are scientists who would like to do the testing, it has been difficult to get funding to actually do it.

As of right now I don’t think the science is actually settled. The preliminary testing that has been done tends to support the belief that increased atmospheric CO2 levels can indeed result in lower nutrition levels in the plants. But there is still a lot we don’t know. We also don’t know how serious of a problem this may be. A lot more testing and experiments need to be done to answer all of the questions that need answers.

Changes. Enjoy the Flowers While We Can

It’s that time of year again. The days are getting noticeably shorter, temperatures are getting cooler. The leaves on the trees are beginning to change color. I’ve said before that I like winter, I love the fall. But I’m rather reluctant to let go of summer and embrace the change of season this year.

We still have brilliant flowers growing outside, but knowing that it’s only a matter of a few weeks before they begin to fade is kind of sad.

And the weather, at least this week, doesn’t have much of an autumnal flavor. After days of daytime temps not much more than the mid-fifties and night time temperatures down in the forties, it hasn’t been exactly summery out.

But yesterday it hit the high seventies, and for the next few days the highs are supposed to be in the low 80s. So we’re going to enjoy it while we can.

The gardens here are doing reasonably well for this time of year. Still lots and lots of flowers, the squash are amazing. This is the first year we grew squash and it’s been more successful than we could have hoped. It looks like we’re going to have a couple of dozen acorn and butternut squash from those few plants.

Alas, the same can’t be said for the tomatoes and peppers that were in the raised beds. Last year the raised beds were amazing. This year… The tomatoes; we know what happened with them. They picked up a fungus because of the wet weather we had all spring and well into summer. And we planted them too close together so there was poor air circulation. That combined to take out the tomatoes early this year. We got enough to make some soup and sauce, but less than a third of the production we should have had.

Not sure what happened with the peppers. I suspect some kind of insect damage plus the wet weather was too much for them. The sweet bells in that bed didn’t even flower. The banana peppers and hot peppers did have some yield, but not as much as they should have had. The peppers we planted in other locations did just fine.

Something in the soil? Don’t know. I may end up digging out all of the soil in both of the raised beds and replacing it this fall just to see what happens. They’re only 8X4 so it wouldn’t be a huge operation to do it. We’ll see.

This week I’ll probably get started doing the usual fall cleanup, starting with the tomatoes and the peppers that haven’t been producing. No point in keeping either of those. The tomatoes, well, they’re all pretty much dead anyway, and it’s pretty obvious that except for the banana peppers we aren’t going to get anything from the others, so there’s no point in leaving them there and we might as well haul them down to the compost pile.

One thing I’ve noticed all season long is a lack of bees. Until recently, I hadn’t seen a single honey bee around. A few bumble bees, but that’s it. That’s probably why the pear tree hasn’t produced the way it usually does. When it was in flower there were almost no bees at all around here. Probably also why the cucumber production has been so poor. The plants are doing well and flowering beautifully, but very little fruit.

One good sign is that yesterday the sedum were loaded with honey bees. Dozens of them were zooming down on the sedum flowers. A bit late, but still nice to see.

Brrr. And Stuff

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 7.29.39 AM With early morning temperatures hovering in the mid 40s around here, the dawn bike rides have pretty much come to an end for the season. I have to put it off until close to mid day when the temps get up to around 60 or so. This upcoming week is supposed to be warmer, but I have to face the fact that the bike season is going to be over in the very near future and it’s going to be back to walking and jogging to try to get exercise, so I’d better check out the treadmill and make sure it’s in good shape. A lot of streets here in town don’t have sidewalks at all, so if you’re a walker/runner you’re either forced out onto the slush and salt covered streets and risking cracking your head open when you slide on the ice, or you look for indoor alternatives.

Despite the cold mornings, it’s still amazingly beautiful out there. I’m determined to enjoy it while I can because it isn’t going to be long before it looks like this over there on the right.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m one of those weird people who actually likes winter. But even I have to admit that as I get older my tolerance for cold has diminished.

I keep telling myself every winter that I really need to get outside with the camera because snowscapes and winter scenes can be amazingly beautiful. But then there’s the whole thing with the feet turning into blocks of ice, fingers going numb, the camera’s focus freezing up and all that.

Equifax debacle – By this time you’ll have heard about the Equifax data theft incident where apparently everyone’s SS number, name, address, date of birth and other identifying information was stolen. Basically if you’ve ever had a credit card, applied for a loan, etc., your data was in the system and it got stolen. Mine did, my kids’ data, my wife’s… Pretty much everyone I know who’s checked was hit.

So if you’re wondering if you’re one of us, you almost certainly are. I won’t give you the web address to go to check at Equifax. That info is available all over. Just make sure you go to the right one and not some phishing site. You can be sure that in the coming days the scammers will be trying to take advantage of the situation with phony credit monitoring services and other BS. So be careful out there.

If you’ve been hit, what do you do? Do you sign up for the one year of free monitoring the company is offering? How much good it will do is questionable, but it might give an early alert if something starts to happen. The thing is, the company is only offering you one year of free monitoring, but that data that was stolen is going to be out there forever. Just because it wasn’t used in one year doesn’t mean it won’t be used next year, or the year after.

You should seriously consider freezing your credit entirely. Yes, you can do that. If nothing else, that should prevent scammers from using your identity to open up new lines of credit, take out loans in your name, etc. You have to do it with all three credit bureaus, and there are fees involved. That depends on the state you live in.

I’m going to do something I don’t normally do very often, recommend someplace to go to for advice and information. That’s Clark Howard’s website . Clark Howard’s website will give you information on what to do, how to monitor your credit for fraud, and how to freeze your credit.

I’ve heard of several incidents where the Equifax site is giving conflicting information about whether or not a person has been hit by this. One person checked on the Equifax site and was told it “appeared” they were not. She checked again a few hours later, and was then told she was. She went through the process again a short time later, and was told again that she wasn’t. In any case, Equifax isn’t giving any firm answer. There are a lot of “might”, “maybe”, “apparently” and other weasel words being used with no actual confirmation.

There are a whole lot of questions that need to be answered over this. Like how did this happen? Why wasn’t this data heavily encrypted so even if it was stolen it would be useless? And why did two or more corporate officers sell their stock in the company after the breech was discovered but before the data theft was made public?

I can’t leave you all depressed and worried, so here’s a flower to cheer you up.