Where did winter go?

 

I am just getting back to this long-form journal of our little pocket farm now starting it’s third year. The area is starting to recover from Helene, and there’s been a lot of personal stuff going on to distract us so I never came in and filled in those months. 

The main thing we did do, and it was a commitment of mine this year, was to get the beds tilled and covered with landscape fabric before the winter rain set in. Guess what, we actually did that! I have the photos to prove it and it looked so nice. Looked. 

Before I could brag on it, the valley got several days of big winds and all of the fabric pulled up and flew around. I have my neighbors video to prove that. 

So back to square one, and just as the cold weather set in. We got all the fabric back, only a little worse for wear, and it was obvious the pins were just not up to the wind in that valley. We didn’t have the time or health to replace it, and I needed to find the right solution to the wind problem. 

And since we are old ladies and the recent extreme cold has us hunkered down at home, we let the field fend for itself til it warmed up. And it has, suddenly, and here we are in a very early spring. So we are back at it, just as I feared, in a kind of panic that we can’t get the new shoots planted in time for spring rainy season - - if we get one!!!

We’ve started harvesting and I posted on IG my very first rods. Kinda paltry in comparison to the lovely bunches (sheaves?) of willow from the more established farms there. Do I have rod envy??? Maybe. 

We seem to have about a week of warm sunny weather ahead, and then hopefully a rainy period. Tomorrow we will go for the third trip to harvest the remaining one year plants, and maybe get a few second year varieties harvested too. The usable shoots are being cut in lengths and put in bags on a chilly patio for the moment. 

Working indoors while the quantities are still small. 
This is Jaune de Falais, the longest rods this yr, 6.5'

60 cuttings from Jaune de Falais, including some 
very slender - see the pencil in the center for size.

  

Miyabeana had the most cuttings - 83! From 11
original plants

Check out the variety of colors in the Miyabeana!

This time, we are going to put down a test length of fabric with 10" nails instead of pins, and a couple of ideas I’ve had to thwart the wind. One idea is to nail down a strip of netting over the edges of the fabric. Netting doesn’t have enough surface area for the wind to catch and might keep the wind from getting under the fabric to pull it up. Another idea is to run a cord taut from nail to nail around the perimeters, giving a continuous pressure at ground level, instead of  every few feet.  Both of those ideas are reasonable in cost for a large area and far less work than massive use of pins or burying all the edges. We’ve got a little time to see how it holds up before we plant. 

There is a benefit to laying down fabric just as we plant, and that is that the willow shoots themselves act as pins across the rows, and adds more resistance to the wind. Our first bed had very few problems with edges being ravelled or pulled up, and I think that’s why that worked. 

I hope we can get this all done with our rickety selves creaking from the cold and inaction.  

Update 3 days later: We've gotten all of one plot harvested, 9 varieties, about 94 plants, still counting and cutting but it looks like we are getting a good rate of reproduction on most plants, only a few did not produce usable rods and those I'll give another season before I dig them up. The one thing I am sure of - my earlier estimates of quantities were way off. I thought we'd have over 1000 new plants, but a more reasonable guess is about 600. Maybe less. Anyway, I am trying to quickly remap the plots because that update means we only need about half the landscape fabric down! I'll need to get more cover crop seeded but so much less work!! Silver Linings, always. 

After the Storm

Photo from Oct 4th, a week after the hurricane. Soggy, but intact.

Last I recall, we were waiting out the season, watching for longer lengths and fuller growth. There was a bit of rain early in Sept., but not enough to spare us the trip out to the farm every couple of days. My expectation was that a freeze would come in late September so this would be the last few weeks of active growth before the willows dropped leaves and go dormant for the winter.

Then came Helene. We couldn't get out there for several days, Old Fort was devastated as well as the up-mountain areas. We made a quick text to one of the neighbors to confirm that the farm did not wash away and that neighborhood was without power and water but otherwise ok. 

Good, and maybe the willow will be twice as tall with all the rain!

Not really, but the property was in fine shape. We were then back to drought and slowly the willow leaves  started looking dry and falling off and the whole bed was  looking very thin! There have been no catkins on any of the varieties yet, even on the 2 year plants. We are supposed to have warm weather through November, so I'm not sure what the schedule will be. 

I just hope the rods set buds! 

We had our friend with the tractor come and do a last mow and a first till of the new field. We are laying down compost on half and ryegrass as a cover crop on the other half. Then we'll lay out new landscape fabric for the new rows. Hopefully we can get to that next week, while the weather is still nice. 

First results are in

A month has gone by, and as we go into fall, the year-end result is coming into view. I did an inventory yesterday to get an idea of how many shoots will be ready to plant in February. You can see the new field behind me in the photo, 6000 square feet currently in a cover crop, and I need to know how much of it needs to be turned over and covered in landscape fabric next month. So I counted rods, only the pencil thickness or larger ones so I was very conservative. All the plants have some number of thin shoots, too flimsy to plant, so they'll get cut and composted. (Are there any uses for them? Tiny baskets maybe?) 
Some as the varieties have done exceedingly well, with substantial, upright tall rods, but most of the purpurea varieties are short, thin and floppy. Many also have an annoying side growth habit that means they are lying in the walkway. I'm not cutting those til next season. I've noticed that the second year growth really strengthened several of my first year plants, at least the ones I got in the ground in time. So there are 6 varieties that fall into the ‘not yet’ category (and sadly, most are basketry favorites like Packing Twine and Dickie Meadows) I'm hoping that plan will allow me some more time to determine if they'll do well here. 

All of the current plants are listed, with the number of plants that are viable or struggling.
Available Rods times Length (in feet) gives the number of 12" cuttings to be planted.

The varieties that excelled are typically other than purpurea, and are the varieties likely to do well for landscaping purposes. No problem there, since one of the first uses I have are living fences and structures on the property. Baskets will come later. 
OK, now for the numbers - I have potentially 1100 cut rods for planting! That’s largely from the 170 first year plants; the best performers are averaging 3.5 useable rods per plant.  Jaune de Falais, by itself,  will yield 200 plants, from 11 originals. My second year plants are only producing about 100 of those starts; Those are my live-and-learn babies: get those cuttings in the ground asap! No more pots!
Of course, when February rolls around, things could be different. Late fall here is usually pretty warm and rainy, so more growth is still possible. It could also go the other way, some of these rods may not set buds, or other problem. 
I’m planning for the best case, and it’s already about 10 times what I expected. 

6 months in

 We were sitting yesterday afternoon, heat-exhausted and tired from a few hours work on the farm, talking about just how much longer we can do this.

Not that we did that much - she mowed the plot perimeter and trimmed the edges of our main 1000 square foot plot. I watered the beds and dropped some clover seed and some straw on a small part of the newly cleared field. We had a pop-up tent and plenty of cold water, took plenty of breaks.  We managed to get out by 3, the hottest part of the day. It was still too much. The high was 92 yesterday. 

 It feels sometimes that it might kill us, with the extreme heat and our vulnerabilities. We need to be morning people. We need a helper. We need storage so we don’t have to haul equipment. We need to get that rain shed up and working. We need it to start raining, actually.  Lots of needs. Not enough energy.

So while we were talking in our exhausted states, I talked about my 3 year plan. I had thought it could be done in 3 years, have most of the infrastructure in and a small but viable business in willow. Maybe even the utilities that would allow us to stay there during harvest and planting seasons, so much more efficient. 

And, as I posted previously, it has been a year since I made an offer on the property. But, I remembered, it has only been 6 months since we’ve had access to the land. Only 6 months. The driveway was finished in mid January of this year. It feels pretty remarkable, given the time and the obstacle of weird weather, that we’ve got some pretty healthy willow growing and are still, so far, wanting to plant more. 

We have busted our old lady asses to get here. Still standing though. C’mon, 2 1/2 years.