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.

Summertime and the willow is high?

Lower bed on left - 7wks; Upper bed on right- 4 wks

Lower bed at 7wks

Look how great this year's babies are doing! The lower bed is at 7 weeks now and the upper bed is at 4 weeks. The prize for the overachiever of the lot is still Jaune de Falais, nearly 3 ft tall at 7 wks old. Even with the dry weather, I haven't lost any plants and only a few in pots are showing yellow leaves, so I am feeling more positive that they got enough spring rain to get a good start on the summer.

Jaune de Falais

Americana 1 yr

Now that the new stalks are establishing, all they need is regular watering. We can start cleaning up the area, weeding and finally paying attention to the 1 year plants. Some are doing particularly well, some are just hanging on. Below is a group of 4 Americana stalks I planted together in a larger pot last year and it is now almost 6 ft tall (I am 5'7"). Long, almost straight rods, while the other two-each pots are smaller and bushier. All are about 8" apart. Significant? Don't know. I have several over-performing individuals from last year, hopefully ready to pollard in the fall. I will try to get some landscape fabric and mulch down in that bed this week.

And this week will be a scorcher. They are calling highs near 90 this week, and working on a property with no shade is punishing. Heat exhaustion is a real possibility at our age. Even though we got the new trimmer mower last week and have mowed the immediate planting area, the other 80% of the property still needs to be mowed. It's going to be a challenge to get to the farm early enough in the day. Neither of us are morning people, and we're an hour away.

We are still going up every other day to hand water everything during this stretch of hot, dry weather. We are currently filling a dozen gallon jugs and an RV fresh water tank that is one day destined to be installed in our project Airstream. We can get about 30 gallons in it, and with a jury-rigged spigot, we manage to soak our 25 ft.x35 ft bed in about a half hour.

The 1 yr bed is getting cleaned u

It would be really nice to not have to drive up and back every other day, and the cost in gas (not to mention water) is rising and it's only June! The long term irrigation plan is in the works, but it will take at least 2 weeks to get it in place, if not more in this heat. Social media has provided a short term idea, but that will take a bit of prep too. Until then, taking a drive in beautiful weather to a mountain valley every other day is hardly torture! But yeah, there are many loose ends to tie up.

Last night we talked about

• A siesta schedule, taking off from noon to four every day. Not sure if we can actually do this.
• Taking the camper over to a campground, 15 minutes from the farm, and spending cooler mornings and evenings on the farm and afternoons at the campground, plugged in and AC blasting. The only negative is $$ - campground fees + sitter fees for 3 kitties in need of food and attention.
• A storage shed again. Right now, loading and unloading our trimmer mower takes a fair amount of time, and we need some secure storage. Horse trailers are again being searched on Craigslist. Pro: no foundation required. Con: Expensive, if they are in shape enough to actually tow. What can I get for $1500 or less?
• Some of the short term irrigation supplies will also be needed for the permanent system, Probably anything I find at Home Depot or Lowe's will be crap so I'm researching online. Dripworks.com looks interesting.

Funny how many solutions require money.