Every few years weather makes it impossible to harvest and deliver vegetables to our subscribers. Our solution is to skip that week and give extra the next week. In the winter, almost all the crops hold fine (except when we have such cold weather that we lose crops). This weekend, the temperatures were very cold (20 degrees) and the ground is so frozen that Tuesday harvest is impossible. We will have to see whether it is possible to harvest for our Friday subscribers.

We spent quite a while covering crops in the hoophouses and outside in order to insulate them from the cold temperatures. Only time will tell if we were successful. The freezing fog that came through is different than any weather event we have seen in 24 years on Pumpkin Ridge. It may be a good thing for the outdoor crops that so much moisture came with the cold weather; snow insulates crops at 32 degrees and water releases heat as it freezes. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that this unusual cold front didn’t do much damage.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a world of frost thorns. Everything was covered in spikes of ice that were 1-2″ long. Here is what a spider’s silk thread looked like:

The bamboo leaves and the bare twigs all looked like thorny plants

Pretty cool, eh?