The scurs are checking the control cables on the Weather Eye to make sure it’s not stuck. Will their diligence pay off with warmer temps or are we stuck in the polar vortex? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with highs near -20 and lows near -30. Ish. Thursday, partly cloudy with a modest chance of afternoon snow. Highs near zero with lows in the mid-single digits below zero. Partly sunny on Friday with highs in the mid-teens and lows around 10 above. Groundhog Day, mostly cloudy with a slight chance of a rain/snow mix. Highs in the upper 30’s with lows in the mid-20’s. Mostly cloudy for Sunday with a good chance of snow. Highs in the upper 20’s with lows around 10 above. Monday, mostly cloudy with some lingering forenoon snow showers. Highs around 20 with lows in the mid-single digits. Mostly cloudy for Tuesday with highs in the upper teens and lows back to near 0. On the 2nd, we will have gained just a hair over an hour of daylight since the winter solstice. The normal high for Groundhog Day is 24 and the normal low is 5. The scurs are unlikely to see their shadow on Saturday. However, after this past week no one in their right mind will believe that spring is just around the corner.
Another week of old-fashioned winter complete with spills, chills and thrills. Ditches are getting full, so a snowy February could make for even more entertainment. Looks like the first installment of Storm of the Week is already in the mix for Sunday into Monday. Snowfall totals around the area for the Sunday night storm were generally in the 7+” range. More drifting at the ranch with this most recent snowfall, so it took more power than the fluff that fell in the previous week. It was cold again, however, with temps in the low single digits while making getting the yard clean enough to allow transportation to move once again. Not that there’s a lot of it, but it sucks hauling buckets and bales over snowbanks if you don’t have to.
The sheep got a reprieve from their scheduled shearing on January 26th. It was too cold to start with and looking further out the -30’s were also a factor. Shearing does put some additional stress on them and extreme temperatures can lead to abortion if the ewes aren’t able to get in a facility to maintain their body temperature. Frostbite can also be a factor, so to err on the side of caution is prudent. You only get to do it once a year, so you may as well as do it right.
Before I went outside Saturday I’d noticed that there was a draft on my backside in the utility room. With the southeast wind that could only mean one thing: the dryer vent flap was full of lint and stuck open again. Sure enough, after digging it out with the longest blade on my jackknife the flap operated freely as it should. It harkened me back to my early days on our farm by Pleasant Grove. Frequently it seemed there were sparrows that got in the dryer vent and found their way inside the gas dryer. This flustered Mom and once Dad got involved, it generally didn’t end well for the sparrows.
Before Sunday’s storm meant tidying things up such as shoveling the sidewalk. It had become packed with snow from the previous storm, so it was an ideal time to peel it off, or so I thought. As is usually the case I was subjected to more than my share of dog help. I spent as much time cleaning the snow that Ruby kept tossing back on the walk lunging at the shovel as I did the original mess. It’s hard to find good help these days, dog help included.
Friday I had my mind set on making a batch of vegetable beef soup. I’d spied some nice beef stew meat at Wagner’s earlier that set the wheels in motion. I procured carrots, onions and celery along with a rutabaga. The recipe also called for beef bouillon cubes. Now, as any of you who had older brothers or sisters can attest, being a younger sibling always made you a great guinea pig. I can remember my older brother babysitting us brats and having us sample things in the spice and baking supply cabinet. There were some things in there that were definitely good to sample. Others not so much. The beef bouillon cubes in the same area were in a little brown jar and wrapped in bright red foil. At first glance they appeared to be candy, which is how they were presented to us. The faces we made when fed the cubes had to be priceless. Thank God there were no cell phone cameras back in those days.
Also included in the soup was barley. Once a commonly grown grain in South Central Minnesota, it’s been a long time since any amount of barley was sown here. Reputedly once Prohibition ended, it was one of the crops that lifted farmers in Southern Minnesota out of debt in The Great Depression. In the early 1980’s I had the good fortune out of college to work with barley in North Central North Dakota for three years. Prior to that as an undergrad, I’d been exposed to a couple years’ worth of soil fertility plot work through the U of M on barley. The connection to beer was only natural. On a student budget, usually cheap beer.
There were two main types, feed and malting barley. Feed barley was easy to raise and a good crop could yield as high as 80 bu./acre in the day. Only certain varieties were accepted by the brewers for malting barley and growing it took more expertise. One needed to limit the nitrogen rates to maintain plump kernels, keep the protein percentage down and maximize the extractable starch, all of this while minimizing the yield penalty from the reduced nitrogen rate. It was somewhat of a balancing act, but if you could pull it off it was worth the effort. If you didn’t, it helped to have some livestock to feed it to. It worked similarly to corn in feed rations. I raised some dandy broilers on it one summer, so I can vouch for barley’s value as a feed ingredient.
The old-fashioned pearl(ed) barley used to make soup is becoming tougher to find. Most of it comes pre-cooked as quick or medium which is less cooked. What makes it pearl barley? During processing the inedible hull is removed, although some of the bran usually remains. Cooked for the proper amount of time it makes a healthy, hearty addition to a soup or stew. However, if you’re on a gluten-free diet, it’s probably not for you. Barley is too closely related to wheat and can cause the same issues. How was the soup? With all the ingredients in the crockpot simmered Saturday afternoon the aroma coming back into the warm house after chores was heavenly. The soup was filling and tasted as good as advertised.
See you next week…real good then.