The scurs and the Weather Eye continue to receive hate mail after Wednesday night’s snowfall event. Are we done with winter finally or is another encore performance (or two) waiting in the wings? Starting Wednesday, cloudy with a good chance of rain. Highs in the mid-50’s with lows in the upper 30’s. Thursday, mostly cloudy with a good chance of a rain in the forenoon. Highs in the mid-40’s with lows in the low 30’s. Partly sunny Friday with highs in the upper 30’s and lows in the upper 20’s. Saturday, mostly sunny with highs in the mid-40’s and lows in the mid-20’s. Mostly sunny Sunday with highs in the upper 40’s and lows in the low 30’s. Monday, cloudy and warmer with highs in the low 50’s and lows in the low 30’s. Continued cloudy skies for Tuesday with highs in the mid-50’s and lows in the low 40’s. The normal high for April 1st is 49 and the normal low is 29. We continue to gain daylight at about three minutes per day. The scurs are thinking maybe by fixing the dome light in the ’74, where the Weather Eye emanated from, we will see more sun next week. That ship may have sailed. April fools!
We certainly are stuck on some cloudy weather. There are anecdotal indications that all is not well in flyover land. From livestock health issues to vitamin D and human depression issues, this has been a tough one. Our old pal the polar vortex has been bandied about recently as well, leading some to believe that in spite of better-than-even odds of above-normal temperatures forecast by NOAA, we may see a chilly start to particularly the first half of April. Take heart, however. Planting much before about the 20th has shown little or no benefit most years, so if it can get it out of its system by then, we should be fine. Fretting about it won’t change it and planting in mud early is a guaranteed disaster.
Some have wondered about all the “free” nitrogen we receive in the snowfall as someone in the news media usually gets wound up about that. Typically we receive somewhere in the vicinity of 10–12 lbs./acre of nitrogen from atmospheric sources over the course of an entire year’s precipitation. The nitrogen received is fairly minimal per precipitation event so like most other things, not much in life is really “free.”
Now, if someone wants some “free” sod, I have lots after “freeing” it from my yard with the tractor and bucket. Last week’s snowfall measured about 7.5” at the ranch with what appeared to be roughly that at the Mall for Men. It was some wet, heavy slop and with the rain that preceded it, totaled about .83” of liquid equivalent. For March snowfall, we’ve now received a hair over the 30-year average (1981–2010) at the SROC with 12.5” having been measured at the ranch. Total precip-wise we are still roughly a half inch behind the SROC average with that being likely to change after this reaches print. It really doesn’t matter at this point. The soil profile is saturated; with temperatures remaining cool and skies cloudy with not much for drying winds, it will take a few days for conditions to become fit.
I am convinced this was one of the reasons farmers used to have livestock: To keep them busy enough so they didn’t have time to venture forth until field conditions were truly ready. At the ranch, the end of lambing season is drawing near. Only a handful of ewes remain left to lamb so working in the garden is unlikely to happen until that occurs. The lambs are growing well although they too would appreciate some extended warm, dry weather to run and hop around. The pasture has greened up nicely, however, so once the snow left, the ewes left to lamb aren’t wasting any time to sneak off and grab as much of the new forage as possible.
The snow did make it a little more difficult for some of the birds to find their favorite food, namely earthworms. Fear not, however. Just as at the ranch, there are numerous berry bushes and trees that sustain them through such occurrences. And if there isn’t, they fly someplace where there is. We did finally catch a glimpse of the male cardinal after hearing him singing much of the past couple weeks. He was sticking close to the protection of the brush pile, although we still haven’t seen him at the feeders.
Saturday, we did our agri-tourism bit with my brother and his family, including a great niece who wasn’t even 2 yet coming down from the Twin Cities to feed the bottle lambs. Little Everly was the star of the show, getting to pet the little black lamb named Goober in the lambing barn and bottle feed the little as yet unnamed buck lamb in the main barn. Maybe call him “Clint” after the man with no name from the spaghetti westerns. After that we headed to The Willows for a little lunch and Everly entertained the waitress. It was a fun day and the weather even cooperated, the rain holding off until later that evening.
Easter Sunday of course meant church and after hauling a few flowers around, Mrs. Cheviot decided it was a good day to hit the Easter brunch afterward. I wasn’t arguing. A long week of evening chores by myself as well as moving snow, etc., had me in no mood to work at grilling a meal. That worked. After we got that accomplished we fed the bottle lambs and settled in to watch the replay of the Gopher women’s hockey team winning the national championship. Luckily, I knew ahead of time they had scored right away so was able to pencil in an hour and a half powernap until the third period when I knew they scored again, eventually winning 3-1. Forewarned is forearmed, I always say.
See you next week…real good then.