Phenology Report

Let’s talk about homestead phenology, shall we?

Winter was average but with deep snowpack. I had expectations of flooding and emaciated deer this spring. That didn’t happen. In fact nothing happened as planned, partially because all the humans acted weird. Like it or not, humans are part of the environment.

The snow came deep and early last fall. It messed up the lake ice but gave snowmobilers orgasms. Last October I found myself “tire kicking” a few used snowmobiles. It was a near miss. I only barely pulled myself away. “Remember, they’re useless much of the year.” I admonished myself. (I also test drove an Argo and had so much fun that I named it Battleduck before I welded my wallet shut and ran away. I test drove several machines last fall. It was part of my planned walkabout. More on that this summer.)

Winter 2019-2020 was so epic for snowmobilers that I mildly regret not going for the snowmobile. Even if the clunker I was pondering died after one season, it would have been worth it. It’s a diem I did not carpe.

The messed up lake ice put ice fishermen off their feed and also cancelled a Canadian ice road trip I was pondering. Snow insulated the ice which kept if from getting rock hard and thick. (Ugh… did I just write that phrase? Get your mind out of the gutter.) It’s easy to tow an ice shack over a foot thick slab of concrete hard ice but it’s a bear to drag it through three feet of slush with no clear base.

The upside is that nobody dumped a truck or ATV into the lake. Or at least none that I noticed.

Snowmobiles kept at it much longer than usual. A few weeks back, in a fit of cabin fever, I was out on my motorcycle (in very very very unsuitable weather). I wound up running parallel to a snowmobile, both of us going about 40MPH. That’s something I’m sure neither of us has done before.

Deep snow is usually hard on deer but they look good to me. They also don’t give a fuck about anything. When I cruise dirt roads they are reluctant to dive back into the snow. They look at me as if to say “Really? We’re on spring break. Take a different road.”

I’ve seen no fawns yet. The elk report is classified. I keep waiting to see the bears come out of hibernation. During skunk mating season, one decided to raid the catfood. He’s dead now. The cranes arrived and have been having dinosaur sex all week. I’ve seen a few robins, and the birds are starting to sing… though only halfheartedly. I’ve seen snow geese but only a few Canadian geese and no ducks. The avian damn hasn’t yet burst.

The snowpack has mostly ebbed without drama. The best possible way to go. Melt a little, freeze a little, inch by inch. No flooding and that’s nice. (If I had quarantine simultaneous with a damp basement that would suck!) If I were in New England, weather like this would have been great for a sugarbush.

The woodpile held out. Yay me! (I purchased some wood too.) One bummer is that the woodstove needs servicing. It took the fun out of wood heat the last month. Obviously I’m not going to try to arrange a house call under current conditions. Also, the last time I had professional service, it turned into a fiasco. (Read: Wood Stove Repair As A Career. Someone Please Do It.)

The FedEx guy got his truck stuck in my yard. He did it almost exactly in the location, calendar date, and time of day where I got mine stuck very deep last year. It’s apparently a tradition now. Social distancing was maintained by a chain that had more than 6′ between his truck and my tractor.

I tried to jump the gun on some forest burning. Everything is wet so nothing will get out of hand. It wasn’t the best or most efficient timing but it was all that I could manage. Controlled burns on private land are hard. At the exact millisecond that biomass will carry a moderate fire someone in a suit freaks out “AAAAHHHHHHH HIGH FIRE DANGER…. WE NEED MORE MONEY!” The guys in suits live several hundred miles south of me and have no idea there’s a north/south gradient… in anything. They stop the supply of burn permits the exact moment it’s dry from the view of the office they never leave. Also, controlled burn season is often cut off because of national personnel issues, budgetary situations, or whatever is going on in offices I don’t know about. It goes like this:

“I’m Curmudgeon, I’d like to burn an acre in Bumfuck Nowhere on the Canadian border.”

“NO CAN DO! There’s a drought in Louisiana.”

“Um… Louisiana is not adjacent to Canada. You own a snowmobile; ever trailered it to Louisiana for a trail ride?”

“High risk in Louisiana means our personnel are all tied up with that.”

“Fires down there exceeding local ability?”

“Potential fires might exceed local ability.”

“But…”

“Buy a woodchipper you deplorable scum.”

Discussions like that are why I’m slowly using less fire on my property and more glyphosate. Don’t blame me, blame the system.

So, there’s this flu thing going on. You may have heard about it ? It’s in the papers. With half the nation’s workforce off line and the rest in tatters, I figured the default answer to anything asked of anyone would be no. I burned while it was still “winter”; far too soon but early enough that even the most paranoid bureaucrat can’t cut me off. It worked… sorta. I made a lot more smoke than usual and only got about half the biomass knocked down. But that’s enough. It’ll make me feel safer in August and that was the goal.

My camping gear lies stacked and sad next to the door. Called to muster and then cancelled… several times now. Spring camping may become fall camping. Who knows? Such are the variations that make life interesting.

One more note: if you aren’t looking at the sky every day, you’re missing something important. Every day go out there and look at a sky without contrails. Soak it in because it won’t last.