Today in the orchard
This morning the temperature on the back porch was 15F. It’s the second night in the past couple of weeks that we’ve had it that chilly. That’s cold for mid-November. The farm ponds are now frozen - not enough to skate, but impressive nonetheless. This cold weather may be caused by a weakening solar vortex and a major sudden stratospheric warming. The weather reporters seem to agree that this polar event—whatever it is—is responsible for the colder temperatures. Not being a meteorologist, I can only report what I observe. It really has been colder this month than I remember it being for some years. It could be the coldest winter since 1968 when the snow was so deep you couldn’t park by the side of many central Maine roads and I watched with some amazement as kids jumped out of third story windows into the snow banks at Colby College. (Though not me.) The temperature in the root cellar is now down to about 40F which is great. I’ll let it continue to drop another 5—7 degrees before I close it up.
Turns out we’re not quite done with tree guards. As I work around the farm, I keep running into another tree here or there that could use some protection. So I’ll continue to wrap window screening around trees to deter the voles.