The first year I started this blog, I wrote quite a bit. Last year not so much. It was a hard year for farming and a hard year to work in the public library and that made it a hard year to write. I spent December and January being pretty lazy about the house and farm. Farmer Bill would suggest that he's been lazy too, but it's all relative. He and his right-hand man have done a lot of maintenance work on the machinery and tools, and worked outside when the weather allowed, even though they haven't put in the kind of hours they will during the growing season.
Speaking of weather... We were really hoping for more snow this winter. We had very little snow last winter, and not much rain over the summer, leaving us in a net deficit. The lack of snow cover during the recent cold spells means that the ground is deeply frozen. After it thaws, we're going to need a pretty rainy spring to get things back on track.
One of the things Farmer Bill does in the off months is go to conferences. It's a great way to get to talk to other growers and learn about new things. The big talk this year is a new insect that's arrived and is starting to cause problems in fruit crops. It's the Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) and it came from Asia, probably via international trade routes. It prefers soft fruits such as blueberries, cherries and raspberries and was found in those crops in Minnesota in 2012. Fruit specialists are looking at IPM methods of controlling this new pest, as well as various chemical (including organic) methods. Apparently SWD can inflict a lot of damage in a short time. Other fruit flies wait until there is overripe or damaged fruit to do their stuff. This fruit fly has a little serrated knife on its butt that lets it cut a slit in good fruit to lay eggs. Isn't nature amazing? We'll be adding monitoring traps for SWD in our raspberries, and maybe in the blueberries too, just in case (they won't be producing any fruit this year since they're only 2 years old). What we'll do if we discover this pest depends on research being done at universities across the country. Right now Farmer Bill is out pruning the apple trees. Generally, pruning should start about February 1. But if temperatures are above 20 degrees F. one can start pruning earlier. Since the goal is to prune and shape every tree every year, the earlier he can start the better.
One of the things I've been doing this winter is trying to improve my quilting skills, without a lot of real success. I continue to really enjoy the designing and piecing parts of quilting, and I think my skills there have improved over the years. But I can't get my quilting skills to a point where I am satisfied. I know I'm a bit of a perfectionist about it, and for some quilts it just shouldn't matter so much, but I'd still like my feathers to look like feathers rather than spikes. I've pretty much decided that hiring someone who IS good at quilting and has one of those really cool long arm machines is worth the expense for the quilts I really care about. I've contacted a long-arm quilter in the area and will meet with her soon to see if we're compatible. For 'lesser' quilts, I'll do the straight-line quilting that I'm reasonably good at and call it a day.
And for this post, I'd better call it a day, too.
