Wind

Yesterday and today were the kind of days my mother used to warn me to be very careful about when I ventured out into the woods. The kind of days where you were likely to surprise an animal - when the scents were whirling around in the air helter-skelter. It was not a good day for hoop houses carefully planted with tender green things. For the past 48 hours I have been nervously glancing out at the 6 ml of plastic that protects all my little proteges from the cold, dangerous outside world. More scary, actually, was the tyvek tape that held the ends and the body of the hoop house together. Would it hold? At 5 a.m. this morning, after a fretful sleep, I pole-vaulted out of bed to see if the house remained while the upstairs of my house moaned in the gusts. There it was, a round tube of stability in an otherwise restless world. I then proceeded to spend the next hour having one nightmare after another about my hoop house blowing away - the kind you have to talk yourself down from after you wake up. It was not a good scene.
But, the hoop house lived. And I was so determined to move forward despite the wind that I got 20 sandbags and filled them with sand this morning, then Mike and I put the plastic back on hoop house two, which went up this weekend, but didn't stay plasticted very long after that breeze kicked up because it only had a handful of sandbags on it. Now it is secure, and I've rented the mother of all rototillers for Friday. I've met this rototiller before. It's a beast. I will need to visit the hot tub at Land's End after I'm done.
It's busy days all around. Matt is working a lot, so we are squeezing in time with him and the kids when we can - a night for Liam here, a morning with Théa there. Meanwhile, it's gogogo time at the farm, so both kids are participating as much as I can manage in all the goings on - cleaning baby chick cages, feeding animals, planting new starts and the like. The yard is finally clear of snow and I did a huge dump run a couple days ago. I think I could do about 10 more and still not have it all under control. Sigh. But I'm hopeful that by the end of this weekend, the winds will have died down, the second hoop house will be planted, and I'll be right on track for another successful year of reaping what I sew.