our maine home – zone 5b
We have a new cold room! Something we’ve really needed for better conditions for storing grains, apples, onions, potatoes, etc.
Sam drilled a hole in the wall of the pantry right to the outside. And put a sweep under the door. It’s in the 50’s in there now, while the rest of the house is in the 70’s. Nice!
Might be my favorite thing about winter. The stove is a companion. And warms us.
Our stove is the Castine model from Jøtul and it’s perfect for us.
Of course, part of the reason I can love heating with wood is that Sam takes care of all the chores involved with getting a handy supply of ready-to-burn logs.
We mulched most of the beds for winter. The two near the back got a layer of chicken coop waste covered by a layer of straw. The other beds got waterlogged straw, picked up from J&P Farmers Market. And some leftover hay.
The strawberry bed got a light layer of mulch. It really needs the blighted leaves pulled off and more mulch. Maybe later.
What’s left in the garden? A nice patch of leeks, quite a lot of kale, some juvenile broccoli that I don’t have much hope for, and mostly bygone escarole. A row of half-hearted spinach.
It’s definitely getting to be wintry out there.
Sam is interested in the temperature management inside the hoophouse where we are overwintering greens. Four seasons farming!
The hoophouse’s plastic cover does part of the job. Then there is an internal low hoop of heavy duty row cover over the raised beds. He has also hung silver-backed bubble wrap from the internal hoophouse frame to reflect light down onto the plants on sunny days.
To give an indication of the difference it makes on a cold day, I recorded some temperatures on February 9, 2020:
| Time | Conditions | Thermometer Location | Temperature |
| 6:30 am | Sunrise | Outside | 1 ℉ |
| In hoophouse | ? | ||
| Row cover down | At soil level | 19 ℉ | |
| 9 am | Sun | Outside | 8 ℉ |
| In hoophouse | 37 ℉ | ||
| Row cover down | At soil level | 28 ℉ | |
| 9:30 am | Sun | Outside | 9.3 ℉ |
| In hoophouse | 51 ℉ | ||
| Row cover raised | At soil level | 50 ℉ | |
| 11:00 am | Sun | Outside | 12 ℉ |
| In hoophouse | 72 ℉ | ||
| Row cover raised | At soil level | 71 ℉ | |
| 7:30 pm | Dark | Outside | 19 ℉ |
| In hoophouse | 20 ℉ | ||
| Row cover down | At soil level | 30 ℉ |
Conclusions:
Sam wants to automate the lifting of the row covers (and other aspects of this process when we get a greenhouse). But for now, it’s been an interesting science project and we are still eating a small amount of greens.
The temperatures have dipped into the teens for several nights recently but the greens in the hoophouse remain healthy and lush. I opened the row covers this afternoon in the sun to give them some extra light and air. While picking some greens, I found a soft green caterpillar munching away and a few grasshoppers, live and well.
I tackled a nasty chore today and was rewarded with a bowl of super sweet cold Concord grapes — frozen and thawed at least once, maybe more.
I had to remove and rewind the netting fence that we put up in the spring as a temporary chicken run. Bad idea in retrospect. The grape vines grew through the netting at the top and the weeds infiltrated it at the bottom. The whole mess had to be cut through and pulled out. The netting is lying in the yard now, waiting for me to get the energy to rewind it on the tall cardboard tube.
For now, can’t stop eating these tasty grapes.