DODGING THE BULLET!!!

As we scrambled through the garden books and scoured the internet to find out how cold it could get before the fruit trees were nothing but a fond memory, the temperatures slowly dropped below the dreaded freezing mark. As with everything else in farming the stakes are high during the inbetween days marking the end of winter and the beginning of Spring. Will the blossoms survive the dip or will they succumb to the harsh bite of the last of the last frost days of the year. I read where some " know it all"  claimed that because of global warming, that the last frost date in our area would be at least a  week earlier than the accepted date of March 18. One word.... HOGWASH. There is another frost warning next week, well into the month of April. Upon inspecting the blossoms following the bitter cold morning, only a few seemed to have been affected by the freeze. Always the optimist, I rationalized that this is natures way of culling the fruit, so that the trees would not be overburdoned. Time will tell. If each peach tree has only 3 peaches, we will be grateful for those, and hope for a better season next year. The strawberries seemed to have accepted the cold with bold resiliance, as they continue to produce the soon to be ripe, little green gems poking out from the greenery. The fingerling potatoes have fallen over and are playing dead. Hopefully, with a little warmth and sunshine they will make another effort to sprout a little further through the ground, shaking off the shriveled tops that did not stand a chance against the sweeping cold. The corn and beans knew better than to poke their heads out of the ground until the danger had passed, and for once we were grateful that they had not yet sprouted . Thankfully, we did not give in to the temptation to plant melon seeds.  In the mean time, we trim back the frozen asparagus tops, snip the black tips off the berry bushes, remove the frost cover from the tomatoes in the greenhouses, which by the way, survived the cold with blooms in tact, and thank the good Lord that we don't live in the Midwest where ice and snow blankets the ground. From our farmstead to your table, thank you for all of your support!!!