Still winter?

The water-logged grass crackled under my feet when I walked down to the shop this morning: oh yes, winter is still trying to hang on for dear life. Temperatures seem unwilling to take the leap into the double digits, in fact have lingered around +5 during the day for quite some time, and night time temperatures have dropped as low as -8 even during the last few days. 

Whenever we cautiously dare to hope that now, finally, the spell is broken we get another blast of winter. Strangely, this seems to happen every weekend, as in this picture taken last Saturday. Winds gusts up to 80 km/h whipped the thin dense veil of snow into small drifts that tried to attach to the crusty, dirty snow banks still left from months of winter. For a few hours the just exposed patches of lawn were once again covered up.

 

It is a losing battle, however: gravel roads are bare, and bare spots show up increasingly in fields and pastures, too. Even with these modest temperatures the melting process is making steady progress. Geese, too, must think it is time: instead of a couple here and there we now see the first larger groups flying overhead, long stretched-out Vs aimed unerringly north or northwest. Every morning and evening the air is filled with their honking voices, and often I stop and search the sky when I hear them in the distance, delighted when I watch their approach from behind the trees, long necks stretched out, wing beat slow and steady. At other times their passing is so quiet that I can hear the whoosh of their wings when they are low enough, interrupted only by bits of conversation muttered in their low, dark voices, talking quietly among each other, like passengers on a night train.  

With more and more snow converted to melt water lakes in the fields it must have seemed safe enough for the ducks to return as well. On Sunday I spotted the first metallic green heads in a crowd of Canada geese: mallards, busily diving in search of food.

They are not the only ones who enjoy the open water: Leo, too, loves it and seems oblivious to its temperature.

 

When I took this picture a few days ago I didn’t notice the bald eagle sitting in the neighbour’s tree on the far right until I looked at it on the computer later; I must have been too busy watching Leo’s joyful splashing right in front of my nose. 

There is one more April weekend coming up. Will it bring more snow? We would very much appreciate a stretch of warm, dry weather so that the snow will finally melt completely and the fields have a chance to dry up. Ideally we would start field work right now, but it doesn’t seem likely to happen before the 10^th of May at the earliest, probably later. As much as we love our farming life, it is never free of anxiety and worries about factors we cannot control. Yet every year it works out somehow.  I guess we just have to follow the example of the geese: stay our course, and trust that we will raise our crop, just like every year.