Winter's last harvest

Is a week of winter all that I will see this year? At the moment, winter has left the mountain and something closer to mid-March has arrived. Temperatures are expected to reach the 50’s this weekend, which will certainly put an end to my snow. The January thaw is becoming ore like a January spring.

It is, of course, much too early in the winter to proclaim the season a bust. At best, however, it will certainly take winter a while to recover from a thaw this extreme. And given the recent history of winters in this area, that may not fully happen at all. Probably to no one’s surprise who has been paying attention, 2012 was the warmest year ever in the U.S. Mainstream media has announced that over several outlets this week, as though it was something new, rather than old news. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that they’ve finally noticed!

For a week or so I had hopes this might, after all, be a real winter, though one that started later than it should. Now, I have less hope. It’s still possible , I suppose, but less likely. It will be another full week before the temperatures reach a relatively normal winter range again. By then it will be mid-January, which is normally the coldest point of the winter.

My photo today shows the last of the autumn apples, caught for a moment in the rising sun. This one is wrinkled and damaged by frost and time. Why hasn’t a deer found this to munch on? They have enough to feed on elsewhere, I suppose, so for the time being they can ignore apples in a tree along the edge of a road, perhaps having plenty of them deeper in the orchard, perhaps preferring the withered grass that is slowly appearing from under the carpet of snow.

Old stones, new orchard

The old stone fence circles the new orchard, one young enough that it won’t produce fruit this season. When I call the fence old, I mean it is likely 200-250 years old, which is just about as old as things get in this part of Pennsylvania. This state is notorious for its rocks—ask any Appalachian Trail hiker about rocks and they will immediately grimace when they mention Pennsylvania. The reason we have so many stone fences is that our earliest farmers had to get those rocks out of their newly cleared fields before they could plant a crop. Those rocks became the stone fences.

Today, the stone fences are disappearing, giving way to houses or wooden fences. In my area, which is both hilly and rocky, the stone fences are still hanging on, and are often still used as fences. Unlike in New England, where the poet Robert Frost famously wrote about a stone fence as a property line (Mending Wall, where he wrote, “good fences make good neighbors”), here they more typically simply mark the edges of a field. 

Sometimes, when I walk through the woods, I come across the remains of an old stone fence from some long-abandoned farm.  Homesteads far up on the mountains frequently didn't survive very long.  The soil isn't as good, the conditions are too severe for a good crop.   Trees around those old fences are frequently huge, which makes me think the forgotten farmer never fully cleared the land before quitting it.   

The hills around my mountain are perfect for growing fruit. Apples are the main crop, though peaches and pears do well too. The first apples, the tart ones used in cooking, are already being harvested, sitting in big bins or on trucks in front of the farmers’ barns, ready to go to market. These are the Jonathans, the McIntoshes, the Rome Beauty. The sweet eating apples of fall will follow soon, though never soon enough for me.

Today the weather is so gloomy, I am again reminded that the day is not far off when I will have to take all the week’s photos for Roundtop Ruminations during the weekends. As it was, I was forced to take a photo out of the forest and partway down the mountain where the fields and orchards are open to the sky, but that gave me a reason to take a closer look at the old fence, once again.

Orchard

No apple blossoms, no cherry blossoms
No peach or pear blossoms
Just a dreary Thursday
of a chilly April

Lines of trees
stand like soldiers
awaiting the word
to charge forth

With green and pink and white

Off the mountain, looking for open sky

After precisely 1.4 days of good weather, rain and drizzle and lots of fog have returned to the mountain. Is this Seattle? I’m feeling as though it might be lately. The overcast sky makes the lush woods with its dense canopy of leaves look rather dark and gloomy, so my photos this week are taken where no canopy blocks what little light the sky offers.

In today’s case, the photo was taken at the neighboring apple orchard. So far, the apples are coming along nicely and some are even starting to turn red. My local area is a good one for orchards in general and apples in particular. The hills at the base of most of the mountains provide the well-drained soils that suits apples. Adams County, York County’s neighbor to the west, is more well-known for its apple orchards, but the northern portion of York County, where I live, is also good for them.

As the orchards meet the edge of the forest, they also provide food for wildlife, though the orchardmen aren’t thrilled with that. Deer routinely munch their way along the edge of the orchard, and wild turkeys are seen much more often in the orchards than I find them (or see signs of them) in the woods.

Some orchardmen have carbide cannons, set to go off at regular intervals, to discourage the visits. The wildlife quickly gets used to them, so they don’t work for long. The cannons seem better at discouraging large flocks of roaming grackles or blackbirds. Still, I’m glad the local orchard doesn’t use them, as I’m not sure I could get used to the sound.

Spring Nor'easter

The strong nor’easter that pummeled the, uh, northeast made its presence felt here on Roundtop, too. I have had several inches of rain, “trapping” me in the cabin for most of Sunday. I’m currently worrying through strong winds that kept me awake for much of the night. To be fair, it wasn’t just the wind that kept me awake. Whenever, anything fell on the roof or the decks and made a noise, Baby Dog was forced to bark at it. I had a mildly wet basement from the rain, but it was nothing my little battery pump couldn’t handle. So far the winds have dropped limbs and branches but no wires or trees.

Before the storm hit, Saturday was overcast but calm and almost warm. I saw a pair of ruby-crowned kinglets darting through the trees, but that was my only new migrant of the weekend. By now I should have at least 10 mores bird species than I’ve recorded.

I’m starting to see some new growth on the forest floor, but it’s still minimal compared with most years to this time. And what has started growing is still too small for me to identify the species. For plants, I need more than ¼ to ½ inch of growth before I can identify them. I have finally seen the first butterfly of the new season—a cabbage white. Typically, I have seen at least 3-4 other species by now.

I expect that once this nor’easter has blown through that spring will explode almost overnight. As you can see from today’s photo looking across the valley and towards the next ridges, it still doesn’t look much like spring here. The grass is green, but the orchard isn’t even close to blossoming yet.

I guess all years have their own seasonal oddities—too much rain, too little, too cold, too warm, etc.,--but this year is one of the most unusual I can remember. I suppose you could say I find it intellectually interesting, but emotionally concerning. Too many odd years in a row have serious consequences for wildlife, migrants and the forest itself. I can do little about it but watch and document what I see.