December to Remember

December to Remember

Many people have idyllic thoughts about how wonderful it must be to work outside in the fresh air among all the pretty flowers. Well, that does happen at certain times of the year, but this past December was not one of those times and what happened has made us really appreciate the hard times all farmers have to face at some point. In November, we had built the most beautiful low tunnels which covered our newly planted ranunculus and anemones, as well as our hardy annuals. In the span of 24 hours in early December, some of these tunnels collapsed like a deck of cards when we received an unusual amount of heavy snow for Hickory, NC. We spent hours removing 10 inches of snow off the collapsed rows and then re-covering the low tunnels using a second layer that was fortunately in place as a floating row cover over the bed. Let us just say this was one of the more difficult times we faced this year physically and some tears were shed. But praise be to God that we can look back at this moment and count it as one of those “character building” opportunities.

Much to our joy, it looks like the “little baby” plants made it through this troubling experience just fine (and we did too).