The Daily: 24 February 24

If Matthew finds ice, he breaks it.                                                      When the cat lies in sunshine in February
If he doesn’t break it, he makes it all the harder.                              she'll creep behind the stove in March.

If there is sharp frost on Matthew’s Day, it will last till March.

The fox is hesitant to walk on ice after St Matthias has passed.

Matthias breaks winter’s back.

Sap begins to run on St Matthew’s Day.

February 24th is St Matthew’s day. This Matthew is not the writer of the first chapter of the New Testament but rather Matthias, the replacement for Judas after the unfortunate incident in the garden.

St Matthew’s day is an old weather marker, carried over from East Anglia with the colonists. The end of February is the end of the year in traditional European calendars. March 1st brings in the new year and the new spring, which for much of the world is the same thing. So there is a certain amount of predicting the given in February’s weather markers — from Candlemas asserting that we have six more weeks of winter weather to birds bring the sun from the south on Valentine’s Day to Matthew breaking winter’s back. On average, these predictions will be correct because our calendars are fairly good at keeping time with the seasonal cycle and because weather follows patterns… mostly… and the main driver of spring warmth, increasing day length, is constant from year to year. On St Matthew’s day, in this part of the world, there are eleven hours of sunlight to beat down on the ice.

What I find interesting is that these predictions for the north of Europe generally work in New England. Weather folklore reveals just how close New England is to Old England. Though it’s an ocean away and quite a bit south of the White Cliffs of Dover, the timing of weather is very similar. However, we experience more extremes on the west side of the Atlantic; it is much colder and snowier here and the swing from winter to summer is more drastic. Still, it is generally true that the end of February is the end of the worst of winter. As the old saws quoted above declare, though there may still be ice, it’s unwise to trust its strength as we head into March.

The timing of weather is changing these days. Spring weather seems to be creeping further and further back into winter, though the transformation is not that spring is coming earlier as much as summer is lasting later. The days may still see the same dwindling sunlight hours heading into winter, but there is so much heat in summer now it takes months to shed it. Around here, as long as the polar vortex remains strong and keeps all the arctic air confined at the top of the world, it’s not unusual to spend the winter holidays in shirt sleeves. But the trees are all bare, because they are counting the daylight hours and ignoring the weather.

In any case, winter is not getting as cold as it once did on average, and it takes much less time and energy to reheat the hemisphere back to balmy summer. This is one of the main problems with climate change. Many woody plants and some perennials count hours of sunlight (or hours of darkness) and are on the same old, pre-climate change calendar. But their mobile partners in pollination — bugs and birds and the weather itself in the form of wind — are following new schedules. There is an asynchrony in the dance of life. Some migratory birds show up weeks before their food sources are breaking dormancy. Insects that spent winter bedded down locally may wake in a string of warm February days, long before there are blossoms. But then winter cold will settle back in, killing the hungry and exposed bugs. Some plants also take cues from the weather and not from the time. Like the insects, the buds and shoots that are drawn out by unseasonable warmth are blighted when more typical weather returns.

There isn’t much to be done about any of this, though putting out bird food — especially the high calorie meal worms that best match normal spring fare — is a good idea. But I think part of being aware of the climate changes we’ve created is bearing witness. Keep records. Learn the new patterns — if there are any. Because the challenge we will be facing for decades to come is a seeming lack of pattern, and we humans don’t do well in random time. So watch for the changes and hang them on the old patterns. Because there will still be eleven hours of daylight on St Matthew’s Day where I live. There will be that underlying continuity even in the chaos.

Our ancestors noted the patterns and made calendars and weather lore so that we would not feel adrift in time, so that we could be embedded in our places, so that we could go about our lives, relying on the steady recurrence of planting season and harvest and snow in deep winter. Their calendars still mostly work. Sap will begin running soon if it hasn’t already darkened the bark of maple trees. But in this time of change, someone has to carry out recalibration. This tuning up the calendars is the work of those who pay attention to this Earth.

What does St Matthew bring to your part of the world? Notice the details of the day where you live. Write it down. Compare it to the old calendars… and then draw up new ones if need be. Someday someone will appreciate what reliable continuity you’ve managed to cull from the flux.

The Snow Moon, or the Hunger Moon, is full at 7:30am today. By the time you are reading this, the moon is probably on the wane. In my part of the world, the moon is full as it sets at 6:58am. Tonight’s moonrise will be the closest to the full moon, but it will be ten hours past full, meaning it may be a little flat on the leading edge, a little bit off full. It is also a full moon happening when the moon is at apogee, the farthest our satellite strays from the Earth. So even in the morning moonset, thirty minutes shy of full, it will not be as impressive as some moons…

I am saying this all as a sort of consolation. As I write this, there is another weekend storm approaching. I doubt there will be any moon sightings from central Vermont. In fact, with sunrise at 6:36am on a Saturday morning, I will probably not be sufficiently awake and dressed to go watch the moon setting, especially if there is sleet and wind and snow. I may be up and doing things before sunrise on the days I don’t have to slog off to wage work (because it’s hard to break my body’s schedule enough to sleep in), but I don’t take on exposure to the elements until later in the morning unless there is a compelling reason. Like the house is on fire…

In any case, it is the full Snow Moon. And it is stormy here in central Vermont. But taken together, those two facts mean that time is getting on. Soon there will be a new moon, the Sap Moon. Soon, early spring will shift to middle spring, when the birds and maple trees remind us that winter is ending. Soon there will be fresh maple syrup and eggs. And soon… there will not be snow.

Maybe…

Full Moon Tales

Of Ruminants and Oats: 14 Winifred Mumbles

Woke to white this morning. Days of cobalt skies with nary a rooster tail of warning and then this. Ploof! Howling wind all night long followed by a cold, silent morning. Only other evidence of the storm’s a few raggedy clouds scurrying over the horizon… and all this drippy white stuff plumped on every surface. Like elves visited in the night and left… droppings. Weather forecasting is boring in February but for these arctic invasions. Good for the garden though. Snow doesn’t run off like rain. Sinks into the dirt as it melts. What doesn’t just go right back to the skies anyway.

Had to spend much of the storm in the barn. Too many new lambs out there for a restful night’s sleep in cold weather. Fired up the rocket stove and made a bucket of root tea instead. Nothing happened. But it would have if I’d stayed in bed. Murphy’s law.

Still, Luni’s looking poorly. Sounding worse. I’ve delivered my share of lambs and all, but maybe this one needs the doctor. She’s, what, ten summers now? Getting up there for a churro. Probably her last breeding season. And too bad, that. She’s bred all the best milkers here. Cream so rich, turns into butter if you accidentally jostle it.

Reminds me: time to make more soap.

Still have time though. She bred late, just after All Hallows. Shouldn’t be dropping for at least a few more days. Don’t know why she’s so uncomfortable already. Probably means there’s more than one in there. Probably neither of them coming out the right way. All those tiny hooves poking in all directions. Horrifying when you think about it. But that’s mammals for you. Best check to see how much of Frida’s colostrum’s in the cooler. Nobody’s popped out more than one in a while. Luni’s a great dam, but she can only suckle one at a time. And both are going to need that first drink quickly. Because kids suck.

Ah well, Luni won’t have to do this again. Time to pass the baton. Means I have to name more ewes. Frida’s definitely not going to breed again after this year’s still born. Third one for her. Didn’t think Frida would come out of it this time. But she pulled through. Churros are endlessly amazing. Alice is also about done, but she never was a great milker anyway. Lovely coat though. Got some heavy Merino in that one. Can even make socks that don’t itch, no mean thing in this cold.

Things to be grateful for: warm feet.

Time does move on. I was old when Luni was born. And wasn’t her dam annoying! Heavy cream was not worth that one. Only… it was, I guess, because I kept putting her in the breeding pen. No name though. Not one that can be said in polite company anyway. Vet wrote down some of the more colorful appellations. Thought it a grand joke. Vets don’t have much cause for humor in lambing season, I guess. And every damn year, it was something with that ewe. Couldn’t push out poop unassisted. Still, she gave me a decade of Luni.

Grudging thanks to the unnamed dam.

I’m too old for naming things. Luni’s daughters will outlive me. And then what? Suppose the council will step in and this all will get assigned to someone else. Hope it’s someone competent. That turbine takes sweet talking every day. And the hens will just walk all over lax attention. Course anything living has its own mind. Sometimes people forget that. Just assume that smaller heads and predictable habits means stupid. But chickens and sheep are anything but biddable when they get ideas. And you never know when an idea will strike. Especially with that walk-about Ameracauna. Best you pay attention.

These days between winter and summer, days unnervingly calm after the midnight winds, make one as ruminative as the sheep. Not much happening in those solid blue skies. But for all the snow, you’d doubt your own mind. Was all that noise real? Did I imagine arctic weather in the desert? At least the March lions haven’t started blowing sand all over the porch yet. But is time happening when nothing else is? Well, there is the snow. And there’s the lambs. Though that’s mostly done by now. That’s maybe what’s bothering me. Maybe Luni too. That feeling that I’m mostly done. And may not be starting up again. Just melt away with the freak snowfall.

Now then…

Should keep busy. Go call on the vet, tell her we may be in for a duo. Get the honorary nephew to help with the heavy lifting. Make up that soap for payment. Maybe some cheese also. Air out the bedding in the extra room, just in case it’s needed. Lambs do seem to like joining the world between midnight and dawn.

Stopped by the oat field on the way back from errands. Soil’s nice and moist with snow melt. Seeds are fat and green, but not quite milky. Not quite time to harvest. But it is time to think about it. Need the honorary nephew for that too. Though he’s getting on like me — though not nearly as far as me. Still, not much for spending the day bent over the scythe. Then again, field’s not that big. About eight houses. If the nephew’s kids help, we can all get it mown in a day. 

Things to be grateful for: concrete foundations.

About all those extra houses are good for is gardens. Last generation figured that one out. Clear off the ruins. Pay particular attention to the toxic bits — because the rusties did love their toxic bits. Mix manure into the inevitable sand drifts. Channel whatever comes flowing off the mountain or falling out of the sky into the square. Add a hedgerow of cane fruits and sunflowers on the windward side to keep it all in place. And voila! you’ve made a verdant miracle. Some of these square fields even have space enough in between for barrows and wagons. (Don’t know how they lived like that, all so close-packed together, breathing each other’s exhaust and all…)

Look out from the foothills today and there’s unnaturally angular patches of green all the way down the valley. And where there were basements, there are orchard trees now. Best places for peaches. With strawberries growing amongst the roots. Only place where water lingers into March. To the point that there are squared-off bogs in the desert. Not sure what the rusties would think of me sowing oats in their erstwhile boudoir, but then I’m not sure what I think about them growing so many houses where there just isn’t water. Me and the rusties would not see eye to eye on a great many issues, I’m sure.

Got the churros and chickens living in another of these concrete squares. Keeps the raccoons out of the eggs and the burrowing rodents to a minimum. Though I’m pretty sure there’s a pack-rat metropolis underneath the foundation. Stands to reason. Cozy shelter that’s not likely to wash away with the next storm.

Wouldn’t want to breathe the exhaust down there, that’s for sure. Plague and hantavirus and malaria and who knows what all. As long as they stay under the impermeable divide, I’ll abide them. Barely. Naught I can do anyway. But there’s traps all over the turbine shed and the summer kitchen. And I leave the wildcats alone, knowing they’ll take any rodent that strays into the open. Usually painfully from the sounds of rodent screams. Lessons are learned in that hunt, for sure. Still, terrified mice and a chicken or so every now and then is a small price to pay for disease control. (Kind of wish they’d take that Ameracauna… despite the loss of her blue eggs…) I’ve also seen more than one red-tail stoop over the garden to come up dangling a rangy rat. Not sure what the hawk gets out of that. Not much more than fur and bones in that meal. Anyway, the rats get about. Makes that colostrum all the more needful. Don’t want Luni to go through all this and then lose the lambs to some flea-bite disease.

And there’s the rub with the concrete. Only place water lingers. But also only place it pools. Don’t know what the rusties did about breeding bugs. Probably one of the main reasons the rusties went extinct. Trick these days is to keep the squares filled with amenable life. Amenable to humans, that is. Pernicious to the pests. Soil. Oats. Strawberries and peaches. Mint and lavender to really annoy the bugs. Nasturtiums too. Plus… add in a bit of pot marigold and yucca and you have everything you need for soap.

Probably related, that. Which came first, I wonder? Did we grow calendula because we knew it drove off bugs of all sizes and scales, or was that just a serendipitous incidental to our love of pretty flowers? Probably both. Like eating chile. Eat it because it tastes good leads to it makes us more healthy leads to we learn to think it tastes all the better. Positive reinforcement works in strange ways. Not all of them good, of course. But we have calendula and nasturtiums and chiles out of the bargain.

Another thing to be thankful for: iteration.

Suppose I should sharpen the scythe and go down to the library to check out a few more for whoever comes to help. Promise of oat-milk and cream soap is probably enough to get the kids here. Maybe I should be teaching those kids how to make it themselves. Mel at the library keeps telling me as much. But then she would with her tools and books and skills lessons. She’s all for preserving the past to pass it on to the future. Me, I just do what works. No philosophy behind it. Or not much anyway. Though maybe works is subjective. Still, I don’t try to qualify it too much. Not my way.

But I can’t help but see a dilemma in this: if I teach them now, why would they come to help with the harvest? Well, guess I still have the oats and churros… And I suppose they are good kids. As far as adolescents go anyway. Maybe Mel’s right. Time for me to pass on the baton as well. Make sure someone after me will be turning concrete foundations into lavender soap. And oatmeal to chase away the cold. And blue eggs and new lambs to grace the spring I’ll not be seeing.

Well, then…

Good thing there’s life to keep these hands busy in the meantime.

©Elizabeth Anker 2024