Wind Storm

On Wednesday of this past week we had an unusual bout of wind that really wreaked havoc on our row covers. The constant wind was blowing at 20-30 mph with gusts of 50 mph. So needless to say the row covers didn't stay in place. We started trying to put them back down but quickly realized that the rock bags we had were not going to hold them. So Robin and I came to the house and started loading bricks into our vehicles. In all it took 2 trips to get the pallet of bricks we had to the farm. As luck would have it those were not helping very much either. So Jeff went the local farm supply store and got sand bags that he filled about 1/2 full and we placed those on the row covers. This is finally what worked. So down the rows we alternated between the sand bags of rock, the other rock bags we had, and the bricks. We were out there from lunch until dark. It was soooo cold! The temperature never got above freezing and the windchill made it feel in the low 20's. The next day I was so tired and every muscle in my body ached. Robin's stepson Dylan helped us too. He and I had a little accident that I wish I could have caught on film. In the middle of the strawberry field there is irrigation pipe. To try to save our muscles and make the job go a little faster Jeff brought a wheel barrow to load and pull through the field. Dylan loaded up the wheel barrow with the sand bags of rocks. When we got to one of the irrigation pipes Dylan got in front of the wheel barrow to pick it up and I was pushing it over the pipe. Well Dylan tripped and dropped the end of the wheel barrow. At this point I lost control of the wheel barrow too. He went down, I went down, and the wheel barrow fell over to the side spilling out the bags. There was nothing to do but laugh. We had been hard at it for about 3 hours and were exhausted. I really wish we had a camera out there with us.

We managed to get all the strawberries covered except for 2 rows and that was because the row cover had been ripped in several pieces. We have two varieties of strawberries out there and the Chandlers can handle the cold better than the Camerosa's. So we left 2 rows of Chandler's uncovered that night. We had another round of snow coming so we had to get out there the next day and get those 2 rows covered up. Robin and 2 mexicans that work with Jeff went up and that filled up more sand bags with rocks and got those 2 rows with pieces of the shredded row cover.

Everything is covered and doing well now. We learned some lessons which most people do in their first year of business. The system we had in place in the field actually worked for the normal we have but for those flukes it didn't hold well. So next year we are going to be prepared for the flukes from the beginning.