The weather's important I guess. I am, as always, more interested in windspeed and direction. Right now it's 22 k/h gusting to 31, from the NNW. In the morning it'll be about the same, so the ride in will be great. I guess I'll wear gloves. To protect myself against the frost. Pshaw.
Ride report
in: 5'C wind NW 20 ks
out: 9'C wind NNW 40 ks
4 comments:
Frost warnings are crucial to gardeners and market-gardeners. Gardeners can cover their tomatoes and then reap many more once the frost period has passed. I believe you like tomatoes, and it is food, after all, and it is often even organic. Market-gardeners such as your friend Joe can recruit a contigent of pickers and harvest bushels and bushels of tomatoes and peppers ahead of the frost event, and then ship it to stores and "earn a living." Who gives a crap about your little fingers??? Have you covered your wife's tomatoes? Hmmm?
Oh you are a most fantastic castigator. I kept my fingers warm. I hope Joe was able to do the same for the tomatoes. Of course my rant was (perhaps rashly) about Environment Canada's penchant for telling us what a reasonably informed look up at the sky along with a walk and a sniff of the air could just as well tell him. Of course farmers and gardeners need to watch for frost, but does Joe (or any farmer worth her salt) need an electronic report to tell him the air might cool to below 0'C? I didn't think so. It's the newsification of the weather that I find tiresome. Must everything result in the wringing of hands these days? Now I'm heading out to cover the tomatoes.
Yes, we can tell with our senses that it will get pretty cold, but no, we can't predict exactly how cold. The difference between +1 and -1 is HUGE! Joe isn't going to hire a crew of pickers to hoard what crop they can if the temp is going to go down to +1, but he will if it's going to be 0 or -1. Veg farmers rely heavily on the media to warn them about possible frost. And Joe did go out in the middle of the night to drive up and down the field, hoping that stirring the air would prevent the frost from settling. But it went down to -3, he figures, so that little ploy was probably of no use. (SIGH!)
I can only imagine the stress! I used four blankets to cover the tomato plants we have. How do you manage a few acres of them? Anyway, I'm still amazed that, given their track record, a farmer would put that much faith in a collection of electronic measuring devices located just north of Gretna, and a computer modeling software run centrally somewhere far from here. Surely Joe's best guess will be as reliable as Environment Canada on how hard the frost will be.
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