Potato Snow

Plant potatoes around St. Patrick's Day and you can expect they'll be snow on your potatoes. That was the thinking I heard from farmer relatives back in Pennsylvania. It is March 26 and snowing here in the frontier of Eastern Oregon.  It's that La Nina girl in the Pacific making temperatures the forecasters say at least ten degrees cooler than normal this year. The climate forecast is for below average temperatures into June. Sigh. And we haven't planted potatoes yet.  

The ducks are in duck heaven because the ditches are full of water that run along the ranch road in front of our place and they race out in the morning after I open their pen, headed for a day in the ditches.  The chickens would prefer no snow. Thursday night I counted beaks on the roost and I came up one short. It was Sadie, the Plymouth Bard Rock, who is in her third winter.  I last noticed her out in the pasture with the others near the wheel lines and that's the last I saw her.  There's was a big hawk or maybe an immature eagle in our poplar tree this week. Maybe he got a taste for chicken. Could be Wiley Coyote.  We knew we might be sharing with the wild things in the neighborhood. So far we've lost three chickens in three years to predators. I can live with that.