Photo Journal: February in ten photos
/February
“We’re just not used to cold winters like this anymore,” has become an unwitting refrain all season long. Rushing from another vehicle to another building; sliding on the perma-ice in the driveway; offering sparse recompense to Johann as he worked on the freezing pipes in the farm office - I’d shrug, or shake my head and say, we’re just not used to cold winters like this anymore. It’s true. Here in the northeast we’ve grown accustomed to harvesting until early December, and digging trenches in February.
The consideration of climatic weather is paramount to the foundation of functional ecological design, regenerative agriculture, and permaculture. We can manipulate the texture and composition of our soils, we can instigate biodiversity, but bringing on high summer is the auspice of the cosmos. And so we design around the seasonal features of our world. Hot dry summers and cool wet springs inform the basis of what plants to plant, and dictate our work rhythms. Lest we cede all our influence, it helps to remember that weather holds the curious posture of being largely out of our hands, and yet wholly influenced by us.
Observing this phenomenon requires no particular expertise. Walk down a treeless city block, and then onto a tree-lined city block, and observe the change in temperature. Walk further on into a preserved forest, and notice how the moisture content of the air is different. Continue to nurture that forest as it grows into an expanse filled with 1000 year old trees like the rainforests, and it will shape the winds that course the world.
Indeed, our bodies are naturally attuned to the weather, and our thoughtful hands intertwined can sway it.
The pond at Hill Rd. in winter has become a source of great speculation. Since our son Roan was born more than three years ago, every winter I’ve chirped like a clock, “Do you think Ro will ever get to skate on the pond?” Each winter, in turn, has delivered a resounding no. Except this winter, when I mused out the window “Do you think Ro will ever get to skate on the –”, I paused on the thick opaque quality of the frozen ice.
The pond, for the first time since we’ve lived at this farm, has been frozen all winter. When the snow occasionally melts uphill, the incoming water glides off the surface of the pond and into the spillways. It’s offered us a novel glance at water management dynamics in sustained freezing temps over time, and this unique insight will help inform our water management development at Hill.
Rattlesnake master seed
blazing star seed
I would have liked to process these seeds earlier, but here we found ourselves firmly in February, with an abundance of seed butting up against a scarcity of time.
It’s preferable to have the seeds processed earlier in the year, because some seeds must undergo a period of cold stratification in order to properly germinate. Planting seeds in naturalized conditions earlier in winter, and exposed to the ensuing wet-freeze-thaw cycles, naturally wears down the protective coating of certain seeds, particularly trees and shrubs.
Pouring over the intricately shaped wildflower seeds I collected in the fall, I’m struck by the way in which they have exquisitely evolved over time to blow, stitch, spray, and drop in perfect accordance with the adaptations necessitated by their environment. Like all biological entities, their form tells the story of their surroundings and the temperature of their time.
Waterfall near Hill Rd Farm
The sustained freezing temps were an irony not lost. Early in the month we received news that a cost share project on which we were in contract with the USDA was no longer being honored, despite having already completed the project at personal expense.
Then we received word that two multi-institutional grant projects Johann was providing technical assistance on had been frozen, despite the work already being in progress and fully funded by Congress.
I mentioned these endeavors in last month’s journal, as they were active projects. In February we had to necessarily and unexpectedly pull back from this work, and re-evaluate our course. I know many, including our peers and colleagues, have experienced similar insecurity and upheaval this month to varying degrees of impact.
As of present writing, the cost share funding has been restored, and the grant projects are still suspended.
Center field aisle at bird
When the snow finally melted I walked the fields up at BIRD for the first time all winter. The snow had come, stayed for months, and then left, with such a dense architecture of habitat remarkably still intact. A mix of deciduous shrubs and trees interplanted with a meadow understory, along with the conifers in the hedges and field edges, have supplied a robust and varied habitat for so many creatures to successfully overwinter.
I watched as a menagerie of red cardinals, tufted titmouses, and sparrows darted through the planting rows. In the hurried rustling of their movements, I heard myself becoming restless for spring.
High tunnel at bird
Hoophouse at bird
A whipping wind barrelled through the area one February night, and in the morning the plastic on the high tunnel was thoroughly ripped, and flapping about.
Both the large high tunnel and the small hoop house at BIRD, after twelve working years, are in a bit of a healing crisis. Yes their metal parts are tarnishing, and their wooden parts are rotting, but also, they have begun to outgrow and overgrow their past use. We’ve patched their parts, and already transitioned parts of their use, but it’s time to rip off the plastic, do a rain flush, clean out the old, and perhaps grow a new skin.
Tender hairy bittercress, growing like a weed in the hoophouse, was a welcomed first sight of spring. When it’s young, its soft leaves rival a tender arugula. These first greens of spring, broadleaf species, and brassica relatives are often less bitter than they’ll grow to be in the coming months as the increasing sun works its alchemy on their alkaloids.
Plants, like people, intuitively change along with their environment.
Some time from now, when the weather warms, and the bittercress flowers, its seeds will disperse via ballistic ballochory at the slightest caress of a passing foot or a warm spring breeze.
Soft as earth exhibition, Artyard
This month I visited Hundred Fruit Farm’s annual Permaculture Design Course as a guest teacher. When this course rolls around each winter, I am reminded that while I teach so infrequently now by choice and necessity, I still deeply enjoy it as a practice.
This photo is from artist Brian Guerin’s group ceramics show, currently on exhibit at Artyard. Brian is a former fields without fences apprentice who worked and learned with us the last time we ran the program, some years back. I remember him as a thoughtful human, with great sensitivity to the natural world. I attended his artist talk on a sunny Sunday morning in February, and found him to be that way still.
By Lindsay Napolitano, 2025
