Sun's Nadir

The days are the shortest they get now, and in a few days, they'll start lengthening again. In the meantime, it's been cold. This was the temp on 12-4 in the late afternoon.We also had a few nights of below 28 degrees. We've had a  little rain, but it's been mostly cold, clear, and windy.

With it this cold, we need to break out the winter garb!

The trees need protection too. We wrapped the small citrus trees in frost cloth and put the lights up in the big one.

The mandarins are ripe! They look beautiful.

This mandarin is posing on the cover of Edible Shasta Butte magazine. It (the mandarin, not the magazine) was delicious.

At our house, the lemons are also ripe.

And the fava beans are up nicely.

They're mulched with pecan leaves... er yeah, that's my story. The paths do have straw underneath, but it didn't seen important to rake the leaves. The favas look so happy and healthy!

The greens I planted in 6a came up much better than I thought they would, and I ended up transplanting a bunch into 5b. I plan to finish that row out in fava beans. The chickens are still working the fallow area. We tossed a bunch of semi-composted stuff on the leaves, and the chickens have been happy to turn it over daily. We also cleaned the chicken pen yesterday and put that in pile P.

We've had some really great sunsets... at 4:30 in the afternoon! Folks don't hang around long when the sun goes down, although we did get a great propane heater. I'll have to remember to get a shot of it.