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Blog Cutia Taranului Weather Reports

Weather Report – Spring 2013

Following what felt like a drought during winter we’ve had an extreme spring. After the snows melted (for the last time) temperatures soared and it felt like we skipped over spring and into summer. It was really hot and really dry for 5 or 6 weeks. Then spring rains arrived. It’s been 3 or weeks of almost non-stop wet weather. Temperatures dropped (came down as low as 6c for a few nights), we even fired up one of the rocket stoves a few times. The weather has been mostly overcast, though we’ve had enough sunshine to start using the solar dehyrators (mostly plants for teas).

Most prominently we’ve been getting lots of rain. This has been quite a relief given the super-dry summer we had last year. While Europe is experiencing destructive flooding we are being blanketed by precious, well paced and well spaced (there’s time for water to soak into the ground) rains. I’m also doing a few experiments regarding water (much more on that in future posts) and the rain has been very collaborative.

A couple of weeks ago we got word from one of the Cutia Taranului producers that they were hit by hail and lost almost their entire crop. This morning we got a call from another small producer (getting started in life as a peasant and new to Cutia Tarnaului) who just notified us that he too lost most of his crop to hail yesterday. An hour or so later Andreea called me out to check out the bees – they were dancing like crazy outside the hive. It looked like swarming behavior – though it should not have been because we pre-emptively split the hive to “cheat swarming”. Andreea suggested that maybe they were indicating a change in the weather … and indeed ominous dark clouds were not far away.

Within minutes a storm broke out. Strong south-eastern winds (usually our winds come from the north-west) with strength that we’ve never seen before (granted we’ve only been here 2 years). Visiblity dropped as a blanket of water came down (and sideways) from the sky. A few lightning bolts also hit the ground. The winds have settled, yet moderate rain continues to fall.

I went for a walk outside to see my water expriments (going very well). Many grasses, a patch of mint and all of our potato plants are bent and leaning in the direction of the wind. One of Ildy and Levente’s greenhouse covers ripped open and seems to have been blown completely off (we can only see the arches of a naked greenhouse from where are – we are waiting to hear from them if they have suffered any other damages).

It’s all so fragile. We (all of us humans on the planet) live and exist within a certain tolerance of natural fluctuation. The more we stress the ecosystem the more extreme it becomes … extremeties that are outside of our tolerances of existence … expressing those stresses directly back into our life.

We must stop taking and start giving.
We must stop pushing and start dancing.
We must stop denying and start accepting.
We must stop denying and start embracing.
We must stop resisting and start surrendering.

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Blog On The Way Weather Reports

March 2013 Snow

Yesterday morning we went outside to move the electric fencing and the flock. It isn’t too long a task and yet by the time we finished temperatures dropped noticeably and wind set in. Later in the evening the sharp-biting cold seemed to disappear and shortly after that … snow appeared. It came in silence, we only noticed it when we opened the door to see if Ricky wants to come inside … and there were flakes falling from the sky and a thin white cover already established on the ground.

This morning we found a wintery landscape with 8-10cm of fresh soft snow. Bhudeva is once again covered in white:

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… and the forecast tells us that a warm 17-18c weekend is expected … climate has become unstable and extreme … now … not 20 or 50 years from now.

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Blog Weather Reports

Weather Report Winter 2012/13

Winter came much earlier this year. We had a major snowfall in early December that left us with a snow cover that the previous year had only appeared at the end of January. It is also brought with the coldest period we had during this winter – a few days where temperatures dropped below -15c.

We had 3 or 4 more note-worthy snow falls throughout December, January and February but for the most part this winter felt dry – as if the previous season’s drought continued throughout the winter. The snow did not accumulate to the levels it had the previous winter. February, usually the coldest winter month, was unusually warm (one time I was outside cutting wood wearing a short-sleeved shirt on a sunny day).

Snow melted fairly early – I think that by late february most of the snow was gone and signs of new green grasses emerged. Even the bees (from the surviving hive) came out for a look around a couple of weeks ago.

My consciousness switched into a spring-ish mode and was caught off-guard by a couple of really cold-weather waves that appeared in March. During the previous weekend there was another substantial snowfall … enough to cover EVERYTHING with a white blanket … but it mostly disappeared after a couple of days.

It’s only my second winter here at Bhudeva and the signs of climate change are very clear. Regardless of overall warming the weather is becoming much less stable, much less predictable and much more prone to extreme shifts. It takes only one, short, local extreme weather event (drought, late frost, hail …) to wipe out traditional crop-systems. It is a stark reminder to me how important deep infrastructures (water and soil fertility) filled with bio-diversity are in meeting this given instability (which is very likely to continue for a long time even if we were to start drastic global regenerative actions today … which doesn’t seem likely to happen).

As Cutia Taranului is coming to life again amidst these shifting and unpredictable weather patterns I find myself immersed in both satisfaction (because of how successful it has been and promises to continue to be) and concern (because of the knowledge that the traditional methods of agriculture used by most peasant families are fragile and unsustainable).

 

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Blog On The Way Weather Reports

Winter 2012 Has Arrived

Until yesterday I still thought the snow blanket may be temporary. This morning I am convinced its here to stay 🙂

I’ve switched to winter mode. It’s 10am and I am just getting out of bed after tea and some reading and writing. Time to go outside and feed the animals. Then back inside for breakfast, to fire up the rocket stove for an hour or two to keep the room warm for the day and to continue reading, writing, resting … being winter 🙂

 

 

 

 

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Blog Weather Reports

Weather Report – February 2012

I am not sure this post will be of much interest to others readers. It is intended more of a short documentation of weather patterns for us to reference in future years. I am writing it now because we are seeing a clear transition into spring and it seems worth noting.

Winter started early with a 2+ week wave of frozen tempretaures (everything outside frosted white) in late October. It was very cold and dry – we didn’t get much rain neither in the summer nor in the autumn. At first it felt like we skipped over autumn directly into winter but then the temperatures went up again – drastically. It was surprsinginly pleasant outside and we were gifted with more days of work … we worked all the way up to Christmas eve … and still there was no snow.

There were only occassional days of sunshine in December and January, more, though still relatively few, in February. I do not recall how it was during November.

Snows came in January and while other of Romania were covered by snow we had a pleasant snowfall. I think that in the open undisturbed fields it accumulated to ~70cm.

Spring emerged suddenly a week ago (~Feb 21) when we awoke to windows without any ice and drastically warmer temperatures. At first with some sunshine and on the 3rd day we had full sunshine.  We were told that temperatures reached as high as 10c. There were signs of snow-melting all around. Then, after the sunshine, came two frozen days … ice on the windows and on the door handle.

Today we had partly cloudy weather and it became windy. The levels of accumulated are definitely coming down. Most of the south-facing land is already completely melted and the view that was white is now brown. All of the rest of the fields are still snow-white and areas around the house are a mixture of snow, slush and mud.