The idea of a climate where spring might begin in February is astounding to me in its luxury, living and livestocking as we do here on steppes and foothills of Alberta. Green grass might start at earliest here in late March. The stock is then kept off all pastures til late May to give it a good start. The animals better like eating hay. ;) The upside to this is the growth is explosive and the protein content of that growth is supercharged.
It's known as fool's spring for a reason — we still have a lot of winter to come, though I imagine a lot milder and probably wetter than yours! We get a week or two of a mild spring-like flush of growth in February but it will stall again and we won't be letting anything on such tender young grass and very, very wet soils until it dries out and gets ahead in April at the earliest, late May for the high ground. February is when the sheep get restless and test the fences but can't be let out yet! We're lucky to have a lot of brambles and stacked up grass on neighbour's ground to keep our goats content this winter.
Yes, i’ve been out chucking hay in -52 windchill, but that is very rare. A week or two of -30 is pretty much a given, though. Each climate has it’s pluses and minuses. I was heartened to learn just the other day for instance, that our sheep from up here have better growth and become larger than the same sheep raised in gentler climates hundreds of miles south of us, on account of the excellence of our forage when it comes. The trick of course is keeping them alive when the forage is not there. Today, hay is a byproduct of the oil economy. It was a much more elegant, and actually sustainable, situation when winter hay was put-up using horses, or before that, scythes.
The idea of a climate where spring might begin in February is astounding to me in its luxury, living and livestocking as we do here on steppes and foothills of Alberta. Green grass might start at earliest here in late March. The stock is then kept off all pastures til late May to give it a good start. The animals better like eating hay. ;) The upside to this is the growth is explosive and the protein content of that growth is supercharged.
It's known as fool's spring for a reason — we still have a lot of winter to come, though I imagine a lot milder and probably wetter than yours! We get a week or two of a mild spring-like flush of growth in February but it will stall again and we won't be letting anything on such tender young grass and very, very wet soils until it dries out and gets ahead in April at the earliest, late May for the high ground. February is when the sheep get restless and test the fences but can't be let out yet! We're lucky to have a lot of brambles and stacked up grass on neighbour's ground to keep our goats content this winter.
Yes, i’ve been out chucking hay in -52 windchill, but that is very rare. A week or two of -30 is pretty much a given, though. Each climate has it’s pluses and minuses. I was heartened to learn just the other day for instance, that our sheep from up here have better growth and become larger than the same sheep raised in gentler climates hundreds of miles south of us, on account of the excellence of our forage when it comes. The trick of course is keeping them alive when the forage is not there. Today, hay is a byproduct of the oil economy. It was a much more elegant, and actually sustainable, situation when winter hay was put-up using horses, or before that, scythes.