Fruitnut, We have several complete thaws throughout the winter. In some locations in the world they have freeze ups where snow is on the ground September- April. It's not unusual for us to be in the 80's this time of year or the 30's. The area around Kansas City can have wide fluctuations in weather (eg. Dec may be as cold as -19 or as hot as 73). Use the "Weather" link below and select lows and highs and you will get an idea of our climate. Remember -19 is not really just -19 it's more like -45 f in Kansas or colder. So our coldest day in the last 25 or so years was -19 but I suspect the wind speed was at least 17 so that's -45 f. See the links below http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/kansas/wind-speed/ http://www.douglastwitchell.com/wind_chill.php Spring is typically very wet but moisture fluctuates a great deal. For example look at the difference between 1988 and 1993 in this link http://www.crh.noaa.gov/eax/localclimate/seasrank/annualpcpn.php The ground is typically frozen and wet without vegetation alive and then it rains on top of that so it's a bad time for erosion. Typically the rain fills the ponds during early spring and they remain full until July when another drought begins and lasts through the 1st of September. Rains start again and there is rain in September, October, November , December. This is why the old timers always told me to plant grass is any month that ends in "R" because the grass needs that rain to get started as does other members of the grass family such as wheat. Kansas is the best wheat growing state for all those reasons because you plow in July and August during the drought and plant seed and then wait for September. The wheat grows because the rain starts it and then rain turns to snow and blankets the wheat. Snow fence would work as good and maybe better but grass is free and a great make shift snow fence because it accumulates a several foot high upside down v that melts and waters trees. Here is a link that might be useful: Weather

How do you make the funding for this happen? Educate the public. Government funding is too inefficient and wasteful to be very useful for anything but basic research. But if people want cleaner foods, and a demand develops for it, and it has with the demand for organics. It makes it more worthwhile for companies to spend the money on research. My problem with synthetics has nothing to do with Monsanto. I don't really have a problem with them. My concern is we still don't understand ecosystems very well and are throwing hand grenades at it with synthetics. the disruption of the ecosystems is concerning to me. We don't know what we are doing. The arrogance of man is a huge deficient to the species. Man even thinks it can change the environment, which is a huge joke! Yes, to a small degree, but hit with an S happens, and mother nature doesn't take orders from man. We really need to figure out which hill to die on. To choose our battles wisely. The way I see things we are in the age of ignorance, as the amount of ignorance of man is at extremely dangerous levels. We end up doing more harm than good. I'll use one example, and try not to go for the obvious one, did you know we use more energy to recycle a plastic bottle than to start from scratch? How is that saving anything??? Oh but it makes us feel so much better. Emotion is a huge deficient. Logic is thrown out the window. How can we do that to the polar bears!? (when populations are growing out of control, and man is on their menus). Wow, what we do just floors me. You know a polar bear will follow a group of men, and pick off the last one. Often nobody notices for awhile. Hey where's Johnny? So best be in front in polar bear territory.

Winter is insanely busy apart from a couple of weeks around Xmas, it is the busiest and hardest time of year. Seed sowing picks up pace after August, then there is leaf raking, clear-up, pruning fruit trees, bulb planting, bare root planting, wood stacking (sympathies, Lyn), fencing, building, garlic and beans to go in, wood chipping, then veggies start after Xmas in a frenzy. Summer, its just weeding and deadheading and watering - easy, mindless stuff. So yeah, I usually have a lot to ramble on about on this forum (and do.....at length, in the company of plenty others). As a rule though, we tend to spend far less time evaluating our mistakes and the vast majority of posts are invariably situated in some sunny uplands of next year's promise....frequently tipping over from fantasy into completely delusional.

Pine away for rain. California is always a drier state but we are in a drought so far this winter. It's not just the irrigation, the 6% humidity is a challenge for seed starting in the field. I had taken a break from even hobby gardening but recently got my mojo back. I sold my flock of 100 chicken, which was the main thing that was kicking my butt. This is prime time for harvesting, transplanting and starting greens, root vegetables and brassicas. I am just starting them for spring along with nightshades. Planting short day onion transplants and seeding intermediate day onions. Would be weeding shallots leeks and garlic but didn't plant any this year unfortunately. Putting up a few trellises. Give blackberries a final prune and arrangement on the trellis and feed with compost because they are breaking dormancy now. Also Clearing out weeds and old plant stubble.building beds and manuring/composting them for spring/warm weather crops. Trapping rodents. I have the whole acre irrigated on gravity now...that will save a few hundred a year by bypassing the 2HP booster pump that serves the house. Less worries about a breakdown in a heatwave. Working on cold frames. Need to rotate/buy seeds. I am also studying how to carry out a CSA, putting sample documents together...just in case....