Stone's Throw Farm

Call it Pig Day if you want (that’s what the Hobby Farms calendar says), but it was Dig-Out Day in Duluth today after a nice Leap Day blizzard yesterday. My friend Heather-Marie and I managed to get one vehicle on the road this morning (her street had not been plowed yet at 9 am, let alone the alley — guess it’s a low priority area!) and headed out to my parents’ “summer house” near the farm to start our respective onion seeds.

We now know that my parents’ driveway catches a lot of snow. We parked at neighbor Olive’s house and shoveled a path to the back door, then set about seeding our onions. If all goes well, we’ll have white, yellow, and red onions in late summer thanks to our efforts today. At right are the onion trays in the germination station.

We’ve got more shelves almost ready to go for plants to hang out on for a while after they germinate and before they move to the greenhouse, which is expensive to heat at night this time of year.

After we finished the seeding, Heather-Marie and I stopped at the farm to get a few things and make sure everything survived the storm. The new hoophouse that Elden and I put up last fall (the smaller one in the photo at right) has led to some interesting snowdrifts forming between the hoophouses.

After admiring the snow sculptures, we headed back to Duluth, where the streets and alleys were almost all plowed and plenty of melting had already taken place. A snowblower in the background reminds me that Dig Out Day isn’t over yet, though.