Early Winter Coming? ...and Food Shortages?

reply to post by soficrow


I am in Arkansas and my green beans did nothing also. We have our second planting of corn in and it is doing well. Tomatoes and peppers did well (peppers are still going). I HOPE it cools down it has been in the 100's (F) for weeks now. It has been too hot to swim! The water in my pool is like bath water. I know Arkansas is always hot this time of year but we are having to fill up the pig wallow twice a day and the same with the garden. The wild plums literally shriveled on the trees. I am just looking forward to being able to turn off the AC and open the windows. The kids are wanting to go out and play but in less than a half hour the babies are hot and cranky.

I have been seeing on the internet that food shortages are coming so we are putting a lot of money into our food stores right now. We are also saving water (I know but better safe than sorry).

Had a decent summer here by our standards although spring was very late in arriving. May and June were lovely, July a washout and August a bit of both but a lot more pleasant than last year. I have a hunch that based on last year where we had an abundance of berries and a very long autumn where the trees held their leaves and colour for much longer than in previous years that we are in for another brutal winter here in Ireland. The pattern seems identical at the moment. Last winter it hit us about 1 week after the UK (on Dec 18th) as it came so slowly from the east and took a while to get a grip but when it did, my God! Very unusual here in the sunny south east to get as many continual days of frost and severe minus temps. This year the road authorities and councils must get their selves sorted out as regards the de-icing and gritting of the roads as we ran out of grit after the first week last year, I’m sure that’ll get a laugh from the northern state US readers. We were discussing heating costs at work yesterday and we all spent at a minimum 2000 euros on oil for central heating and wood, coal, peat bricks and firelighters for our living room fires. Seemed like every trip to the shop involved the purchase of one or the other. I’ve already started to stock up by initiating the first wood delivery the other week.

Eeuuuww... My plants started dying or going into hibernation mode about 2 days ago.

Does not bode well. Wanted more tomatoes, at least.

reply to post by virraszto


Green tomatoes can be pickled with onions and canned. Green Tomatoes can be fried and eaten with ranch dressing.
I looked up acorns recently, and apparently they are edible, there are recipies for pancakes and muffins. They seem to need to be dried out thoughly to not mildew or hatch bugs.

Our garden started off great here in South Carolina, the tomatoes and beans and squash were fine. After the forth of July it was very hot 111 degrees f a few days. We had 94 plus deegree days for 4 months straight. It was very hot for here. Everything stopped producing.
My husband thought he would grow cucumbers in mounds and train the vines to grow up a fence. That was the worst idea, it failed! We got two cucumbers and the vines died off. I planted pumkins, I got one tiny
5 inch diameter pumkin. Not enough rain, you can't water enough here
it just evaporates, or runs off on the hard packed clay.

Well, sofi, I'm a little jealous. We haven't seen high temps drop below 95 here Dallas for over a month.

Western Canada is definitly seeing a bad summer and early winter. Farms are 4 weeks behind. I have some friends in the industry and they just started swathing, let alone starting the harvest. This past spring about 30% of the crop area was not able to be planted due to unusually wet conditions. This was followed by a slightly cool and very wet summer with more hail the usuall. So Yeilds are not looking so great across a vast area either and the longer the wet weather keeps up, the worse its going to get (its been raining for the past week on and off, usually this time of year its bone dry). And its only supposed to continue.

Trees are already well on their way to changing colors and they had a ton of fruit on them this year. And to top it all off its supposed to snow here on Thursday. So yes I think its going to be an early and severe winter.

Frost warning tonight in Saskatchewan. Fields are still full of water and mud.
Summer is officially over when the temperature drops to -1 as it is expected tonight.
We don't get fall or spring here it seems. Winter flows directly into summer, which I think we actually missed this year. Barely stopped raining. Now frost and snow is on its way.
And there is still mosquitoes outside
They seem to have adapted to the cold a little too well.

North UK here. I'm seriously worried about the coming winter. The last but one was bad, the last one was horrendous. I live down a single track farm road with a few others. The snow which normally stays for just a few days lasted and lasted. Then it turned to solid ice for weeks on end. People who have lived here all their lives said it was unprecedented. We had to leave our cars up on the main road. It was bad enough trying to walk up. I bought a sled to bring down sacks of coal. It was that bad.
I'm getting my roof fixed in readiness and stocking up.

SW Ontario here.

We're having the summer one can only dream about. Lots of rain and long spells of hot sunny weather has created bumper crops in the farming areas of this province. Corn grown to between 8 and 10 feet high, hay and wheat harvested during exceptionally prime conditions and the beans coming along really well, Ontario's farmers are in for a very profitable year.

I know we're really lucky in this as many of the food growing areas of the world are in dire circumstances.

What's driving this all are the El Nino and La Nina cycles. The effects of El Nino are great for the American NE and hell for the west while La Nina has the opposite results.

reply to post by snowspirit


Sorry to hear the cold has come early, and that is ridiculously cold for September. Feels early here in Southern California too, although the trees still have leaves, but the nights are already cold (not like yours, though!).I have farming relatives in Swift Current, Sask.

reply to post by SunnyDee


I just checked Swift Current on the weather network, they're not as cold yet, further south than me, but I think they have a high elevation. They will be at 2 or 3 degrees celcius next weekend. Usually Saskatchewan is one of the sunniest provinces, not hot, but sunny. Not this year.

There was a few pocket areas around Sask that had some decent crops. Hopefully your family was lucky that way.

We had a pretty hot and wet summer, and alot of flooding. We dug up some potatoes and they have a waterlogged taste to them... whole crop is no good. The beets grew in weird shapes instead of nice bulbs.

We didn't get a tomato blight this year, but our neighbor did. Cucumbers started out okay, then withered and died.

Green Pepper plants grew really big, but only had 2 peppers on them. Eggplant and Carrots did okay.

The farmers here have not started harvesting yet, the grainery is not running either.

The birds have been missing about a week now. Robins and Sparrows are gone, the blackbirds gathered this morning and left. Also, the Monarch Butterflies showed up 2 days ago.

When we went shopping, two people told us our first snow will be Oct. 1st.

The one thing that hasn't happened yet is the Fall ladybug swarm.

Western Pa.
Corn came late, Bodacious was medium and milky but the flint stayed small.
Lost 1/2 the potatoes.
Tomatoes wanted to grow but came late, real struggle.
Beans had to replant, browned out.
Peppers went crazy 32 bushel so far.
Melons never took off,
Pumpkins didnt develop.
Squash did alright.
Cucumbers didnt do well.
Gourds did so so.
Next year will be here soon enough.

Thanks all.

...Garden still mostly green, with a few brown patches. Beans FINALLY okay, blossoms staying not dropping, will have a last good crop.

Finally have pics to share, but need to get round to uploading and posting... Not sure when that might happen.

FYI - Food news does predict shortages, but no one official is suggesting erratic weather worsened by volcanoes or BP oil spill affecting North Atlantic current.

I read in the newspaper on sunday that we here in britain can expect strong snow and ice by the end of september, which is extremely early!

It gonna be a long and tough winter!

Peace and stay warm.
ALS

reply to post by soficrow


Hi Sofi,

Found your thread yesterday...found this today.

Published September 12 2010
2011 Old Farmer's Almanac predicts cold, snowy winter for region

It’s not a pig’s spleen or squirrel nuts, but it seems to work just as well.

The secret Old Farmer’s Almanac formula has once again predicted the upcoming winter: A cold and snowy one.

“That’s winter up there. The winter will be about 2 to 3 degrees lower than normal. January will be the coldest month,” said Mare-Anne Jarvela, a senior research editor at Farmer’s Almanac. “Snowfall will be near normal. So, you’re probably not going to get a huge amount.”

The book has been a storm of weather predictions, planting seasons and humorous anecdotes for 219 years.

But authors aren’t just spitting in the wind when trying to predict the weather. They use a mix of scientific research, modern technology, ocean current and sunspot technology. A drizzle of the top secret, original, weather formula is also used.

www.agweek.com...


Its a great read...and has much info in it about El Nina, and La Nina...

I wonder if the gulf current stall has anything to do with this odd weather.

If food drops people will riot and when we riot martial law will be declaired.

Well we got our first snowfall last night in parts of Alberta, and it actually stuck to the ground for a while too (total of about 1cm where i am). Some places got to around -8C for the low which is definitly late fall/early winter weather. So much for fall, it lasted a whole week...

Fields have been too wet to get into for harvest yet so most of the crops are still in the ground. Another widespread killing frost is expected tonight, so it does not look good for the farmers here.

Thanks all, and... reply to post by burntheships


Always like Farmer's Almanac.

... The past several nights have been cold, -2 to -3 C (about 25F ???) with windchill. I didn't harvest or cover - just crossed my fingers. Couple of cherry tomatoes got wrecked from frostbite but looks like everything else survived. Should have a week or 2 more of cool summer/warm fall weather. I hope.

I'm thinking about putting my garden pics into a video, seems easier to me than uploading even 20 shots and figuring out how to get them here.

Well we had an "Indian Summer" after my last posts, but now - we're full out into a deep freeze that's more appropriate to January-February than mid-December.

Besides climate change, I'm wondering about that "tilting on the axis" thing that happens, and the fact that the date for daylight savings time was changed. ...Could it be that because the earth HAS shifted on her axis, our seasons really DO start sooner than they did before ?

...the '04 earthquake and tsunami comes to mind as an identifiable, possible trigger...