Freaky warm

Having seen the kids off to school, I just walked into my office and opened up all of my windows. It smells great out there: the pastures are turning more green every day, and I can hear the birds singing. Taken as a snapshot there’s not a whole lot not to love about it and all of this would be completely normal of course…if it was May. I can say with complete certainty that our children had never previously gone to school in shorts this early in the year.

The alpacas meanwhile spent yesterday huffing and puffing –many after all are sporting 4+ inches of growth now — through temperatures that were in the 70s and if the forecast holds true, we’re supposed to hit the 80s on Wednesday. Just bizarre. I did see a diagram of the jet stream at one point last week that showed it taking a pretty radical turn northeast over northern Ontario and Quebec which I’m sure would go a long way towards explaining the lack of colder systems coming our way over the past months as well as the relative heat wave we’re experiencing now. Unfortunately I suspect that that while that is no doubt a big part of the immediate cause, it’s probably also symptomatic of something much bigger.

Normally we get to take the farm’s fans on the road with us to the spring shows, knowing that it won’t really warm up around here until after all of that silliness has passed and often times not until after the herd has been shorn (in early May) in any case.  Jen pointed out this morning though that if the warm trend continues we’re going to have to invest in more fans so that we can be sufficiently covered both home and away. We will of course do this knowing full well that it will still go down into the 40s the day after we finish shearing. It’s tradition after all!

Follow me on Twitter @CCNFalpacas