I have heard a saying in Vermont to plant corn when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear though my cousin and I would laugh about what squirrel and exactly how big it's ears are. Planting peas when lilacs are beginning to leaf sounds late for us. I had an elderly neighbor growing up who would generally plant at least some peas in March scraping away snow if necessary and always had the earliest. I have been tempted on recent 60 degree days but the two feet of snow we had on the ground last April 1 is too fresh in my mind. I am soaking some peas to plant in greenhouse and a cold frame though.
My sister recently gave me a book FARM CONVENIENCES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM, a reprint of an old dusty manuscript found in Pennsylvania by the Lyons Press that has many interesting devices including a nest to foil egg eating hens, a situation that gave me great frustration last summer. My lone hen after a winter of solitude has started laying again. Return of light?? Our local and only NH commercial TV station proclaimed it the warmest winter in 113 years yesterday and other reports have it the first time the states largest lake (Winnespesauke) has not frozen since official records have been kept which is 151 years. As that (1850) was the appoximate end of "the little ice age " so perhaps it is the warmest since "the medieval warming" which predated that. However from reports I have read about ice pack decreases in the arctic it is my opinion that our experiment with atmospheric alteration could just as easily lead to colder as warmer conditions as the arctic ocean was open and fed moisture to northern latitude lands during the last ice ages. vann
