First Frost 2025

Sometimes the weather forecast is right on the money.  And then other times, they totally miss it.  I can understand.  Weather has a lot of variables and conditions that affect it.  In planting crops, I like to have a pretty good idea of when to plant things in advance of a rain, so that the crop will be watered in.  It hasn't rained in several weeks now, so I'm a little concerned about the crimson clover that I planted.  The ground is as hard as a basketball court.  I don't know how the crimson clover will germinate and grown on that!

I also like to know when high winds are coming and, of course, when a freeze or frost is coming.  We have lots of tomatoes on the vine that I'd pull if a freeze was coming.

But frosts...  What about those?  Frost won't damage most of the stuff still growing in the garden from the spring, like tomatoes and peppers.  I looked up the Farmer's Almanac for the first frost date for our location.  I put in our zip code and it said: "The average first frost date is November 9"  November 9th came and went with no frost, but...

We woke up on the morning of November 11th to this:

It was a good first frost.  Not enough to damage anything in the garden, but enough to slow down any new grass growth in the pasture.

The cows, goats, and chickens will continue to clean up the last remaining grass and then it will be time to start supplementing with hay.  Last year we rolled out the first round bale on January 1st.  I'm thinking this year will be sooner to hay the cows.  At the bee club meeting, some of the beekeepers were saying that the bees were completely stopping up all the holes in their bee boxes with propolis, and they are reading that as a prediction that a cold winter is on the way.  Who knows?  Weather forecasters, Farmer's Almanacs, and beekeepers can all be wrong.  We'll have to wait to find out.