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For Peter Rideout -- Hurricane Fiona

Chuck Ellis said:
Hi Peter, Are you far enough inland that Hurricane Fiona won't affect you too much.... from news it's moving north and will hit the Canadian coast line in a few days.
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Thanks Chuck.
We are watching the forecasts very closely and making all possible preparations. Remnants of hurricanes come up this way from time to time, usually much weakened, bringing rain and a bit of wind. This looks like a strong one. The track and cone of uncertainty have not deviated for days and will pass over Cape Breton Island and eastern Nova Scotia tonight with winds forecast at 165 km per hour (about 100mph)
We are in the Annapolis Valley, in the southwestern part of the province, on the wet side of the storm, but the forecast is still saying winds 50-70kph with gusts to 100. We are most concerned about the apple crop, an important economic driver here and we are at the peak of harvesting our premium varieties. It’s been a busy week.
A bit of geographic trivia: no place in Nova Scotia is more than about half an hour’s drive from the coast, the Atlantic, the Bay of Fundy or the Gulf of St Lawrence.
 
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Dave Hoskins said:
Hurricanes are no fun to be in. So, take care.
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Truer words never said... I sat through Typhoon Karen on Guam in 1982... she blew right up the mouth of the harbor, sank 2 Royal Korean gun boats that were in repair and sans engines... just rolled the over and sank at the docks... washed all the tugs up on shore at the other end of the harbor, destroyed a few cars that were parked at the admin building and flooded my radio room on the ground floor of the building...She moved a number of cars that were parked next to the admin building across the parking lot and they all looked as if they had been shot with 00 buckshot.
On the civilian part of the iuland nearly wiped out the towns of Tamuning and Agana, and did wipe out Inarajan... leveled it as the eye passed over.
Back on the base, it blew about a foot of gravel into the swim pool just out side my barracks and over on Anderson AFB they lost one wall of a typhoon proof building. Officially the sustained winds were 186 mph, but when I made a run up to COMNAVMAR to pick up the base messages (with the radio room flooded we handed off our inbound traffic the admiral's base) one of the radiomen there told me the last wind reading they had before the machine blew away was 206 mph.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
Truer words never said... I sat through Typhoon Karen on Guam in 1982... she blew right up the mouth of the harbor, sank 2 Royal Korean gun boats that were in repair and sans engines... just rolled the over and sank at the docks... washed all the tugs up on shore at the other end of the harbor, destroyed a few cars that were parked at the admin building and flooded my radio room on the ground floor of the building...She moved a number of cars that were parked next to the admin building across the parking lot and they all looked as if they had been shot with 00 buckshot.
On the civilian part of the iuland nearly wiped out the towns of Tamuning and Agana, and did wipe out Inarajan... leveled it as the eye passed over.
Back on the base, it blew about a foot of gravel into the swim pool just out side my barracks and over on Anderson AFB they lost one wall of a typhoon proof building. Officially the sustained winds were 186 mph, but when I made a run up to COMNAVMAR to pick up the base messages (with the radio room flooded we handed off our inbound traffic the admiral's base) one of the radiomen there told me the last wind reading they had before the machine blew away was 206 mph.
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Wow! A storm against which all others will be measured.
 
Just to update you, we dodged a bullet here. Fiona came ashore as category 3 hurricane around Arichat on the south coast of Cape Breton Island more than 200 km east of us. So we were on the outer edge of the storm and farm weather stations didn’t record any wind gusts above 70 km per hour. Reports of major damage are emerging now, however, from eastern Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island and the west coast of Newfoundland.

This is the end 30 foot section of a row of Honeycrisp apples with a full fruit load. The screw in anchor pulled out causing the end post to break and the first section of trees to break off. There was just one other section like this in the same block. A small percentage of fruit was blown off and the remaining fruit will be assessed for bruising as harvesting proceeds. It could have been so much worse.
We have no damage or disturbance around our own property. The new roof on the big barn just shrugged it off !
7B0035FE-8334-47AE-ADAE-425BCE923BC9.jpeg
 
Glad you weather the weather well...

Now we get to worry about our daughter and husband that has just closed on a new house in Ft. Meyers, Florida area.... they closed Monday and are scheduled to move in before October 1st... looks like IAN will be hitting just about Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. They're both working today and not sure about tomorrow... she is manager to a condo complex and he is a chef working at the country club in Ft. Meyers.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
Truer words never said... I sat through Typhoon Karen on Guam in 1982... she blew right up the mouth of the harbor, sank 2 Royal Korean gun boats that were in repair and sans engines... just rolled the over and sank at the docks... washed all the tugs up on shore at the other end of the harbor, destroyed a few cars that were parked at the admin building and flooded my radio room on the ground floor of the building...She moved a number of cars that were parked next to the admin building across the parking lot and they all looked as if they had been shot with 00 buckshot.
On the civilian part of the iuland nearly wiped out the towns of Tamuning and Agana, and did wipe out Inarajan... leveled it as the eye passed over.
Back on the base, it blew about a foot of gravel into the swim pool just out side my barracks and over on Anderson AFB they lost one wall of a typhoon proof building. Officially the sustained winds were 186 mph, but when I made a run up to COMNAVMAR to pick up the base messages (with the radio room flooded we handed off our inbound traffic the admiral's base) one of the radiomen there told me the last wind reading they had before the machine blew away was 206 mph.
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and because of this storm my favorite beer bar (as a matter of fact the only beer bar) on the submarine base , "Andy's Hut", was destroyed.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
Glad you weather the weather well...

Now we get to worry about our daughter and husband that has just closed on a new house in Ft. Meyers, Florida area.... they closed Monday and are scheduled to move in before October 1st... looks like IAN will be hitting just about Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. They're both working today and not sure about tomorrow... she is manager to a condo complex and he is a chef working at the country club in Ft. Meyers.
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I hope they and their new home are safe and secure, Chuck.
 
Wow and I worry about a little heat an drought. Both bad but we all survived. Glad to see Peter was just on the fringes and didn't sustain to much damage.
David
 
Glad to hear there was minimal damage. Do Honeycrisps make good cider? applesauce? I’m guessing you have all the fruit you can use during harvest season.
 
Ted Calver said:
Glad to hear there was minimal damage. Do Honeycrisps make good cider? applesauce? I’m guessing you have all the fruit you can use during harvest season.
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They’re primarily a premium fresh fruit apple, Ted, although there’s an industrial bakery here in the Valley that makes a “Honeycrisp” branded pie as part of their line. At least one local cidery makes a specialty cider along the same lines.
The pickers are trained to cull hard as they pick, but it’s heartbreaking to see rejects on the ground for a blemish. I eat several a day for sure.
 
Peter Rideout said:
Maybe the garlic family
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Waaaaay waaaay ahead of you there... 32lbs put up this year.. MIGHT be enough...

I did make 40 some gallons of honeycrisp cider one year now that you mention it, the benefits of apple country and a bin of seconds. It was really decent cider, I had one 5g batch of it I used a spicy saison yeast blend and that was a REALLY good cider as the yeast threw some light cinnamon/clove notes on top of the apples. Yum!
 
Certainly crazy weather this year. The neighbor is doing a second baling of hay this week on our fields. We weren’t sure he’d get another as dry as it was this summer. Luckily the Johnson grass took over, did well, and his cows will eat it. He was having to start feeding bales from his first cutting in July.

We were hoping to try a planting of pumpkins this season in the fields to see how they would do, but never got around to it. I was mowing a path to the creek a few weeks back and noticed what looked like pumping leaves covering the ground. Low and behold we had some ”volunteer“ pumpkins show up out on our creek bank. Seems someone was thinking of us. :)
 
Darren Wright said:
Luckily the Johnson grass took over
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Now there's a sentence you don't see very often. I guess it must not be TO bad weather wise to keep the cyanide down in it... That'll be fun to try to get rid of if you end deciding to do so.

Darren Wright said:
Low and behold we had some ”volunteer“ pumpkins show up out on our creek bank.
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We had a volunteer "patty pan" squash this year that's been outdoing all the other summer squash. Also a white pumpkin that I SURE as heck never planted (it might be a stray outcross, not sure.. but it's in the melon patch so I'm not sure how it got there). Sometimes the stray volunteers are the best plants, I usually leave a few unless they're really in the road just to see how it goes. Makes for sort of a wild garden.. but hey.. plants is plants.
 
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