Winter Solstice on the Farm

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is the time of shortest days, lowest sun and least solar energy. The solstice usually occurs on 21 December. The croplands are not yet in the depths of winter: there can be snow and hard frost next to warm days when the air temperature rises.?Yet the crops and wild plants are hardly growing.

The Crops

There are four states to the arable fields: harvested and ploughed, showing bare soil and no crop; harvested and still in stubble, the crops yet to be sown; harvested late summer and sown in autumn with winter crops and now showing rows of green shoots; and in the minority, fields of ‘root’ crops and forages, sown earlier and now full and green.

The weather variable – the fields can be open, revealing the greens and browns of crops, soil and stubble; or else covered in sheets of ice or snow, or frozen-drenched in haar.?It depends in the?weather-patterns in the north Atlantic – a wind from the balmy south or a freezing down-draught from Iceland, the Baltic or Siberia. It can change day by day.

Of the winter crops, oilseed rape is perhaps the most sensitive; it needs to be sown as early in the autumn as possible, giving it time to get its roots down into the soil and a good canopy of leaf before the winter chill starts to cut it back. Delay in sowing much after late August will bring a yield penalty next summer.?Winter barley and winter wheat, and occasionally winter oat, should all be showing bright green rows of emerged shoots, but mostly not yet closed into?a complete leaf canopy.

The ploughed and stubble fields are most likely waiting for the spring sowings, three to four months to go.

Even though the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, this date also marks the beginning of winter. Interestingly, our seasons trail the solstice, due to thermal mass held by the oceans. Since these large bodies of water retain heat and cold, they affect the climate, typically making January and February our coldest months. Similarly, summer solstice and the beginning of summer mark the longest day of the year, on June 21, and generally our hottest months are July and August.

Historically, while the summer solstice is a time to anticipate the growing season and harvest, the winter solstice has been a time of celebration for the imminent return of light. Many communities and religions have created rituals and festivities around this time of year. Some ancient structures were also built to allow light to enter certain areas only on the solstice. Across communities and religion, the return of light following the winter solstice is cause for gratefulness and hope.

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Reference: https://www.growpittsburgh.org/urban-harvester-winter-solstice/