
Three AM and the alarm goes off. The wind machines are on in the back of Gary’s place and it is another frosty morning. This morning a few sprinklers were partly plugged. Even on the hottest sunny day, clearing plugged sprinklers is a wet and cold job. At least my car has a good heater and in thirty minute the coffee house will open. It may be a few degrees warmer than the other day but still there is ice on the aluminum pipes. The car thermometer reads a few degrees warmer than ground level. If it keeps freezing like this I will need to get a better way to monitor the temperature because it gets costly to run the pump if I don’t need to. There is always something to spend more money on and we do our part in keeping this economy going. I remembered we have an infrared food safety thermometer back at the kitchen. It measures the surface temperature, not air temperature. Tomato plants 34˚, strawberry leaves 30˚, asparagus 29˚ fava bean 24˚not protected, and the aluminum pipes 20˚!!! dry, 66˚ full of water. Even though the asparagus is below freezing, the melting and freezing of the water from the sprinklers keeps internal parts from hitting critical temperatures. A little higher humidity this morning; lots of white frost. It’s pretty in January not now.