It seems that we haven’t had more than one sunny, dry day at a time for a month now! Our North garden is basically white clay and you can’t even walk in there without sinking to your shins in gumbo. And we’ve had enough heat that the weeds are having a field day … literally! Oh well, the garden plants do look good even if they are weedy.

Since Will can’t go haying yet because it’s so wet, he’s been doing odd jobs. One of them was driving down a well on the side of our spring basin. This was a homemade 6″ steel pipe with a welded, homemade point on the end, 10 feet long. First he dug a hole with our little backhoe and buried most of the first 10′ length. Then he welded another 10′ pipe onto that. He used our tractor-mounted post-pounder to drive it down. When finished, four feet was left, two feet of which will be buried. There’s water in the pipe but also silt from driving. So Will has to get our gasoline pump and pump out the silt. This well will supply our new barn, the buried line draining back into the well so it doesn’t freeze in the winter. (We’ll put a big round bale over the well head to make sure, just like we did for our house well.)

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Another job was burying the plastic irrigation line which runs along our main garden, below the plum orchard. This was always a “nasty” area because I couldn’t mow it with the lawnmower because the pipe laid in there … somewhere. He built a trenching plow out of junk (of course!) and with it hooked to the three point on our Ford 660, he was able to run a trench quite easily. Now the pipe is buried and I will be able to mow there. Hooray! By the way, this pipe is only buried about a foot and half deep but we completely drain the irrigation line in the fall so there is no problem with freezing.

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We had the Cook area garden club out last week and enjoyed about 30 people visiting and asking questions about our garden, orchards, and homestead in general. It was fun for all. (Of course, I wish my flower beds were better weeded…)

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But our cat, Mittens, doesn’t mind a bit. It’s her private jungle. She especially likes stalking through my Oriental poppies and hostas. — Jackie

5 COMMENTS

  1. Wally,

    No, he hasn’t and he’s about biting himself because of it, along with all the farmers around here. Some have had hay down for two weeks, being rained on nearly every day. Issh!

  2. Has Will been able to start making any hay between all the rain drops? Just wondering if the big new tractor is working well too?

  3. It all boils down to we get what we get…. It’s still raining here and down 100 miles south of us, near my son, Bill’s, they’re having major flooding with earthen dams threatening to give at any time. Luckily they live on a hill but even so water’s running through their yard like a river. It’s not so bad here but boy is it ever wet!!! The garden looks great, so far. (Please God, NO HAIL.)

  4. Miss Jackie, I hope your rains have settled and What does a frog look like?????Some weeks or more ago I squawked that my place looks like the days of Noah with ponding water everywhere. Well I am asking for rain now. My grass is still green, but people in our area seem to think their grass should be mowed every other day and now theirs is dried up. I let mine grow for the benefit of the honey bees who love our dutch white clover….I hope they will be able to make enough honey for themselves and me to reap some excess. Some years we get a crop and some years the bees need it all for the winter coming…..Rick

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