After three nights of intense worrying about freezing temperatures killing our crops, today is like a beautiful blessing. Some of the trees are starting to turn color but I think it’s partly due to stress from all the dry weather we’ve had. Yes, we had rain, but only a sprinkle or a little more. Not enough to do much good until the one we had on Tuesday. That one was very nice and gave us hope for a good harvest of nice Kuroda carrots, after all.
Yesterday, we hosted a group of folks from Orr, Minnesota, north of us. We toured the gardens and let them sample lots of tomatoes. Even to us, it’s amazing all the different flavors our tomatoes have. A lot of the kids remarked on that as they ate another and another piece. It was so fun!
Will’s waiting for haybine parts again. It seems they sent him the wrong ones — again! While he’s waiting, he’s been out in the woods, gathering up what we call small wood. That’s dead branches that are very dry but have no bark left. And he’s been cutting up our big, beaver-cut logs we had left from two years ago. The splitter is hooked up to the tractor and we’ll be splitting wood soon. Right now, he’s repairing the plank fence of the cow yard and working on the back of the run-in shed. Cows are hard on fences of any kind but stout electric and over the last year, they broke several of the planks on the fence. As we want to get them corralled for a while, until the gardens are harvested, to avoid any break ins, the fence has to be in perfect shape to hold them in. Of course, they’d rather eat green grass than dry hay!
Our apples are wonderful this year. Some of our young trees are starting to bear and a couple of the culinary crabs, like Trailman and Chestnut are simply loaded. I’ll have to get them picked and get busy making apple slices, apple juice, apple butter and applesauce. Today, I’m getting busy and seeding out the kazillion tomatoes waiting in crates out on the porch.
— Jackie
While I can’t speak for all of your readers/posters, I wish I could give you a few days of work.
We’re supposed to get close to 90 on Saturday – ugh especially since the humidity will creep up.
Perhaps this spate of warm weather will start the last of the slicing tomatoes to ripen. I hate to admit defeat but the I’ll be composting the paste tomato plants this weekend. I’ll take a closer look at the one slicer plant in case I missed some large enough fruit. Seed garlic should arrive soon. I’ll plant an additional row this year. I have decided to not plant any paste tomatoes next year. So the space will have garlic and potatoes.
I’ll query dad this weekend re: a potato patch at his place. We have access to very reasonable priced per bale of straw which we can use to mulch between rows. My grandparents (his parents) last garden was on the sandy side, perfect for potatoes. Might be a safe hobby for dad – I have a really bad feeling re: another pandemic.