This week we got things done. The potatoes are mostly dug. I got tired of all that quality time with the pitch fork (the soles of my feet are sore from stomping on it) so we took a leap of faith and hooked the plow up to the tractor. Since Rosie only kicks out about 10 horsepower (which is to say the same as a 9-14 foot motor boat, a 2 stage air compressor, and half as much as our riding lawn mower), she can’t pull the plow very deep. It took three beds and a lot of sliced potatoes to figure out how to get them out of the ground without damaging a significant proportion of the tubers, but in the end it worked brilliantly. Unfortunately we couldn’t make it work for the fingerlings, so those I had to resort to the trusty digging fork.
Wayne came back with his big tractor and worked up another two acre plot for us. He also knocked down the three acre field of Johnson grass that we are still trying to figure out how to manage. I got the cover crop seeded and disked in. It is a custom blend of soybeans, cowpeas, sun hemp, sudangrass and sunflowers. The last round of melons has been seeded in the greenhouse, and then re-seeded after some naughty mice dug up and ate every seed. Next year’s leeks have been seeded. Fall cabbage and Brussels sprouts are popping up in their seed trays. Randy has been hoeing up a storm in the sweet potatoes and mulching the chard so that we can try to hold it over until fall. The whole garden got watered but we can’t take any credit for that. After two days of agony watching dark clouds pass by all around us, we got a good soaking rain from 3 am to 5 am Saturday morning.
It is amazing how much work we can get done when the temperatures are a little cooler. Not only does the temperature govern our productivity, it also governs my mood. At 85 degrees I am optimistic, satisfied and enthusiastic. At 95 degrees I am agitated, frustrated and discouraged. Hopelessness and despair dawn around 100 degrees. When it is hot out, I oscillate wildly between a state of frantic, angry panic and the absentminded lethargy of depression. Ah, don’t you just love summer? If you want to know how things are going on the farm, ask Randy. I probably won’t be able to tell until September, when my rational brain comes back.
