Farm Friday, July 21st, 2023

Andrew Gaertner
3 min readJul 21, 2023

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Manifesting broken tractors

Maximilllan sunflowers — perennial flowers that we love. All photos by author.

So last week I mentioned that all the tractors were in working order. I should never say something like that. Never.

On Wednesday, I did some mowing in the orchard. As I was almost finished I heard a screeching noise and the tractor died and there was smoke coming from under the mower. Oops. I hit something! I hate it when things get left out in the grass because soon enough the grass grows up around anything left on the ground. Fenceposts, garden tools, hoses, rolls of wire fencing, rocks, firewood, tennis balls, bocce balls, soccer balls, frisbees. This is an incomplete list of items I have hit with the mower. So Wednesday was no exceptional day when I ran over a cleverly hidden roll of woven wire and popped a tire. Oh well.

Then I was using the tiller on the other tractor and when I parked it I heard a hissing sound and I looked to find antifreeze gushing out of a hole in the line. I need to fix that line and I hope the tractor didn’t sustain any damage to the engine. Grr.

Otherwise, the garden is looking good. We got a small rain that in no way alleviated the drought but perhaps staved off the worst effects. We started the garlic harvest. We mulched the blueberries and apple trees. Making progress.

Cucumber vine on our deck.
Grabbing the string!
Grabbing each other
I love it!
This is what happens when you leave a random roll of wire in an orchard.
Can you hear the hissing sound of necessary repairs?
Sheep and llamas on new pasture. Can you see the difference between the foreground and the new pasture where they are eating? Also, barn swallows in flight!
Lovely sunset
Tree frogs can be green or grey.
A family from the school made us a cake to honor the farm !!!!
garlic harvest!
Potatoes today.
Potatoes two weeks ago. Exponential growth phase.
Tomatoes today! We could be eating these in two weeks.
Pumpkins are filling in the row and now they are ready to vine out.

In writing news, I wrote a genealogy column for my local paper. The topic is sex outside of marriage and infidelity. It was fun to write and I will rework for Medium soon. I also wrote a one-page essay for our school publication about why we have a farm. I will include a reworked version of that one here, too.

Harvesting this week: Garlic, onions, swiss chard, radishes, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, basil, sage, thyme, parsley, cut flowers, kale, bok choy, and some wild raspberries.

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Andrew Gaertner
Andrew Gaertner

Written by Andrew Gaertner

To live in a world of peace and justice we must imagine it first. For this, we need artists and writers. I write to reach for the edges of what is possible.

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