Farm Friday, June 17th, 2022

Planting, planting, graduation, planting, weeding

Busy week.

The inside of our barn. We are almost out of last year’s hay. We will be getting more next week.

It is hard to see our beloved llama not be able to get up on her own. She knows that when people are coming that we will help her stand up, so as we get close, she starts to try to stand up. She can almost do it all by herself. Most of the time we don’t have to lift her up so much as just guide her with a little support. But when she gets to standing, her front leg shakes a while, and sometimes she goes back down. But often she can stand and walk around and sit back down gracefully. We are hoping for a full recovery, but it is looking less and less likely. There is hot weather coming, so we are thinking about shearing some of her hair off.

When we only have two people to lift up Precious, we wrap a sheet around her front and each hold onto it while we lift her from either side. Easier with three people.

My front yard is a weedy mess. I have heard the saying that the cobbler’s kids go barefoot. Well, this farmer’s yard grows weeds. But we do have a healthy iris cluster growing.

This is the three sisters garden. We finally finished planting the beans and squash, so now all we have to do is a little weeding. Planting peppers in the background.

Some deer were getting into the garden this week and eating the popcorn plants in the three sisters. We fixed up the fence and haven’t seen the deer back.

This week we planted A LOT. We finished planting about 150 squash plants and 300 bean seeds in the three sisters. We planted 300 pepper plants, 350 tomato plants, 100 eggplant plants, 1000 yellow dent corn plants, and 150 Brussels Sprouts plants. In the greenhouse, we also started 800 broccoli family seeds, 1200 sweet corn seeds, and 200 watermelon seeds.

I also got two non-functioning tractors running and used them to get a lot of weeds killed in the onions, pumpkins, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts.

Plus I spent HOURS mowing the acres of lawns. So much grass!

On Sunday, I got away from the farm and got to go fishing with my friend. She lives on a lake and took me out casting fly rods for bluegills. She brought her dogs and we caught a bunch of fish. Yay!

We call that a “mess” of bluegills.

On Monday we went into the city and attended the eighth-grade graduation. I don’t have any photos, but it was a lovely ceremony.

Then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday: plant, plant, plant, weed, mow, plant. Today, Friday, was the end-of-year gathering for the staff of the school in the city. So I put on my go-to-town clothes again and got a little weepy saying goodbye to some of my colleagues who are retiring or leaving. Good food though.

Our garlic is looking good.

This is where we will be planting our carrots in a few weeks. We cover it with fabric to try to kill the weeds before we plant. This method is called “occultation.”

Onions after I just cultivated them with the Allis-G tractor

Tomatoes and Eggplant, recently planted. This functions as a “before” picture. Also shadow of yours truly.

Little baby blueberries! Two weeks? Stay tuned.

This week I finally wrote my July genealogy column for my local paper. The Medium version can be found here: Please Don’t Call it the Irish Potato Famine. I know something about potato blight. It hits our potatoes and tomatoes regularly.

Okay. See you next week!