Farm Friday, October 21st, 2022
Cold nights and tired bodies.
Last Friday I wrote about how cold nights were coming this week. The weather people were not wrong. Monday morning we woke up to 20 degrees (F) and Tuesday was even colder. In anticipation of the cold, I put out a call on the local list serve to see if anyone wanted to pick potatoes with me on a Sunday afternoon. I’d love to show you photos from Sunday, but I was too focused on digging spuds to take any pictures. My friend Murphy came over and we grubbed out potatoes behind the tractor for a couple of hours. It was sleeting off and on and our hands were freezing. When we finally ran out of daylight, we had pulled about 800 pounds out of the ground and stored them in the root cellar. Not a bad haul.
Last Friday afternoon my co-workers and I moved all the pumpkins and squash to the greenhouse, where the heater can keep them from freezing. When I saw all the squash in one place, it was clear we needed to give some away. We have so much! On Tuesday I put a note out on the list serve for anyone to come by and get free squash, as long as they don’t mind that the outside has some slight damage. We have given away at least fifty squash so far. Also, on Wednesday, we loaded a school van to bring a hundred pumpkins to the local food shelf.
This week was a hard week. In addition to working to bring in the potatoes on Sunday (my “day off”) we were down a sick staff member (missing one out of four) for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, just when we had a new group of junior high students come out for the beginning of a three-week farm experience. I’m tired, but I get a real day off tomorrow.
In writing news… Big week. I published my forensic genealogy story and a story about why I am not afraid of nuclear war (even though I probably should be). And I also put a draft of my upcoming Vocal media contest entry dragon story up on Medium. I want feedback, so please read and comment.
