Big Jobs Done - July 25, 2024 @goldenoakfarm

What we started with

On Thursday morning I was up at 5AM and working on editing photos. I’d taken a lot on Wednesday. I had to stop and get ready for the day at 5:45AM as my general helper and my #2 intern would be here at 6AM.

The job for the day was unloading the wood chip mulch from the truck and seeing how much of the New Herb walkways we could get done. They had the truck about ¾ unloaded when my brother appeared at 7AM. He agreed to reload the truck for us, so we went up to do that. My general helper drove the truck.

With the extra mulch we got this far on the walkways.

Those 2 had the mulching well in hand, so I wandered the rows deadheading and weeding. When I looked into the hoophouse, I had a surprise. One of the 5 ginger we’d planted had come up! It has until early October to grow, so we’ll see how far it gets.

Once I finished in the New Herb garden, I started weeding the New West garden and got half of it done by the time they finished.

We finished about 8AM and so I had them drive the truck back to the barn and we loaded 5 bales of hay in, as that was my guess on how much we needed.

But before we did that, I decided it might be wise to go fill the truck up with gas. The gas gauge doesn’t work and the last note was April that it had been filled. My general helper was going to drive the truck, but she had ridden here with my #2 intern and didn’t have her license.

So my #2 intern drove the truck and it was an adventure. She wasn’t used to the clutch. But we made it into town, through construction in 2 places, got the gas (tank only ½ empty) and back home. She was quite thrilled to have driven the beast with no mishaps. (My general helper got the photo.)

This is the garlic area in the Big garden we dug up a week ago. We made sure the old mulch was thick enough before putting down new mulch. I had guessed wrong and we had to go back to the barn and get all the rest of the hay.

There was a bale left but I’m sure we’ll find a place for it. Once we’d cleaned up from that job, we moved over to the Small garden.

Oh, and we found the first artichoke bud in the Big garden.

This was the mess of peas in the Small garden. The green peas had been beaten up too much by whatever was taking the peas and had developed mildew.

The sugar pods had been harvested in the last few days, but were still doing ok. So we went over them one last time and saved anything usable.

The sugar pod vines went into the compost and the green peas went over the bank because of the mildew. Then we cleaned off the fences as best we could, took them out and pulled the posts. We rolled the fences up and put them back in the garden as I have to mow on Sunday and we were out of time.

There might be enough peas and pods for supper.

In the South garden one of the sweet pea vines made it to the top of the porch side so I got a photo of its flowers.

After they left, I spent several hours editing photos and writing posts. I was pretty wiped out. It had been wicked humid in the morning, but dried out as the day went on.

I didn’t get the peas done, that will be on Friday I guess. I’m thinking about trying to get the West Shed garden done before the daffodil bulbs rot. It’s to be another sunny but not humid day.