A welcome rest at the end of the week

It’s been a good week. Lots of work. I’m glad that it’s the end of the week and we have a day of rest – a welcome respite every week. Normally, I don’t like to post without photos, but I decided to go ahead tonight, mainly because I didn’t take any pictures this week.

On Monday, my friend Jon came over (he’s coming over on Mondays and Wednesdays to work with me), and we dug footers for the porch and kitchen on the new house. We also planed some boards that will be used for the upstairs subfloor.

On Tuesday, the children and I worked in the garden. The potatoes were really needing weeded. The children worked on weeding Monday and Tuesday. Then, I tilled between the rows. The potatoes in this particular plot haven’t done as well as I would like. I think the wet weather after they were planted didn’t help. In the morning on Tuesday, I also bought 100 80-pound bags of concrete mix in order to be ready for pouring the footers on Wednesday.

Wednesday morning was the scheduled delivery for our coop order. Thankfully, Danny offered to get it for me. I had a few things to do to be ready for when Jon arrived. Once he got here, we began mixing and pouring concrete. Thankfully, I bought an electric powered concrete mixer from Lowes a few weeks ago when we started working on the cistern again. It worked great powered by my Yamaha generator (which is so quiet you couldn’t hear it over the noise of the mixer).

We started with the footer for the kitchen. I ran the mixer while Jon dumped the concrete and tamped it down. It took 54 bags to finish it, mixing two at a time. We used three bags of concrete for each of the porch footers (one for below each post). The mixer was just able to hold three bags worth, and we were able to position the mixer for each one so that we could dump straight into the hole. It all went very smoothly. We mixed 98 bags of concrete and got the job done. I was a little tired at the end of the day!

On Thursday, I cut some wood for the cookstove, and then the children and I worked in the garden. We planted some sweet corn, more green beans, zucchini squash, and cantaloupe and set out another 100 sweet potato slips (we now have 300 sweet potato plants growing). I also bush hogged where the cows have grazed during the last two weeks, mixed some manure with wet hay, adding to one of the compost piles, and tilled the field for growing beans and squash. The children and I ended the day with a swim in the pond, the same as we did on Monday and Tuesday.

Today, I replanted the corn field because it looks like only about 1/3 of the corn we planted two weeks ago came up. I don’t know why it didn’t germinate well. It may have been too wet. I do know that crows ate a good bit of it right out of the ground. I used the garden planter to replant today. It took a bit of work since I didn’t work the ground first (I didn’t want to disturb the corn plants already up). Hopefully, what I planted today will germinate and grow well with little interference by pesky crows.

I also planted our dried bean seeds. The rows in this field are 80 feet long (give or take 15 feet). I planted 4 rows of small kidney beans, 12 rows of pinto beans, 12 rows of red beans, and 12 rows of horticulture beans. I also planted several kinds of winter squash, some pumpkins, okra, and cantaloupe. Then, this afternoon, I went to town and bought some concrete blocks and mortar mix to be prepared for more work on the new house on Monday.

Oh, I also completed some class work (I’m teaching a six-week section during the summer session) in the mornings before everyone else got up. There are a few other things I did during the week, but the ones I’ve mentioned are the major ones. It was a good week with lots of things accomplished, and I’m glad that it’s Sabbath now!