The work of summer

There’s an amazing amount of work to be done every day. We keep plugging away. I’ve been devoting a lot of time to our house project. We’re making some good progress. You can check it out on my other blog, if you haven’t already.

The children and I have enjoyed swimming in the pond several times. They actually ask me if they can go in the pond nearly every day. Usually, there is no real reason not to. The pond isn’t holding water as I would like it to. Water seeps out in several places around the dam. I don’t know if this is something that will correct itself over time as the dam settles more, or not. It’s not a fast leak, but the water level has gone down a fair bit.

We’ve been enjoying some produce from the garden. I didn’t get in a hurry to get the garden planted this spring, so we’re not enjoying things like tomatoes and squash yet. But, those things won’t be too long. We’ve had some nice salads, and the sugar snap peas were awesome! We had new potatoes with our first picking of snap peas a couple of weeks ago. The asparagus did quite well this year, especially considering the small size of our asparagus bed. I think I need to set out about a 1,000 plants!

We’ve been eating fresh black raspberries for the last two weeks. We’re also getting blueberries off of our older plants. Soon, it will be time to begin picking blackberries. Some of the early ones are ripening.

Yesterday, we got the tomatoes staked up. I like to keep them mulched and hold them up off of the ground. I used to let our Roma tomatoes sprawl out, but now I stake them up, too. They are so much nicer to pick and do better this way.

I drove small posts in the ground and strung baling twine I took off of bales last winter between the posts to hold up the Romas. I’m trying a new method for the Mortgage Lifters: using livestock panels in an A-frame. I learned about this method from another individual who regularly uses it. It is certainly a quicker, easier way to stake up tomatoes.

We’re growing pole beans this year. Usually, I plant bush beans. I built a frame work using sycamore poles for the beans to climb on. I may add a few more poles. I have one more row to take care of. I’m thinking I’ll use the livestock panels that we had for the peas. I’m going to save the rest of the peas for next year’s seed. So, they are about done with the panels.

The boys have been working on mulching the plants in the garden. They mulched the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and squash so far. There are still some more sweet potatoes and tomatoes to mulch. Maybe this next week.

The children, dad, and I spent some time in our small corn field this week. The crows about ruined our corn crop by eating the corn out of the ground before it germinated. I replanted between what came up the first time that the crows didn’t get, but the stupid birds ate most of that, too. I don’t know how well it will produce, but there is some corn growing in the field. The weeds were threatening to take over, though. I tilled between the rows, and then we all worked in the rows with hoes. It was hot and sweaty work, but we got most of it done. I have 4 or 5 rows to do this coming week.

I was able to haul one load of manure and bedding from the sale barn last week. This is a slow time of year for them. Also, since they had to do a thorough cleaning a month or so ago after the flood, there’s been less need for cleaning out. When I can see myself clear to do so, I’m going to start hauling some of the old sawdust from the sawmill.