Two days in a row! This morning, after I had fed everyone breakfast and the kids had all made it to the bus stop on time, I asked Mike what his plans for the day were. He indicated he had nothing specific on his plate, so I asked him if he was up to making a trip to the Ness farm and picking the gardens there.
And he was! On top of that, my leg works better today than it did yesterday, to the point where my knee lifts when I walk, which might sound silly, but after being hobbled last week and using a cane to make it to the bathroom after the epidural that was supposed to make things better, I was worried. Now, being able to actually control my leg and foot I was feeling confident enough to even try my hand at driving. That worked for about 5 minutes. Apparently sitting is still not something my body will allow. I made it from my house here in Navarre to Mound, which is not very far, before there was sudden pain in my low back and my leg started on fire. Thankfully I had Mike along to drive me as well. <smile>
The weeds had overwhelmed the bean plants, but with the lack of rain they had also dried down nicely, and Mike filled up several grocery bags with dried pods. There are still some maturing yet, and I am glad we did not frost here two nights ago when there was a warning. There is quite a bit yet that will come in. Today it was more Piggot Family heirloom cowpeas, some Mandan Red that I had missed, a few Dragon Tongue, Jacob’s Golden Cattle, Contender (meant to be a green bean, but we will see how it tastes as a soup bean) Valentine, and second pickings of the early cowpeas which have matured another set which is just starting to dry down.
Once the peas were picked, we kicked through the weeds and found another 6 grocery bags of Mochata squashes, and a few Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Acorns. Once again, I was very thankful to have Mike there to haul it all to the new Honda minivan (which of course replaces the one wrecked back in July) and I still felt well enough to make the trip back to take a look at the sunflowers and the Victor Kucyk 2175 corn.
The corn is completely dried down already. Harvesting has been undertaken by the local white tail deer, raccoons, and pheasants, the evidence of which was the fleeing animals and hundreds of partially or completely eaten cobs on the ground. We will still get plenty for our purposes, and Mike hauled out about 50 pounds of ears that met what selection I could do at this point. I would have rather been in the patch back when it first started drying down, but beggars cannot be choosers. Will take best developed cobs and put together enough to plant another acre next year, and the rest is chicken feed and corn meal. I talked to Lance Ness later in the day. He is going to find out if the corn harvester he bought even works later this week, and if not we will get all the kids out there with sacks to pick it as well as we can. In the meantime it is the best deer baiting station I have ever seen. Never before have I seen deer hitting dried corn this early in the year. They are really tearing it apart. Hundreds of acres of corn within a mile of this location, but what they want is this stuff. Maybe the deer saw the studies showing how some GMO crops shrink the testicles of rats in a laboratory setting. <laughing>
On the way home I purchased the fixings to make reuben sandwiches for Mike and Patti, as a thanks to Mike for all the work. He unloaded all of the squash and put it on the deck to cure, I made lunch for him, myself and Patti, then he headed out to knock around town, I shelled beans for a while, and then took a nap. Once again Mike, thank you.
