On Friday night Nell and I drove down to my parent’s home which gave Nell and Patti some apart time (sorely needed for them) and so that I could get an early start in the gardens down there. I had a trunk full of seeds and plant, a car full of steel posts and tools, and a mind full of plans. It is now warm enough to plant beans (finally) and I still have a few corn types to get in, as well as some squashes.
When we arrived it was dark. My mom asked me if I had taken a look down at the garden. Told her no, and she then told me she had dug out a lot of strawberry plants from her garden and put them by the entrance to the big garden in the field in case I wanted to fine a home for them down there. (I do) so in my mind, the first thing I would do the next morning was fluff up one of the beds I had made and get those in the ground.
It was a rough night. Just didn’t sleep well, and I slept in without really feeling rested. Nell and I got up at the same time, went upstairs, and had coffee cake and coffee while my parents were preparing breakfast for the B&B guests (roundbarnfarm.com check it out if you have not already) and then I headed out to the field. Nell was going to play inside until I got the garden tractor and trailer so I could give her a ride.
This is the pile of strawberry plants I found waiting by the entrance to the garden. Inside the garden I found this:
Very little of what I had previously planted was obvious in evidence. The broccoli planted with onion sets and garlic bulbils I could see. The pea trellis with onion sets was doing ok. The cherry bushes and apple trees you could see. But in places, the weeds and sunchokes we up to my waist. I gave a quick walk-around the garden and was really frustrated. The white flint corn I had planted was engulfed in weeds taller than my knees. The grape vine area was even higher. The Wamneheza corn was not much better, but having been planted (and the ground worked) later I could see the corn in a few places. While walking through a flock of wild turkeys that had been obscured by the weeds erupted from the greenery and took off. One of them flew low, right through the fencing, tearing a 4 food wide hole in it. I was so discouraged that on my way back to the house for more coffee I was thinking of driving into town, getting a tiller, and turning most of it back under again.
After another cup of coffee up at the house, accompanied by another piece of coffee cake, I decided to make a real assessment of the area. Nell and I went out to the pole barn, got the weed wacker and a tank of gas, and drove that along with some other equipment down to the garden. Since all of the beds have been raked up to work as raised beds, I walked all of the rows, cutting the weeds between them down to the ground. Then I went around all of the fruit trees and rhubarb transplants, taking all of those weeds down. Carefully I worked through the grape vine area, finding each one and taking all of the weeds down there.
Once that was done, I got on my hands and knees and started weeding out the white flint corn, carefully taking each weed out individually until I could find the seedlings, and then cleaning up the hills until each row appeared.
After working through all of that, I turned my attention to the Wamneheza corn. This was nowhere near as tall, and in some areas the broad-leaf grasses growing made it difficult to tell what was what, so I just weeded out the tallest weeds, leaving the rest to grow until I could tell which was which.
It was getting to be mid-afternoon by now and I had spent 7 hours in the sun. Nell had been a good gopher, keeping me supplied with water or Woodchuck cider (good stuff) as I worked, but I really wanted to PLANT something instead of just tearing out weeds. I reworked a 40 foot long bed near where I have the broccoli bed, we spread landscaping fabric over it, and I started putting dirt over the edges of it so that wind could not move it. After working my way 2/3 of the way around the fabric I found myself uncontrollably sweating and lightheaded. I quickly packed things that would not do well with rain (bags of seeds) and drove the tractor back up to the house, got myself into a cold shower for about ten minutes, and then I laid down on a bed and passed out for about 45 minutes. Heat and I don’t mix really well, and the 7 hours in the sun had taken it’s toll on me.
When I awoke I felt much better and Nell and I headed back out. I finished getting the landscape fabric edges covered, and started putting in dwarf tomato plants, which I continued to do until the tornado sirens went off. The bed has room for about 50. I got in 41 by that point.
I had my back to this, and had not seen it sneak up on me.
I quickly packed everything up again, got Nell inside, and pulled up the weather radar on my parent’s computer. I could see a glob of dark purple surrounded by red just north of their home, but due to how slow their connection is, and how old their computer is, I could not tell if it was going to hit there. My mom told me that she thought the worst of it was going to slide to the north of us, but that the radio had indicated strong winds and damaging hail were in the heart of the storm. On the off-chance all of it missed the garden I quickly hauled 15 gallons of water down to the garden and mudded in all of the tomato plants I had put into the ground, and then just planted more squash in the corn where my weeding had exposed where previous plantings had not germinated or had been eaten from underneath by rodents until rain started to spatter and it was dinner time.
Nell had taken a break from working with me in the middle of the day and gone into Red Wing with her grampa to get things for dinner. He let her pick out what she wanted, which apparently was corn on the cob and new york strip steaks. We stuffed ourselves on that and home made sourdough bread, which had been heavily buttered and grilled. After all of that, we packed up and headed home. My back survived the day, but it was not what I had planned on getting done. Never seems to be.
On the drive home we drove through where the heart of the storm had passed. At my parents all it was, was a spattering of rain. Just to the northwest, trees had been stripped of most of their leaves, and there was deep standing water in the fields to either side of the road. Glad it didn’t hit us. Storms like that are going to make for a busy Tuesday when I get back to the office.
