Claire and I got out to the Ness farm again, earlier today, with a stop at the Maple Plain feed store to get a bag of chicken feed. This was the day for me to finish the spring planting here, and do maintenance.
First order of business was to weed the potatoes with a stirrup hoe, and then finish mounding them with the tiller Lance bought. It does work slick to hill the potatoes with that little tiller. You just stand on one side of the row of potatoes, and drag the tiller at high speed down the other side of the potatoes. It grinds up the path space between the rows, kills the weeds, and piles the dirt up nicely. Once I had that done, I hauled manure with a wheelbarrow to the flour corns I planted a few weeds ago and side dressed all of the rows with it.
before
after
Once that was done I dressed the tops of all of the squash hills that I planted earlier in the year with the old horse manure, and Claire followed me, watering them as we went. Now that I have weed whipped all of it, they are much easier to find and are growing well. There is not a squash I have planted that is not 80 days or less to maturity. With our cold spring I am just not taking any chances on not getting a crop in this fall
I did put in more squash hills today after assessing the area and figuring I could fit another 20 hills around the perimeter. I finished all of my Arikara squash seed yesterday with the 48 hills I did then. There are a lot of them planted at the Red Wing garden as well. Today I had brought a bushing butternut I have selected for three years now that gives a larger crookneck (compared to the Butterbush) squash and I put in 16 hills of those. I finished it off with 4 hills of yellow zucchini.
At some point in the day today I put cardboard down on 60 feet of path, and hauled wheelbarrows of horse manure mulch to cover it, and tilled up a few new beds for Heidi to seed, or I will use them for fall root crops in a couple of weeks, Piper caught and ate a 13 stripe gopher, and for now, the planting there is done. Combined with the squash hills I planted earlier in the year there I should have close to 100 hills of squash in at that location.
David called as I was finishing up the squash and asked if Claire and I would come over for dinner. Dinner? it was already after 5pm. I had been out in the sun pretty much constantly for 7 hours. Claire and I packed things up and we headed home to drop off the dog, planning on going to David’s for dinner.
But I hit a wall while driving. Not literally of course, but I stated to fall asleep at the wheel of the car and it is just a 15 minute drive. I called David up, apologized, but said I was going to go home and pass out, which was what I did. Patti drove over at some later point to pick up Claire and check on me. Guess I burned myself pretty toasty. She says that the back of my neck is purple. <sigh> oh well. Patti got the chicken run framed in at David’s, and she and David built a chicken tractor so they can move the chickens around the yard to have them graze and eat bugs.
I woke up when they all got home, groggy as though I had been drinking. I think I need to drink a lot of water tonight before I go to sleep again. Good lesson for me: Even if it is only 68 degrees, you can get heat exhaustion and a sunburn.
