May 9, 2019 Summer Heat has Come

Our Hostas are thriving

 Planting season has finally come. The hundreds of baby plants sprouted in the Greenhouse over the past few months are almost entirely in the dirt where they can grow into production. And the Gardens are full of life. All thanks to the heat climbing over eighty degrees all week long and never going below fifty at night. Together we got most of the job done and still had time to do some extra-curriculars. By Thursday night the corn planted on Tuesday had already grown three inches, the cantaloupe and watermelons were also showing signs of settling in for the Summer.

Ann put plants into the rows, while I tried to stay in front of her by putting the final touches on the dirt by flame weeding and finish tilling.

The Runner Ducks
enjoying the sunshine.

We have nearly perfect growing conditions in nearly perfect soil. All of this is so much better than last year (the first year). The Strawberry fields are already a sea of flowers and many plants have half-inch green fruit. We're really hoping that the berries will be available for sale at our produce stand by the end of the month. The same for the first flight of lettuces, finally growing and ought to be ready to eat by June first.

We had a free three month tune-up for out e-bikes scheduled this week and somehow found the time to get them into Portland. It so happened that a farmer in Molalla had about a hundred feet of free wiggle wire channel listed on Craig's List, so we took the time to go get it (another piece of our Strawberry Tower puzzle showing up for free). We already had the Wiggle Wire and the chain, now we need about thirty ten foot corrugated steel panels for free and we'll be set to build the towers. After we got back we took the bikes into Banks to get some errands done.  A perfectly used day which ended in an early to bed scenario.

The Tulips are giving us
many new bulbs.

But just before bed-time I found five baby Runner Ducks Wednesday, again on Craig's List, and the decision to buy was an easy one. We have had so much fun with the five we already had and the eggs they give us are marvelous, so we decided to expand the duck flock just a little bit more. The babies will come to us on Saturday. About the perfect timing as the broody chick coop will open up next week. This weekend our ten new Orpington chicks will finally come out of our broody hutch and join the hens in the main coop. This is just right on time too, some of our older hens are beginning to die off. As we planned the chicken business we had thought we would eventually take older hens for food, but the hens we have are laying until the bitter end and so it seems that their lives will continue until they fall over. A few have fallen over in the past few weeks but we are pretty sure they had good lives, at least for the time they were living on our Farm.

Ten baby Orpingtons
Graduated into the
Big Coop this week.

It appears that our permit is being actively worked on. A County driveway permit guy came by today, to do his bit of our permit process. He tells me that we're going to have to replace the culvert along the road and this is not exactly unexpected, just un-welcomed, news. I also got our civil engineer to re-draw the site plan, another piece of the puzzle completed. Nobody can tell us how long the process will take, but it appears that each step will add something to the building budget. Needless to say, it is all part of the game. Building the house is winning the game so we're will to do whatever it takes.

As the week comes to a close we appear to be right on track, right on time, and moving forward every day. The list of things to do seems to finally be shrinking, or at least not growing, and with the permit coming we will soon be building our new home. All seems well on Creekside Farm.