The nature of this project, so far, has been somewhat manic. We find something that works, or a plan comes together, and you get very happy to have found it. The following day you hit a roadblock, or wall, and you suffer unhappiness until something better comes along or enough time goes by. That's been the simple path we have been walking for more than the four years we have actually be able to make a claim on this place. UP! Down. Up! Down. An emotional roller coaster which appears to be taking a toll on us since this is going on so long.
This week wasn't much of a down-turn, even though the end of last week was a very nice UP!
We started off the week with sunny, but cool weather. Farming sort of requires heat and we didn't get very much of that for the entire week. We had a bit of rain which came out of thick clouds that eventually delivered thunderstorms once they hit the Cascades on the other side of the city. The rain was heavy, but short lived. We thought about watering the gardens but because of the cooler weather didn't do it.
We harvested about ten pints of Strawberries all week due to the cooler weather. Five of them sold and five went into the freezer to wait for Winter's desserts. The end of the week was colder, but the forecast is for a lot of heat next week. Let's hope.
We have had many visitors this week. The normal amount of visitors is a solid zero so far, with the occasional someone dropping after being announced. This week people simply found the place, some even stopped.
One fellow drove by in his pick-up truck and offered to sell us some horse manure compost he had cooking for a few years. We agreed to a price but he didn't get it delivered until Friday morning (un-announced). The compost was of a superior quality, so we used a bit of it to make a new patch of garden and another chunk to compost the strawberry field. We cleared most of the weeds from the strawberries and laid a nice line of mulch between the rows of berries. This is doing what we have read ought to work to supercharge the organic berry field and replenish the nutrients used up by the plants. Not that these particular berries have had much of a chance to use thing up. Hopefully we will see some rapid growth in the Strawberries this week, the mulch will keep the roots cool and hold water down where the roots can find it.
We started off the week with the intention of "caponizing" (castrating) the one young rooster we found in the last clutch of chicks we bought. This is a squeamish subject because birds carry their testes inside, under the rib cage. I won't go into details except to say that the tools we bought to do the job proved inadequate. So our young rooster spent the week healing up while we waited for another re-tractor to come in the mail. We'll probably try again next week. I'll discuss the benefits of "caponizing" then.
On Monday we got e-mail from the County telling us that we would need a grading permit, something which doesn't seem ought to be required of us. I wrote back telling them why we didn't need it. We haven't hear back yet whether we are going forward or not. Such is the nature of this project. One week we're UP! The next week we're down.
The trick to surviving all of this is to keep moving, and planning what to do when we get the opportunity.
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