August 16th, 2019 Back to Work

The Summer Supper is happening!
Come one, come all!

After nearly nine weeks of laying around I returned to work. Not just this, I also returned to driving a car, wearing regular shoes, and thinking ahead toward a better future. Not everything is as it once was, but a bunch of stuff is.

On Tuesday I noticed that I could move my toes without much effort. This may not sound like much, but it signaled that the swelling in my foot was beginning to go away. On Wednesday morning I was able to bend my ankle enough to pull on a pair of jeans. The work of the farm doesn't really match wearing shorts, so work pants are better. By Wednesday night I could feel the tendon flexing along the inside of my arch. Thursday morning I could begin to make out an ankle bone, and that was about it. I strapped on my ski-boot styled foot support and went to work on Thursday morning and did nearly an entire day's work for the first time. Just after lunch I took the boot off and replaced it with a pair of matching runners. In normal shoes I can drive a car, but I still need to use a crutch on one side to keep some of the pressure off of the foot as insurance. All of this might give my foot doctor a headache, but I really needed to go back to work despite his anxieties.

The Farm is looking good, things are happening.

We are getting about a quart of large strawberries out of our patch every day. Most of these go straight into the freezer, some go on our plates. Lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, onions, and corn are all present in at least one of our meals every day. Soon the zucchini, melons, and beans will begin to show up on our plates too. There still isn't enough being picked to open the produce stand, but we are selling produce to Ann's circle of friends and we donated enough lettuce to St.Vincent food bank to make a bunch of people happy. Giving food away was always part of our plan, so at least something is going according to some plan. This  doesn't happen much.

Most of the damage from the tree fall in mid- June has been either cleaned up, or waiting the lifting of the burn ban. We will start putting up a replacement greenhouse soon enough and the irrigation stuff as well.

We will also need to build a shelter for the Summer Supper Party in September. Make sure to RSVP on the form above this article if you plan on coming. We will announce the menu soon, but the food will be good and the drinks cold. Last year we fed fifty or so people, this year we are hoping for another twenty-five more to come.

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Our young hens began giving eggs this week. The eggs are good, but will be a bit small for a few more weeks. Orpington chickens are very large and their eggs are large as well, so the little eggs are sort of comical, but tasty. Ann delivers large eggs to our loyal customers, the little eggs stay here for personal use. Our duck eggs are selling well and our two new hens gave their first eggs this week. As it turned out only two of the five new Runner Ducks turned out to be hens so we are in the process of finding homes for the three young drakes we do not need. These drakes are very pretty so it shouldn't take long to find places to re-home them to.

The rodent problems have gone away for the time being. Hunting the squirrels and rabbits with a rifle has worked, but we are not at all happy to have shot those who were eating our crops. We haven't seen any more for a few days so maybe the new plan worked.

We got a message from the County that they needed a few engineering questions answered, so the permit is being worked and we might be able to build some day. I got our structural engineer on the job and we should have the questions answered pretty soon, but I'm ever more skeptical about the building phase of our project happening this year. Not building this year puts our whole project at risk since making money really depends on having a house and kennel. The timing is getting uncomfortably close but we are not panicky about it just yet.

All in all, this was a really good week. The weather has been great, nothing bad happened, and we are somehow beginning to look forward to a brighter future. All seem as it ought to be once more and we are very grateful for it.