Sept. 2, 2019 A nice week

The Farm started throwing us nice days this week. Every one of them a winner. Warm in the daytime, cool at night. A wonderful week. To be honest, since the tree fall a few months ago, my love for the place had started to wain just a bit.  This week brought all the love and enthusiasm for it back to me.

The Market Garden started to produce some really nice vegetables this week. Peppers, Beans, and Cucumbers all started producing as they should. There are twenty-two Sugar Baby Watermelons growing on the fifteen feet of row-space that made it through the rodent wars. The Corn is giving us six to eight nice ears daily too, and we even got a few zucchinis this week, so we know there will be way too many of both of these things in another week or so. Tomatoes are everywhere, particularly the yellow pears, which are bit sized and wonderfully sweet. Ann made Camp Creekside Pico de Gallo using fresh produce and a ton of fresh cilantro and we are eating it on everything. Plus we are either selling or giving away a whole lot of good food. Ann started fermenting pickles. Looks like hell, but this is how our great grand-mothers did it, and they were smart, so we'll have to see the result. Fermenting pickle means they can live on the counter instead of our way too small refrigerator.

My first effort.

I began a new craft project this week, carving Feather-stone into landscape decor. So far I have done one good rustic pagoda, and one little frog house which came out nicely.

Feather-stone is a volcanic glass, something a bit lighter than pumice. It carves very easily and looks great without much finish work. We had always planned for the Farm to produce craft items and this one is the first of many we hope to someday make for people to buy.

This first one was quick and fun to make. the picture on the left shows what an unplanned hour can do with very few tools. I have since bought a few new tools and taken the time to finish it. Afterward we plan to "paint" it with a moss and yogurt solution so that it has a sense of age to it.

We started in building the shelter for the Summer Supper on the twenty-first. Make sure to sign up using the form at the top of this page. It will be a good time and everything is provided.

On Friday morning we got the revised engineering drawings for the new house delivered to the County. The counter girl said this is the last hurdle, but we're not celebrating until we have the approvals in hand. There's a good chance that we will get our permits too late in the year to start building. Rains come in less than two months and the mud keeps large equipment from moving on the Farm. Perhaps we'll get the foundations in before the rains come. . .  If so we might get the framing done before Winter sets in. . . And if the stars all align and the Winter is dry we might even get the roof on it so that we can begin making a house.  But the Summer weather has been cool this year, so we'll look hard at things before deciding.

Friday after noon brought the final word on Laffee Taffe. She is going to have at least five puppies in early October. It is not entirely good news, but we have made peace with the idea and are getting ready for their coming. We started to build an eight by eight foot addition to the back of the tiny home to give the babies somewhere to play during the day. It should be done this week. In mid-September our two new females will arrive from Idaho, so things will be a bit "poopy" around here until December when the babies go to their new homes. Christmas Basset Hound Pups are always the perfect gift for anyone eight to eighty. We had our little hot tub put back together last week and spent nearly every evening soaking the pains of life away since then. But we had to empty it this morning to begin building the puppy room extension, so we'll be sad for a few days before it heats back up.

All said and done, this has been a good productive week and it looks like there will be another following after it.