August 15, 2020 A Month Later

 Time flies. I looked up and a month's time had gone by without an update for this journal. Not at all too disciplined, but things happen, and don't, that get in the way. The lack of  and update didn't mean that nothing got done.

The Farm is growing. Ann and our three tenant farmers have been very busy. The plots of MacGreggor's Market Garden we have allowed people to grow are doing very well. This is the third year of tilling for MacGreggor's Market Garden. It is small, but we have tilled in quite a bit of compost and so it holds water a bit better than the native soils. The weed seed bank has finally begun to burn itself out so weeds are not as big of a problem in this one particular patch of dirt. Building a vegetable farm from unimproved dirt takes time. We are tilling in tons of compost every year and planting quite a bit. The worms and fungus then have the stuff they need to do the work of permanently improve the dirt and make soil. We are trying to grow eighteen inches of soil depth but at present we're only about half way there. But the lack of depth allows some things to grow pretty well without a lot of watering and weeding.

• One couple who has adopted a plot of land to farm put in nothing but peppers grown from starts they had purchased. The peppers haven't really done well so far this year, but there is a lot of season left. 
• One of our perennial helpers, Beth, took a plot of land and her stuff is doing fantastically. Her Zucchini and tomatoes are huge and producing a huge crop. She has even got some sweet Ground Cherries ripening out there. 
• A local woman and her daughter took a plot and planted nothing but seeds. These have exploded in growth, she even has carrots up and growing. Her sunflowers haven't bloomed yet, but everything else looks very good.
• Our own plantings in this Garden had been pretty slow to grow, but we have been eating our own lettuces for about a month now and we'll be having beans and peppers pretty soon. We also put in quite a lot of peppers, grown from seed, and they are doing okay. But none of the peppers have produced much. 

In the Kitchen Garden we have begun harvesting potatoes and onions. So far there is about five bushels of various potatoes, not as much as expected. Since these rows are in very new dirt we are pretty happy for the harvest, but our plans to donate the excess to the food bank isn't going to be as large as we thought. We are realizing a large number of seed potatoes for next year's planting and the soil ought to be much better then. The Strawberries aren't as "ever-bearing" as we thought they would be. The Strawberry Patch is largely weed free now and the plants all doing pretty well, but there is only enough fruit coming for our own eating. The Peaches and Herbs Garden is doing wonderfully. Our Chives and Thyme is doing very well, enough so that our Runner Ducks are eating only enough to keep the beds tidy. Basil hasn't done real well but the soils are all new. Sapedeh (our Peach tree named for the person who gave it to us) is growing like a wild weed right now and I will have to prune it hard once the weather turns cold and restore its shape. And a few of the Asian plums we have allowed to continue are also doing very well, even though they were pruned to harshly to bear fruit this year. It takes a few years to grow a tree taller, or smaller, but we expect these tress to produce next year. Our corn, pumpkins, and sunflowers are all doing very well in the Kitchen Garden. We have many pumpkins ripening and the whole Garden is very colorful. 

From Sell Road the Farm looks like a Farm should. . . Tons of plants and animals everywhere. The Ducks are happy in their Garden of Ducky Delights. We re-homed the two Khaki Campbells because they turned out to be drakes. And we re-homed ten of our older hens as twenty of our new hens are now ready to join the flock. Ann is working very hard out there, but my time is spent building the new Farmhouse.

All of the Gable ends were 
finally built by last week. 

The big news on the Farmhouse is that the roof is nearly finished. This has been a long haul and our son Jack has been a huge help in putting the thousands of part together. Each of these parts is small when taken on its own, but all of them are considerably high off of the ground. We have safety equipment which is tied to the top of the roof, but this doesn't make the job of going up there any easier. This past week we built all of the interior structure and bracing in, making the roof very stiff, but there are some touch-up projects to do before we can have the thing inspected. 

In a week or so we will have our house framing and roof inspected and then we can begin to put on roof felt on to keep the rains out from above. We ordered the windows a few weeks ago, and already have the doors, siding, and vapor barriers needed to make the place waterproof on the sides. It looks like we will beat the rains and have the place ready to begin finishing the interior. This will all take time, but the house looks a lot like a house ought to.

All in all this post isn't very long despite all that is happening here. The heat has arrived, things are growing, and the house is at its full height and looking good. But there is so much more to do. So we'll just keep pecking away at it all in hopes that our dreams will finally be realized.