Coronavirus Farm

I'm not entirely sure, but I think we're in the third week of "stay-at-home" life. Adam has been sick, not with Covid-19 it turns out, but with Mono. In addition, both mowers and our weed-eater were experiencing springtime refusal to operate, and new parts were ordered. Today, at last, we mowed. 

The beds in the house lot: herbs and some flowers

In the herb garden by the house, I put some itty-bitty basil plants out today.

This is the only annual I plant in my herb beds. The old herb bed looks a mess, but it's chock full of lemon balm, tarragon, cilantro, oregano, thyme, and a bit of mint that I rip up regularly.

The two teepee affairs are for sweet peas.

This horrible mass of weeds is actually many daffodils, whose greenery I must give a chance to yellow so they will bloom next year. My eucalyptus tree died there. Soon a huge tub of cherry tomatoes will sit there.

Weedy pasture:

The buttercups are blooming in the pasture.

In the veggie garden, the peas are lovely!

 We have a resident black snake living behind/inside the metal liner around this bed. He introduced himself to me yesterday.

The strawberries are hiding under a cover.

I picked four yesterday.

We're eating as much asparagus as we can. I'll freeze the leftover.

asparagus bed

I'm digging out the bed for okra, which I should sow soon.

The soil temp needs to be warm for okra. It grew so well here last year I'm doing more this year.

My year-old elderberry gave me five little elderberry starts this spring that I've put each in her own tire bed.

We'll see if they decide to live.

Tiny little thing.
What else? I'm awful with flower beds, but a little clump of Sweet William and something-else-I-should-remember, are blooming. See the encroaching grass, vetch, and onions? I'm more interested in my herbs.

And I put 3 lemongrass plants in the ground. There's a Sedum a friend gave me a cutting of.

I put it in the bed and it lived! You never know.

You'd think, being stuck at home, that we'd be vigorously addressing our 4 acres and being productive. Adam is too sick and tired to do much. And honestly, I'm giving myself a pass on the usual guilt-trip of productivity and accomplishment. The world seems fractured, living is scary, the immediate future is woefully uncertain, and I find it hard to focus on much. This is not despair I speak of, just stress. In God's hands, our lives are safe and we will be well. But if the grass grows high and the asparagus goes to seed, I will not worry over it. Don't you either. Much love from the farm!

We Are Diggin' Fall!

As I mentioned before, Adam has been push-mowing this big field. The tidy piles look cute, but that tall stuff on the left/top of the photo? That's the chest-high goldenrod weeds he still has to tackle. Thankfully, a friend with a tractor offered to bush-hog the rest of it for us. He came today.

Today I reminded Adam it was time to check sweet potatoes. They've been in the ground since mid-June. Sure enough ...

 

That's only 5 plants' worth. There are many more to dig. Yay!! I love sweet potatoes. I wonder how long it will take me this winter to tire of them? I think I need to find a good sweet potato pie recipe.

For lunch today, I made some avocado dip with a few things off the farm: egg, a few last tomatoes, and beautiful cilantro:

Our self-seeding cilantro is just lovely:

And my newest hen Autumn laid her first egg this morning!

 She's just a teenaged hen, so her first egg is small. It's on the left, below. Next to it is one of Punkin's eggs. Punkin is a year older. Hens' eggs get larger as they grow older; however, they lay less often. Your "jumbo" eggs in the grocery are from older hens.

Adam continues to lay thick mulch on our house beds. It's like putting the plants nighty-night for the winter.

 A wonderful addition to our farm this weekend is this nice extension ladder that we bought from a friend for $50. It's so good to have it; now we can begin to work on our house eaves/roof/leak. 

 We've had no rain in weeks, and everything's quite dry. But the sky is darkening today, and the clouds are billowing, and it feels like rain. My poor mum (from last year) is trying hard to bloom.

 Yesterday afternoon was nice enough outside to sit in the pecan orchard with the dogs. I've been picking up pecans every day. It will be a banner year.

 That's Ned's head. We looked out over the big field and listened for geese. He and Baby wrestled and competed for my hand. They're just playing.

I have a good friend who's a potter. We both sold our wares at the music festival in Oriental on Saturday. She pulled out this exquisite chalice -

She offered it to me as a gift because it had a hairline crack. Wow! I just love it. It looks like fairytales and Tolkien's world and tree nymphs. I put a small candle in it today while I painted.

That's it from the farm. We're still drying loofahs and picking green beans and wondering how the white potatoes will do. But right now, things are pretty good on the farm.

Adam's Labors

 Nearly every day, Adam mows this big field for a few hours. He was unable to scythe it in early summer because of his hand injury. Now the grasses and weeds are thick, so he must push-mow it. He needs it when it's still alive and "wick." This puts the nutrients into the compost. His helpers:

When he mows, the mice and rats scatter in the field. Baby and Ned love to chase and pounce them. You'll see their tails curling stiffly over the grasses, thrashing back and forth in joy as they dig for mice or rats. Adam says he's run over a couple of snakes too - eek!!

 While in Nebraska visiting his mother, Adam learned again how to make "cement" leaves. Gloria has made many of these, and oh-my-goodness, are they beautiful! So Adam made a few upon returning home:

 The small ones above are hosta leaves. He also made a huge elephant ear leaf. 

 

He did this outside on our patio tables, covered in plastic. He got special gloves and made up the masonry mix in a tub.

 

Then he did a planter using a bath towel.

 Yes, that's an upside-down bath towel, hardened with cement. Pretty cool, huh? 
The leaves will lie on the ground over winter, drying very slowly. We'll use them as pavers and ornaments in the yard. If we have leftovers, I'll sell them at the market.
He also saw a lady's brick edging in Nebraska and came home with designs upon our tea bed:

 He's been raking pine straw and spreading it in the shade beds.

(Ooo - that photo was a little tilty!!)
 I'll brag on Adam a little now. He sometimes tells his parishioners that he is a "full-service pastor," and he does mean it. One dear friend in our church needed someone to assemble some shelving that she'd ordered. She brought it to Adam, and he finished the second one today, and we took it to her house. Another elderly man in our congregation has needed extensive help with some financial issues he's facing. Adam's spent many hours at his home, helping him with all of it, organizing, making phone calls. So much of the work of a pastor is, by definition, unnoticed and even confidential. If you think your pastor (especially if he has no staff to help) just sits around all day thinking up a 20 minute sermon, you probably don't know all that he's doing. Some home visits and hospital visits are rather private too. It's a private occupation, in fact, low-key, but always on call. I'm proud of my pastor husband and all he does for people.

Loofahs and Chickens

 I've enjoyed my loofah plants so much, and they have reciprocated! I'm excited to report that I have about 25 loofahs. On the vine, they are dark green:

 

I wait until they are turning yellow before I pick them. Then I put them on the front porch to dry where it's quite warm.

 The first loofah I harvested eventually turned black. Then I cut the tip ends off and stripped all the husk and flesh off -- it's basically a very fibrous squash, and I'm trying to get down to just the fiber.

 That's the innards, the fiber, after I've let it dry for a couple of weeks. I shook its seeds out.

Seeds from one loofah are more than I received in the one seed packet I ordered. I'll never have to order seeds again!

 I then placed the dirty loofahs in a bowl with dish soap and bleach, and they soaked. See how they cleaned up?

Above is the middle section that had the most dark flesh from the "fruit" stuck to it, and there are a few specks left, but I'll get it cleaned out. I plan to sell the loofah sections at the market, perhaps with a slim rope attached. Or I'll put them into a soap batch, selling the soap with the loofah cut right into it. I've done that before, but not with loofah I've grown myself.
And now, a few chicken pictures. These are my young birds. The dark one is the rooster, Arthur.

 Aren't Sylvie's tail feathers pretty?

 This is Lady Grey. She's half silkie.

 Arthur is my friendliest bird ever. He comes quite close and seems to trust me.

 Each morning from about 8:00 till lunch, Adam is out in the big field, mowing the tall grasses down.

He's making compost, as usual.