Rural Gardening: Adventures on Dirt Rich Farm (City goes Country), 0 by Hineni

Hineni wrote:
Thank ya'll for the encouragement and ideas :) It's nice to have someone to relate my daily experiences to. Thankfully, not every day is so adventure filled or I'd have to learn that neat fainting move the ladies of the silver screen used to do back in the good' ol days, with the hand to the forehead and the slow buckle to the ground. In my case though, I might fall on a dog or a gourd, but most probably a very thorny blackberry bush :) This week I was actually thankful when Monday came around - I got a little bit of rest since I have to work at the desk....LOL!

Last night's post-work garden clearing continuation was much more mundane. I guess in an hour and a half there is less chance for adventure :) About the only funny thing was my Jack got an asthma attack from snorfling some kind of bug, which caused the pups to fall to the ground in confusion as I went to get him some water. When I got back with the water, they crowded him out and they weren't in need!! I did uncover two more really large tomato plants back under the peach tree, and three more squash/gourd plants, all fruiting. I was lazier this time and just used a rock I found in the garden and sticks for my tomato stakes rather than hike down to the barn to get the 9-lb maul again. I'd already done two water lugs from the spring, hand laundered and dried another laundry load, fed the pig and done my dehydrating of squashes in addition to my regular day job. This hand laundering thing has got to find a process improvement along the way somewhere though. I need to get washboards I think, because my clothes aren't coming so clean, and we won't EVEN mention the socks :( Of course, nine hours of garden dirt vs 10 minutes of stomping and two rinses might not be enough to really get those pounds of dirt out of the clothes...lol!

I think I will try a big tub and washboards outside - should give my neighbors something more to shake their heads about. The elderly couple think I'm crazy for doing things 'the old-fashioned' way, and I haven't seen the other neighbor since I returned his furry-critter-containing trap and closed the fence up to the barn. I didn't recognize the animal, but it slept the hardest of anything I've seen! J thought it was dead because when he picked up and shook the cage it didn't move. But I showed him where it was breathing (mom thing left over from checking on babies when they are little). The neighbor called it a groundhog and said it was tearing up his garden. I looked up pictures and it does seem possible - but man it sure was cute. Apparently, even though it was 10 feet from my for...errr garden, his was far more appealing since it is all neat and tidy. Maybe it couldn't ID the gigantic mutant squash things as food either because heck, they are bigger than he was! I can't find any evidence that it ever entered my garden. Although quite frankly, I'm not sure what evidence I would be looking for.

Squash pickles? I'll have to look up a recipe for those. I'm the only one who really likes pickles, and I never thought of squash and pickles in the same sentence.

I don't have a Hersch crock - but Darius had already mentioned that one needed to go on my 'want' list for making sauerkraut and such. They are kinda pricey for right now.

We wanted some goats, but our housing for them is not secure, nor is it even cleared to where I would or could walk in it! I'm not sure if we put them in there, they would clear it, or if they would rather ravage my new baby trees on the outside of the fence. But for now, it's just not safe enough to try to handle some goats - for them or me! Probably when J gets up here full time, we'll tackle clearing the goat and chicken area and then get some occupants for those spaces. I think I'd be pressing my novice farm-wife status if I tried to manage all of that right now...LOL! Weeds don't move, so those I can tackle :)

On today's agenda is lugging the 50 lb bag of woods dirt that my neighbor dropped of for me down to my 'potting bench' (in some circles it's called an a/c unit). This is the place where I protect plants from the pups, as they love them to death with their teeth, especially the ones in the compostable pots. Many mornings I found homeless little plants clinging fiercely to some scant potting soil, with no container to be found. They were always the ones in those types of pots. So I moved everything up off the ground and the plant ravaging stopped some - until they discovered that one of my blueberry bushes was planted in an UBER sized one of those. It now sits on the potting bench too, sans many branches and all berries :( I have some seedlings to transplant and that woods dirt is so dark and rich, and all the babies I've put in it seem to just love it.

Here's a photo of my potting bench :) It's one of the few places I could actually work without pupslippers, because they like to get UNDER the potting bench. Now they are getting too big to fit under there and they just fight all around my feet. I feel like my two most common phrases are "NO PUT THAT DOWN" and "GET OFF THAT" LOL! As you can see, Darius was kind enough to give me...more squash :) And I have some watermelon to plant. There are also two winter squash (we think) that were formerly homeless babies that have been plunked into a handy container until I could transplant them. You'll also notice my pup-marked kneeling pad. Yes, they love that foamy, giving rubbery surface and I had to chase it down a few mornings before I realized it too, must be defended. The potting bench is a little more croweded right now, as it's holding two baby blackberry plants, some stinging nettle transplants and some other stuff I can't recall. I have to get my seedlings out of the wheelbarrow so that I can push it down to the sack of woods dirt (how in the world did that 77 year old man lift that thing???) in order to not pinch a nerve in my back again. I foolishly hefted it over a four foot fence yesterday (and yes, it took several tries...lol!) , and this morning woke up with several numb fingers as a result. A little typing got them back functioning though :)