The corn is now well on its way to being knee high, and the beans have begun to sprout. The garlic scapes are ready to be picked and within another week, or possible two the actual bulbs will be ready to come up too.vearly July means sweating in the full sun as we dig up several thousand bulbs of garlic. A good chunk have to be set aside for planting in November, but those get pulled apart into individual cloves for planting. The pumpkins have gone in the ground or are in the process of going in. I’m not sure where my brother in law is in that process. I don’t know if it’s too early to be putting his watermelons in the ground yet or not. I’m no farmer, I just help out with manual labour sometimes when my work schedule permits. I split wood and gather rocks, and wander around the grounds every morning to make sure nothing’s being disturbed, or that people don’t think they can camp out or squat in the outbuildings there. I sometimes greet the conservation authority there when testing the wells, or inspecting the houses on the property. I don’t drive the trucks or tractors (though I could because I have driven several makes and models of tractors over the years).
I prefer to buck and split logs in my spare time. Or prune trees and shape shrubs. I’ll even go so far as to cut the grass and weed eat (when I actually have my weed eater at hand that is.) I’ve gone a month without my Echo SRM-230 thanks to repeat delays with the service department. But I digress, I’ve moaned enough about those delays here, I don’t need to continue. Do I prefer wood splitting. Usually with an axe, but if we did get a hydraulic log splitter I wouldn’t refuse to use it, you know what I mean. It feels good to watch one pile shrink and make another pile grow. Very satisfying. Goals!
It’s now Monday. The last Monday of this school year. Kids are done by noon on Thursday. Then it’ll be 9 weeks of mayhem! W00t-w00t! **Distant horn noises*”.
Soon my kids will be in grades seven & four respectively. Crazy. Seems like just yesterday I was walking them into their first day of kindergarten. To me they are still my tiny itty bitty little toddlers, waddling around babbling, trying to make the sounds of real words. Not this pre-teen, and accompanying kid getting really close to double digits. They’re like real people now. Not my tiny little terrors trying to evade naps, or being spoon fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Littles I had to carry absolutely everywhere 100% of the time, regardless of how my back said about it. Oh how time does fly.
For now the farming looks to be under wraps, and I’m waiting on the call to come dig garlic, or if the weather stays cool, go split some more wood for the green wire bins. We have massive tree stumps to burn, so we can start to use the lower quality split stuff to Stoke the flames and remove those ground based obstacles.
I took some time this weekend to prune back our fourteen year old cherry tree, as it is growing right under the power lines. I used my fiberglass pole pruner to cut out about six feet of branches below the lines. I’m about eight feet too short to touch the lines even with the pole pruner fully extended. I was in no trouble. But I feel better about keeping the tree from catching fire or zapping any animals or people that come into contact with it. Tree looks a bit chopped up, but it’s for the best.
To be honest I would really like to trim back our maple too. It has a lone branch that should it snap it would snag our direct power feed from the grid. So I want to cut that well back, right to the trunk actually. Plus take off the one limb that faces the house. If it goes it’s coming straight through our living room window/ceiling.
Those limbs will take me a good couple of hours to cut out small piece by piece to not do the damages I’m trying to avoid. I need a truck or the trailer to cart all the waste wood away, as it’ll be too much for my van to move economically. Twenty trips back and forth to the farm seems dumb, when one dump trailer load full would likely do it all in one go. Plus I have some brush piles here all ready that could go as well. It never ends with these trees!
I should get to work now. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 