Thank You for the Cow Paths

Dear Farmer who rents my land;

Thank you for the cow paths. When I walked the pasture today, marking boulders for removal, I was delighted to find that your cows have made paths. Granted, they are not in the same places that my grandfather's cows had them, but they are nice just the same. I am hoping with time they will become as deeply etched among the buttercups as I remember them and that they will fill up with the fine powder of dirt that feels good to toes or becomes slick in the rain and make a satisfying smack under bare feet.

There is a lot of work history in that land. There are pits that springs have carved around piles of rocks stacked by men generations ago who foolishly thought they could stop the erosion. Every now and then I come across an unexpected gully opening up beneath my feet in seemingly flat land, but most of the creek banks still feel familiar as they did 30 years ago.

I am surprised that the old fence line where we took out the wire this spring has blended in so well, and that the new fence line has already aged to match it's surroundings as if a clever decorator "distressed" it with golden rods and dried grass to make it look old. The pasture has already moved on and forgotten our hard work with a casual shrug at the whims of humans and their boundary lines. I think my newer coils of wire look nice on the old wire pile.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I had noticed the improvement. The pasture looks good, and somehow satisfied to be grazed by cows again. It has been nearly a century since my family arrived, and close to two centuries since settlers brought the first cows here. I wonder what will be here in another hundred years. I hope they keep the cow paths.

Sincerely,
Your Farmer Neighbor

Lesbian Squash and Other Gardening Issues

I knew that title would get your attention. The neighbors' squash plants have a proliferation of blooms. But, we turned over all the leaves to examine them, and all the blossoms are female. Not a male among them. And this does not bode well for squash production, because you need at least one male flower in there to pollinate the female flowers. Without that all important male flower, you can't even practice forced flower sex with a Q-tip or paint brush. My husband, a gardening rookie was shocked to find that this was a concern. Ahhhh, the complicated and stressful life of a gardener. My squash plants are not to the point of flowering yet, so that is one worry I can put off.

But production has started. I have a half grown Ichiban eggplant.

A quarter sized Barlow Jap tomato.



Quite a few Sweet Pickle peppers.



And a bell pepper the size of a marble.

The Undead Tomato has been transplanted to a BIG pot, and has taken up residence in the garden. It's mate (which I snapped off during transplanting) is doing just as well and has set a teeny tiny tomato.

Of course there's lots more stuff growing in the garden. I just got my bean poles sanded and painted (thanks Honey, I would have gotten to it) and back up. These will support the Painted Lady pole beans from beans I saved for two years. I have red clover planted in the bed, and an artichoke in the center.




My own squash beds are doing fine, and the Borage I planted between them is just about ready to bloom and draw all sorts of beneficial pollinators to my wide expanse of gravel.

The cucumber and bush bean bed is lush and thriving.

And construction has progressed with the completion of the pergolas over the gates.

We even have benches to sit on which is really a necessity since we all end up congregating in the garden on evenings and weekends. We've looked at a lot of benches over the past two weeks, and settled on these for three reasons. They were very inexpensive, can be painted if they need a freshening up, and fold completely flat for winter storage. I plan to either get or make cushions for them, but right now, they are nice for setting down a wine glass.

Tim is working on attaching tight woven rabbit proof fence along the bottom 2 feet of the perimeter, and I have taken to worrying about early blight and bacterial speck. No sign of them yet, nor is there any powdery mildew. I've been pruning the tomato plants religiously, and got up early this morning to spray everything with a dilution of baking soda, oil, and castile soap.

I'm going completely organic this year. I've used some bone meal around the maters to ward off blossom end rot, and I've fertilized once with a fish and sea weed fertilizer. My next project it to run some compost through the sifter and dress the beds where digging has brought the bare soil to the top allowing weeds to grow. All in all, the weeds are still in check.

Hog Pen

Tim has been hard at work on the fence, with the help of neighbor Mike, racing against the Memorial Day Deadline. My husband claims that I do not fully appreciate his talents, but I do. Just look at this guy build fence! And it's not just any old fence. It's straight as an arrow, with the added difficulty of having to step down the grade (yet remain level). And it is perfectly square. I mean rectangular. Well, not perfectly, but it's within an inch so I'd say it's perfect.

In fact, I chose him, in part, for his constructing capabilities. Anyone knows, that when a farm girl is looking for a mate, and she asks to see his equipment, she's not talking about the family jewels. She's talking about his implements. Because it's pretty likely she's going to want him to build something. What we want to see is, at the bare minimum, a front end loader, a back blade, and a brush hog. Bonus points for backhoe attachments, box scrapers and 5 foot tillers. And we perfectly understand of he finds it necessary to have one tractor for each implement. Stopping to change implements will only slow the project. Besides, we don't like helping with the three point hitch. And as a reminder, because I know you're reading this Dear... if you stand between the tractor and the implement, it is not your wife's fault if your foot gets run over. It says so in the safety manuals. And yes, I read them. All of them.

On Saturday, I would pause in my house work and look out the window to find Tim and Mike bent over their work, with string lines and levels, putting in each post to exact specifications.



What we remembered as fertile topsoil, has mysteriously morphed into hard packed clay with a tough shale ledge at about 3 feet.



More than once I went out there to find a freshly dug post hole mysteriously smoking. Not actual smoke, but clouds of stone dust would come rolling out after the assault by the auger.



Then he spent two days chipping away at this miserable clay to put in the skirt boards, and staple the panels to them to keep critters from scooting under. Yes, I see that this fence, as it is, is not rabbit proof, chuck proof, or even deer proof. But don't you worry... we have plans. There will be electric run down low to discourage the bunnies and chucks... a wire above the top panel to discourage the deer... and the whole fence will be grounded in case a coon tries to climb it, because sooner or later, they will cross an electric wire, while hanging on the panel and have a very illuminating experience. We did this previously with the chicken yard, and the results were quite satisfactory... in a sadistic sort of way. But the coons stayed out. In fact, it was years before we saw them again.



And if I ever give up gardening, we can always raise hogs, open a small zoo... or a concentration camp.

Don't Fence Me In (or out)

Just in case you think we haven't been doing anything. Tim finished piping the overflow out to the ditch, put in the beginnings of a driveway on the far side, and, as a sideline, spent two days working with the road crew to put culvert pipe and fill in our front ditch. In the mean time, the weather has not been condusive to working outside. The winds have been high, and the temperatures low. Still, last Friday, he and the neighbor layed out the four corners of the garden fence and did some preliminary excavation. They also cut the cattle panels for the long sides in half, and welded a new rod into the end of each so we didn't have to lose a whole square. This is necessary, because the long sides are on a slight slope, and we are stepping each 8 foot panel down an inch and a half to flollow the slope. Then, when I came home from work today, I had the beginnings of a fence.



I wasn't expecting Tim to auger the holes, and set a corner post himself. Usually running the auger is easier with a helper on the ground. And setting 6x6 posts by yourself is sort of a pain. But I think he was just itching to see some fencing. I know I was. There will be a 2x4 running along the top of each panel, and a 2x6 skirt board along the bottom. The posts will be cut down. Then he is going to drill for a electric fence rod in the top of each post, and run a hot wire 2 feet above the panels to discourage the deer from jumping over (which we've learned they will if we don't run a wire).

In addition, as a bonus for working with the road crew for two days, Tim networked and found a section of 24" culvert pipe. This stuff runs $18 a foot, and you would have to buy a whole length of it. So, getting a 4 foot scrap for free was a real treat. This will go over the man hole on the water tank, and be back filled. Tim will fashion an accessible lid so we can get to the tank clean out. I'll find a sun dial, bird bath or planter or something to disguise the lid. Right now it sort of looks like the beginnings of a creative playground in our back yard.




ON the planting front, my tomato and eggplants have just about outgrown their grow lights. I am putting off transplanting them into gallon containers because even though they are pretty well hardened off, the night time temps have been low enough that I would have to move over 2 dozen pots into the garage every night, and I am delaying that hassle for as long as I can. I think I might transplant the tallest tomatoes tomorrow. Then I will only have to wrangle half a dozen pots each morning and night. I am lookiong forward to having a cold frame to eliminate some of this hassle next year.

Lessons in electric fencing... or "Take off yer duck boots"

I had Good Friday off so we spent most of the day putting down mulch on all the landscape beds. Another project I had planned was to fence in my perennial bed with electric fence. After two years of battling the deer, I've just had it. Time for some deer training.

Last fall I picked up a solar fencer on sale. We figured it would need some time to charge so Hubby and I built the fence, installed the fencer, then let it go. On Friday, it had been charging for 5 days so we figured it was ready to go. We fiddled and diddled around with the fence, but couldn't get more than a tickle. Hmmmm. OK. Maybe the battery is shot after a whole winter of not being charged? Hubby promised to spend some time trouble shooting. So, today he went to work. He rechecked everything and drove a couple more ground rods in. Still nothing. He went and got the plug-in-the-wall fencer and put that in. Still just a tickle. Hmmmm. Must definitely be something with the installation of the fence. He put the solar one back in and went back to his trouble shooting. He wired the corner post to a tree to steady it. He made a very neat installation of the wire from the fencer, and the ground wire. Sometime in his careful fence neatening up, he happened to drop a wrench on the ground. Squatting near the ground, holding the fence wire in one hand, he reached down and picked the wrench up off the ground. I only wish I had been there to see what happened next. When he grabbed that wrench, he said the jolt from the fencer knocked him flat on his butt. Ahhhhh! It works! Confused, he knelt on the ground and grabbed the hot wire again. Wham-O. Knocked flat again. Then a light dawned... his rubber duck boots had been insulating him. Anytime he touched the ground and the fence, he got zapped full strength. Leave it to my husband not to wise up at this point. He says he touched it at least twice more. Then, he called the neighbor over for a demonstration. Again, the neighbor was insulated by his duck boots... until he went to set his beer can on the ground so he could think better and figure out why he didn't get zapped. (Evil snicker)

So, we have solved the mystery of the electric fence installation. And I only wish I would happen to catch the deer reaching through it to trim off my tulips...