Farmer for Breakfast and other oddities.

The farmer's arms are currently covered in gnat bites - as are his ears and anywhere else those little buggers could reach.  And, to add insult to injury, the skeeters are bellying up to the bar as well.  Monday was particularly miserable.  It was really hard to work through it.  Tuesdays was far better with the wind, but we don't see wind forecast for Wednesday.  We really hope the gnat life cycle completes and the population declines.  If it doesn't there will not be much of us left after a full day in the fields tomorrow.

Hey!  Um... You missed a spot.

Tammy was getting tired of seeing partially painted buildings, so she cracked out the paint just prior to the second batch of rain.  It was mostly dry before the rain came and it was under the eaves, so it held up reasonably well.  But, of course, Mrranda had to supervise (that is her job after all). 

Eyes to ceiling foks.

With it being so wet, we spent more time on "indoor" projects, such as working on building a brooder room for chicks.   The first step was taking down the old ceiling and putting up a new metal ceiling.  This helps us to keep raccoons out of the room.  That, and the old ceiling was pretty disgusting.

The picture above shows the new ceiling.  What you don't really see is the other destruction and removal work we did to prep this area.  At this time, there is a wall framed in on the North end and a frame nearly ready to put up on the South end. 

this is not the last straw

We're anxious to get the straw mulch down in the tomato field, but we'll settle for laying straw in the high tunnel for the tomatoes there.  It sure does look nice.

Not what we were hoping for

For some reason, the paper mulch is not holding up like it has in the past.  Sadly, it is now becoming a danger to the plants as it lifts up and either covers them or beats them to death.

Actually, we are pretty sure of the reason(s) and it mostly has to do with the timing of the rain and weather we have been getting.  But, even so, this makes it hard to want to keep using paper mulch when we don't get the benefits we need out of it.  It's even more disappointing because we have had reasonable success in the past.

Before

After

The fields are drying out in spots so we can get back to work.  The weeds have gotten ahead of us so we're working hard to catch back up.  Our crew of Kieran, Denis and Erik are working hard to help us in that regard.

If anyone would like to spend a couple of hours on the farm as a volunteer, this would be a good time.  Contact us and let us know.