A Summary.......Of Sorts

Things have been really busy around here, and this pretty much sums up why....

But it's not all about the planting....there are lots of other things that need to be done to keep this farm running. Here are just a few:

Moving the Pea Tunnel for crop rotation purposes.

The black zip ties hold each concrete reinforcement wire section to a rebar arch, and the white zipties hold each of the units together. Cut the white zip ties, move the sections, and rezip tie.

Maintaining the duck fence. This section was too low...

 So I added another section....

And tied them together.

Try to get out of that!

These 2x4 blocks that were supporting the big beams alongside the house in the garden were rotting away.

So new ones needed to be built.

An easy, but boring project.

But hey, I got to use a hydraulic jack for the first time.

It's so cool....I came up with all sorts of other things I could use it for in the house, but the jack is so heavy I didn't feel like hauling it around.

All of the beds needed to be tilled and prepped for planting. I had lots of helpers for that job.

While tilling up last year's carrot bed I found a bunch more carrots!

And they were just as sweet and delicious as ever!

Of course all of the starts in the Sunroom needed to be continuously cared for.


This Spring has been so gloomy that all of my starts are very weak and spindly. Very sad.....but I'm hoping for the best. With a little sunshine they should snap out of it.

Of course, Kitty needed to be shaved. Here he is on the chopping block, awaiting his inevitable demise.

 That's better!

 Of course, most of my projects had to be done in the rain.....it just won't stop raining!

Mr. Adams has been busy too, getting the boat ready for the Spring hunting season.

One of his biggest projects was putting a bulbous bow on the boat. For those of you who do not know what a bulbous bow is....

1. A bulbous bow is a protruding bulb at the bow(or front) of a ship just below the waterline. The bulb modifies the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag and thus increasing speed, range, fuel efficiency, and stability.

A "building" was required for this project. 

And Gerald Gangle, our local fiberglass expert, was hired to make sure the job was done properly.

And while he was doing that, Mr. Adams was attending to all of the other things that need to be done at haulout time.

 Here are the guys with the finished project. It's a thing of beauty....

It's a beautiful thing!

 And back in the water it went.

Of course, with an extended bow, it now became necessary to extend the bow roller too, so the anchor won't drop on the bulbous bow. Mr. Adams built a beautiful new bow roller.

He's handy like that.

 A lot of long, hard hours have been put into these projects....I think we both could use a vacation.

Water Again.....But This Time Where I DON'T Want It!

For a couple of years now there has been a lot of water at the bottom of the garden.

Too much water.

In the pathways,

 And in the beds too.

It started out sort of gradually, and we came up with all sorts of explanations for why it must be happening....things like: well, it HAS been raining a lot, or, the soil is compacting over the years from tilling, or,  a drainage pipe from the house gutters must be plugged....anything but the most obvious and most dreaded possibility.

But by March we had to accept the obvious truth.....the main water pipe to the house had to have a leak in it. Oh boy...I envisioned a week long project with an excavator to fix the problem, and neither I nor Mr. Adams had time for that! But something had to be done....I couldn't plant the beds this Spring with that much moisture in them.

So last week, one day, I grabbed a shovel and started to dig a hole to find the water pipe. Once I found the pipe I started to dig a trench. The trench was about 8 feet long when the ground started to get pretty wet. It was about that time that Mr. Adams drove in the driveway. Great timing! He dug about another foot and the ground got REALLY wet. About that time Ken and Monique drove in and Ken jumped in to lend a hand. Great timing again.....because right away they hit water!!!!

Mr. Adams figures that about 5 gallons of water a minute was coming out of that leak! We shut off the water valve down by the road and then Mr. Adams and Ken went to town and bought the supplies to fix the leak.

We turned the water back on and the leak was fixed. Wow! That was easy....a lot easier than I expected it to be.

The next task was to fill the trench back up. But how? With the same material? The material that caused the leak to begin with? It was decided that I should buy some pea gravel to surround the pipe.

I think I bought enough gravel.

Oh yeah.

 (one bucket worth of gravel)

 The leak was found, the pipe was fixed, and the trench was filled back in before the day was over.
And the best news of all is that the ground started to dry up...in 2 days it was completely dry!!!!!!

I'm so happy!