2nd week of June 2009
As the days lengthen one of the most refreshing things for me is to be outside at dusk. Sometimes I'm out weeding in the cool of the day till I can't distinguish plants from weeds and sometimes I'm just sitting on the porch with a baby on my lap taking in the evening sounds. With plenty of daylight there is also extra time for outdoor work and everyone goes to bed tired. In the garden I've had my oldest son haul many carts full of compost to side dress potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and any thing else I see that looks like it could use a boost of nutrients. Little by little we are hilling all the potato rows also. I planted sweet potatoes this week with some going into an experimental bed that is a modified "Three Sisters" planting. This bed has circles of 5 Bloody Butcher corn plants with pole beans planted at the base of each corn to climb on and a sweet potato plant between circles to provide a ground cover. We'll see how it works even if I didn't have fish to add to the planting holes like the Indians did. Here is also a picture of my bed of Cimarron romaine lettuce that is for seed production. I think they almost look like roses with their rosettes of red leaves.
It was a little challenging to get the hay in among some rainy days. After the first tedding, the field was rained on but then dried well the next day. Here Olin is raking the hay into windrows in preparation for our neighbor to custom bale it into large square bales. The barn is now filled with 105 large bales which is about 47 tons of hay. It feels good to have that under roof and now we can be thankful when rain comes rather than fretting about wet hay.
With the assistance of my garden helpers it actually feels like we are staying ahead of many of the weeds. Weeding definitely works best as a discipline of getting them while they are young and taking a little time every day to tackle one corner. I also had the opportunity to talk about weeds at a church ladies group this week. The hostess was gracious enough to let enough weeds in her garden so we could take a group walk and I showed them different weeds along the way and how they can be eaten. We also explored a bed with many edible flowers in it and did lots of sampling. The evening ended with some delightful weedy refreshements - a greens (nettles, lambs quarters, pigweed) quiche, weedy pasta, a salad topped with chickweed and edible flowers, dandelion muffins and mint tea with nettles and stevia. It was a delicious evening and hopefully everyone learned to appreciate their weeds more. "If you can't beat them, eat them!"
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