thinning, weeding, mulching, squashing....

This month has been all about trying to stay a step ahead of the bugs, the weeds and the lack of rain. We've been enduring a really hot spell with 99 degree days. I've been trying to get out to the garden by 6:30, sometimes earlier, and working till 9ish when I'm forced inside due to heat and Eli leaving for work. I'm pleased with how much more time I've had for gardening since school ended. I still never feel like I get enough time out there, but I'm averaging about 2-3 hours a day the past two weeks. I hope to ramp that up in the next couple of weeks to get the garden to a really weed free status before we head to Michigan at the end of July.

I planted another round of tomatoes last week. I plan to get a couple more rows of beans put in this week. I'm hoping that staggering the planting like this will guarantee some beans and tomatoes into the fall this year. The tomatoes I'd planted in the spring are finally starting to deliver. I've been putting them in the CSA bags for a few weeks now but have done so at the expense of not having any on my personal dinner table. Last night we enjoyed a tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil salad. Yum. We also enjoyed a raw chard salad (the chard is all riddled with holes at this point but I hate to take it out because I always crave greens by the end of summer...hopefully the cooler weather coming this week will give it a chance to recover), cucumber slices, and rosemary roasted potatoes. I love having a table full of food that I've grown myself.

I've included a photo of Ward helping me thin and weed cucumber plants. He had a terrific time until all of sudden he was DONE. At that point I had no choice but to bring him in and wash him off in the kitchen sink. That kid has eaten more dirt at this point than Isabel and Flora combined. I'm looking forward to the 80's on tap for this week because I'll be able to have all the kids in the garden with me at any point during the day. Maybe I'll get some more artwork out of the girls.

I've been dealing with a round of bursitis in my right knee. I noticed it was swollen and that I couldn't kneel on it around the 1st of the month. I waited, hoping it would resolve on it's own, until last week at which point I went to see my GP. She drained it and told me to compress it with an ace bandage, which I did for four days until I realized the swelling had moved to my ankle. I took the bandage off and iced the ankle. Thank goodness it went back to normal the next day but my knee is swollen again. Occupational hazard. Oh well. I continue to ice it at night in hopes that it will not get worse. It's not painful unless I kneel on it. So I'm just using my little garden cart and scooting around the garden on that, like I did when I was pregnant. It works.

I've exhausted my kids' patience for blogging. It's almost cool enough to get out to the garden now anyway. Yay!

Remembering

The end of the school year has kept us really busy. I’m so glad it’s over! Between school events and squeezing in work for the garden, I’ve not had a free minute to keep this updated. The biggest garden news is that we opted to take a two week break in filling orders for the last week in May and first week in June as our spring crops were caput and our summer crops not quite “there” yet. We start back up with our orders this coming week and I think we’re on the verge of a real bounty out there. The plants are loaded with blooms and almost ripe fruit. I’ve been top-dressing with composted horse manure and applying fish emulsion. I plan two or three more weeks of setting out the second round of tomato plants and bean seeds. Hopefully this staggered planting of tomatoes will make the harvest more manageable. We had some waste last year because there was just more than we could process.

In honor of Father’s Day, I thought I'd share something I wrote at the end of May. I was feeling really pretty overwhelmed by the garden and was upset that I needed to take a two week break on filling orders. I'd had an idea that I wanted to write about this since March, but just hadn't sat down to do it. So, anyway, here it is:

My dad grew up a farm boy working side by side with his parents in the fields. He went on to more white collar work but returned to the farm in his retirement and loved nothing better than tooling around on his tractor on his daddy’s land. My dad was a smart guy and he could fix just about anything, the product of growing up on a farm and having to be frugal with what you hired done. After retiring, he did truck farming for a few years and then came down with lung cancer. I believe the lung cancer is probably another legacy of his farm childhood. Most folks working tobacco do indeed end up smoking said tobacco….it is smoke and develop a tolerance to the stuff or work in it, not smoke, and puke as a result of the build-up of tobacco in your system.

Last spring he was at UNC for many weeks and I’d go up to see him in the evenings just to talk to him, help him have some connection with the outside world. It was hard. My dad was a large, fit guy, always on the move, always outside. And to see him pale and small and weak was really hard. Dad and I had huge holes in our relationship that we’d only been patching up since I reached adulthood. We also were on opposite ends of the political spectrum and since coming through the fevered 2008 election season, we’d learned to avoid any conversation that might turn to social policy. So there were a good many things we just didn’t want to talk about in such heavy circumstances. Especially because Dad couldn’t talk. He had a tracheotomy in place and when he could communicate at all it was in whispers or written word. So I chit chatted about general day to day stuff a lot and dad listened. I talked about the kids, about his grandson that was growing inside me, about the garden.

I talked a lot about the garden. He was a conventional farmer and didn’t really get the whole organic thing but he had tons of wisdom to impart, like how to properly plant potatoes for easy hilling. When to plant sweet potatoes. You get the idea. So last spring I talked about all the weeds were battling and I remember him eyeing me sternly and writing “You let it get ahead of you didn’t you?” “Yes, yes Dad, I did”. And when telling him about my battle with flea beetles and squash bugs his recommendation to use Seven Dust and my “but Dad that’s not organic” and Dad’s “Well, I don’t know what to tell you then”. Yeah, I know. I don’t know what to tell me either. Maybe that I should charge more money for the freaking organic squash because they are so hard won.

Dad died very shortly after Ward was born. Family politics being what they are I found myself mired in Jerry Springerish crap. And knee-deep in adjusting to life as a family of five. My grieving process was incomplete for sure. This spring I’ve thought so much about Dad and how much I miss him. As I’m out in the garden spraying my weak little organic concoction on the flea beetles and manually squashing the life out of squash bugs I think of my dad and his sage advice to just use Seven Dust. It would certainly be easier. I think of him as I try to stay one step ahead of the weeds. I find myself occasionally overwhelmed with the urge to call him or email him and then I remember. Gosh, I sure do miss him. I’m so thankful to have developed the relationship that I did with him, to have him whispering his advice to me as I stake up tomato plants. I guess the main point of this post is that I’m trying really hard to not let it get ahead of me. With three kids, one of whom is a baby, it sometimes feels like I’m on the verge of a colossal failure out there, but I keep putting one foot in front of the other and praying I’m just a step ahead.