Monday morning, the first thing I did was spray the few transplants in the greenhouse with pyganic We get these small moths about this time every year that reek havoc on transplants, mostly brassicas.
I failed to mention this to Jenifer and she came behind me and watered the greenhouse washing off stuff I had just applied. .
Totally my fault, I just grunt most days until noon except on Saturdays when I have to talk.
Then we went to spot spray the the potatoes with Spinosad.
Another biological insecticide that has a very low toxicity to beneficial insects and does an awesome job. Jenifer and I each had a 1/2 gallon hand-held sprayer and covered 3/4 of an acre of potatoes… We are going to have a lot of potatoes in 2-3 weeks.
It was already 10:30 am and Jenifer headed off to harvest for the CSA and I went to my dad’s shop to try and get our Howard Rotavator back together.
Our tiller is 19 years old and flew apart last fall. We welded it for the short-term in April, then it flew apart again. I thought I was going to have to buy some very expensive West German machined parts but my dad looked at it, knew a guy close by with a machine shop set up in an old chicken house and for $150, I am back in business.
I got educated getting that machine back together… I am no mechanic. I was covered in hydraulic oil, gear oil, lock-tite, and gasket making material. Heck of a headache from sniffing those fumes. Took me all day and around 5:30, I was able to run a pass through a section of the garden with the tiller and apparently, I got it back together in the correct order..
We have been without the tiller for over a month and that has hurt us. I had hoped that I could just till all the areas of the garden that needed working, but after that one pass with the tiller, I decided it all needed bush-hogging first. So I bush-hogged till dark. Jenifer was doing ball practice with Ellie and Levi. She made home made cornbread with onions and opened a can of beans. Good enough for me.
After supper, I sat down at the kitchen table with our “new’ used laptop. A good friend of ours who is in the equipment leasing business brought it by the Matthews Farmer’s market last Saturday and handed it to Jenifer. I am not positive, but I think we traded a pastured Thanksgiving turkey for the laptop. It is an IBM thinkpad. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn it on.
I felt kind of silly sitting at the supper table at 10:30 pm in grease covered pants trying to figure out the workings of a laptop. I probably should just hand it over to Ellie or Levi and let one of them show me how it works.
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