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.

Tuesday, I spent all day potting up young transplants of eggplants and peppers into 4.5″ X 4. pots. Why do I mention this? We used to transplant the plants directly from the flats into the garden. They did ok. We have found though that if we take the time and spend the money on large peat pots, it is well worth the effort.
Instead of subjecting a small transplant straight from a 72-cell flat to our red clay soil, we pot them up. A 4.5″ X 4″ peat pot surrounds the plug with about 8 times the volume of excellent growing medium as opposed to sticking them straight in the ground.

Our transplant potting mix consists of Fafard 3B (peat moss, bark, vermiculite), Black Cow compost, worm castings, and is amended with a complete 5-3-4 organic fertilizer, azomite, a volcanic rock dust, and lime.

It is more work to transplant the large peat pots but eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes are long term crops that have the potential to keep producing until first frost. It pays to take a little extra effort on the front end.

Wednesday

It was an interesting and fun day!
CSA members Joe and Jonathan showed up to work.

We were in clean-up mode and Joe and I started working on an eyesore, the hay wagon from hell piled with junk setting right across the driveway from the greenhouse.

Jonathan helped Jenifer clean up the greenhouse and set in to potting up tomato plants.

The hay wagon was loaded with junk that I had not used in 3 years. I save everything. Joe was making fun of me, holding up 8″ pieces of rotting of 2 x4’s asking if he could toss it. I had to think, those pieces of wood would make great small wheel scotches.

I love it when CSA workshares show up. Jenifer goes out of her way to feed them. Wednesday, she made an arugula salad with FL. blood oranges, and Rooti the pig country ham. Awesome!

Joe and I took the eyesore hay wagon down to just the running gear. We piled the junk either on the trash pile or burn pile and then used wrenches, hammers, crow-bars and the front-end loader of the tractor with a chain attached to remove the old timber..

I am good taking stuff apart, it is putting it back together that I have always had a problem with.