scything

A bit more progress

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The thunder I heard as I finished up my post last night was a storm that passed to the north of us, but we did get rain. A steady rain all night, and almost all morning. Enough that we’ve got water in all the usual pooling areas again.

When the rain stopped, I headed out to try scything, and to see if it was any easier with wet grass.

Honestly, I can’t say for sure, one way or the other.

I did a bit more beside the main garden. Hit another patch of mostly alfalfa, which made cutting difficult. Then I did the paths in the maple grove. The grass there is sparse, and there’s about as much creeping bellflower as grass. That went quite easily.

Then I went to the outer yard.

The area I had been working on before, because the grass was still upright, is no longer upright. I’d started working from the driveway side because that gave me an open side where the swaths of hay could be deposited in windrows. The wind flattened the grass from the other direction, though, and to be able to cut it, the most effective way would be to work from the root side. Which meant starting from the barn.

The area in front of the barn was flattened in all directions, where the wind would have swirled around in circles there. It’s an awkward space to work in. Once that was done, I started working my way towards the driveway.

What a brutal job it was, and what a mess I made of it!

First off, I’ve never buried the toe of the blade into the ground so often! The flattened grass almost pushed the tip downwards. Second, I was hack and slashing a path through the middle of tall grass. There was no open space on one side to deposit the windrow. It had to be dumped on top of uncut grass, some of which was even taller than what I was cutting, and the lengths kept getting hung up on the blade.

I got a little more than half way to the driveway before calling it a day. Working in 16C/61F was a lot more pleasant that yesterday’s 28C/83F, but the cutting itself was brutal.

Once that first swath is cut, it’ll be easier. It’ll still be a pain cutting flattened hay, but I’ll have the open space on one side and will no longer be getting the blade hung up on still attached grass at the end of my cutting stroke.

There is a lot to cut in here and, when that’s done, I will need to cut the area in front of the warehouse, too. Right now, it’s almost inaccessible. Then, if I’m really ambitious, I’d like to cut a lane to the secondary driveway. I still need to properly repair the gate, and right now the grass about as high as the gate itself!

On the plus side, I’m finally going to have lots of mulch for the garden beds!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s progress

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I managed to get a few things at least partially accomplished today.

It’s been put off for way too long, for various reasons, but we really needed to get a burn done. The burn barrel is getting to the point that we won’t be able to use it for much longer; it’s simply disintegrating on one side. So the wood pellet cat litter is being put into the metal fire ring I set up near it, to burn the things that wouldn’t fit in the burn barrel. It was getting too full.

Doing a burn in what turned out to be 26C/79F – not even the hottest part of the day – was not going to be fun. Some time ago, while cleaning out the sun room and the old kitchen, we found the parts of a beach umbrella.

They were not together when we found them. 🤨

So I grabbed the pencil tip iron bar I found somewhere else (I can’t even remember, anymore) and used it to make a hole for the umbrella post. The iron bar is only a couple of feet long, but the ground in the outer yard is a lot softer than the inner yard, so it worked rather well. It wasn’t much, but it at least gave me some shade to duck into in between tending the fires in both the barrel and the fire ring.

When it got to the point where I could cover them and leave them to smolder, I puttered around with a few other things. Some of the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence needed some supports added to them. Then I set the bench I made on the saw horses to clean off the roughest edges with the wood shaver and sand paper, and took a scrub brush to get the dirt off the bottoms of the legs. I went through two sanding sponges in the process. They got torn to shreds, but at least things are smooth enough not to cause injury, even after being painted.

The bench then got hosed down and is now sitting upside down on the saw horses to dry, before it gets its first coat of paint. The underside probably won’t get more than one coat, except for where it will come in contact with the ground.

That done, I moved on to the Yellow Pear tomato bed. Some of them were getting tall enough to add more support there, too.

After that, I moved on to the main garden area.

Three of the four apple gourds are getting pretty tall and starting to climb the poles next to them. I attached pairs of bamboo poles as cross pieces between the three poles, so they’ll have horizontal support as they grow bigger. Only one of the apple gourds is tall enough to actually benefit from the new support, but the other two should be there, soon. As for the fourth plant, it is so small, it’s barely visible over the cardboard mulch!

That done, I decided to water the squash patch – then ended up watering the whole area. For the first time this year, I set up a sprinkler to water the garden. Usually, I just water it myself, but I wanted to work on something else at the same time.

I did find a lovely surprise that wasn’t there this morning!

Our very first tomato that is starting to turn red!

There is one other that has just the lightest blush on it. Both are Sophie’s Choice tomatoes.

Woo hoo!

While the garden was being watered, I started scything nearby.

This is as far as I got. We’d reached our high of 28C/82F by then, and it was just too hot. On top of that, there is a lot of alfalfa in the first couple of swathes, and that stuff does not cut as easily. It also tends to get hung up on the blade. When scything, the cut grass gets pulled along with the blade and deposited in windrows – if all goes well. It did not go well! I found myself dragging cut material back again, and it just did not want to let go! Also, the ground is so rough, I couldn’t slide the blade smoothly across. I had to hold it higher up. All of which made the job a lot more difficult. Which I would have been okay with, if it weren’t for the heat!

So I moved on to another job.

I started using the loppers on the trees by the garden plots. I started cleaning up these trees from the other end… last spring? The spring before? *sigh* I’m losing track of time! 😆 In the above photo, I’d cleared some branches away from the end. This will make it easier to get under there and scythe later one. However, as I kept moving the sprinkler down the garden beds, I was able to work on an area that needed pruning more. You can just barely see the grow bags in the photo. There were some fairly large, bushy branches above them that I wanted to clear out. I did enough to clear the space above the grow bags before stopping. While the sprinkler was set up over the last beds in this area, I watered where the trellises are from the rain barrel with a watering can. The water was quite warm! Then I got a bit more pruning done while refilling the barrel with the hose.

It was a bit all over the place, but it still managed to be a productive day, even with the heat.

Our forecasts have been all over the place. First, I was seeing thunderstorm warnings for Tuesday (today is Saturday). Then for Monday. Then for tomorrow morning! Meanwhile, another app is saying we’re going to get light rain tonight and tomorrow. Looking at the weather radar, however, it looks like the system is going to pass to the north of us. We’ll see if we get any rain at all! At least it will cool things down and if things work out, I’ll try scything after it rains. From what I’ve looked up, scythes cut better when the grass is wet, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test that, yet.

We shall see what tomorrow brings us.

Oh, my goodness! Is that thunder I hear? Why, yes. Yes it is.

So much for the weather radar being accurate!

The Re-Farmer

Scything and mulching progress

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There had been predictions for more rain this afternoon, but when things stayed dry, I headed out with the scythe.

I worked on the area where the hay is still upright, and not flattened to the ground by wind. I took this picture when I thought I was done with scything for the day, but ended up cutting one more swath.

This means we can now access the shed we want to dismantle, now that the roof collapsed over the winter. We still need more space to stack things. I suspect much of it will go into a burn pile, but I know there is some good lumber that can still be salvaged in there, and I want to make sure there’s someplace to put them that’s off the ground. Once the remains of the roof is cleared away, I’m thinking of dragging out the old metal garage door that’s leaning against one wall and laying it on the ground, and using that to stack lumber on top of. If all goes well, we’ll have the materials to build a chicken coop that can handle our winters. I’d really like to build one on wheels, so we can set it up in different places, as needed. I hope to use the chickens as part of our gardening plans, as well as for eggs and meat.

We shall see how that works out.

Meanwhile.

In the foreground of the photo, you can see some of the dried hay from when I tried using the weed trimmer to cut this. I gathered all the previously cut hay into the wagon and hauled it to the garden.

The Boston Marrow really, really needed some help with all the grass and weeds that had grown through the straw mulch. I have not been able to get more cardboard, however…

I did have the box from when we bought the new lawn mower last year in the garage. It’s a really, really heavy cardboard, and there were so many strong metal staples in two of the corners, it was easier to just cut out that part of the cardboard, after removing all the tape I could.

Because the cardboard is so heavy, and I had just one box, I cut it up into many smaller pieces. Then, for each Boston Marrow, I cut a piece with an opening in the middle, to fit around the plants. Once each plant was done, I filled in the spaces in between with the remaining pieces.

I was short one piece to finish!

Ah, well. Close enough.

The dried hay in the wagon, however, was not enough to mulch all the squash, however. So I went back and got the freshly cut hay.

Thanks to the net that came with the wagon, I was able to jam all of it into the wagon.

It was enough to almost completely finish mulching the area.

Because there was no mulch on top of the cardboard I’d already laid down around the green patty pan squash and the hulless pumpkins, not only did the cardboard dry quickly in the sun, but pieces kept getting blown around. In this bed, it was bad enough that I weighed them down with some boards, as best I could.

Thankfully, there was enough hay to mulch all the individual squash plants, but not enough to finish filling in the spaces between the hulless pumpkins, nor to fill in up to the corn. It will be sufficient for now, though. Once the hay was down, I wet it enough that the cardboard below would be damp, too.

The green patty pan squash plants are so tiny, they’re completely hidden by the hay! I did make sure they were not covered. Honest. 😄 As small as they are, after all this time, there is still the possibility of a crop out of them. They have only 55 days to maturity. I’m hoping that, now that they’re mulched and not fighting for nutrients – and they’re no longer drowned out! – they’ll perk up, and we might have something to harvest by the end of August.

The cardboard being blown around is a problem in the big squash patch, too, but there was no more hay. I decided to use some of the remaining straw bale.

I only got one load done. Just enough to mulch two Baby Pam pumpkin plants.

This is one reason why. The handle on our new garden fork broke off!

The other reason is, while pulling the straw off the bale, there were clouds of what look to be mold spores being kicked up. I really didn’t want to be breathing that stuff!

Well, there’s a whole area just north of the garden that’s too overgrown to mow. I’ll start scything that to use on the nearby squash patch, so that I’m not having to use the wagon to bring it over.

But not today. Probably not tomorrow, either, as I will be out and about for much of the day. Saturday is supposed to hit 28C/82F, but if I get started scything early enough, I should be able to escape the heat. The hottest part of the day is typically around 5pm, so there should be plenty of time.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer