Dear readers,
Hubbard squashes from the gardens
Good morning! Alas, no new post this morning. I could blame it on the home-distilled peach moonshine a friend foisted on me at the end of a very long evening (Friday night). Or yesterday’s late night, at least for this farmer, playing the card game, The Mind, with a guest staying with us. But today, facing a full range of farm tasks to be carried out between rain showers leftover from Hurricane Delta, squeezing in a nap this afternoon, and fixing some crawfish etouffee this evening… a fresh blog post goes in search of an author.
Meanwhile, if our ground wasn’t too sodden, we would be planting our garlic today. Instead that will have to wait until later in the week. So we will load up some lumber that was cut on the sawmill and store it in the barn, do some weeding in the hoop-house, put some fresh bedding down for the pigs and the sheep, and otherwise trying to earn our keep and the right to take a nap.
I’ll talk with you next week,
Brian
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Reading this weekend: The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd (J. Rebanks) and How to Think Like Shakespeare: lessons from a renaissance education (S. Newstok)
“No rest for the wicked” my Dad often said (after getting up from a catnap). Don’t feel you owe us anything. My own ambition level has declined ever since I turned 65. Just don’t have the drive or even the physical strength anymore. I even started taking naps once in awhile. Enjoy yours!
Take it easy, if it comes easy, take it twice….
The remnants of Delta were predicted to make a minor appearance here in central Ohio. This afternoon around two… the dog and I went out behind the house to sit and sip a cup of coffee, read the paper, and wait on the shower. [teaching a dog to read the paper is an adventure to be sure – and given the direction of our media these days, not a trick with much of a future/ but I digress]
So there we sat. Suddenly a commotion in the tree above us… a little squirrel lost his grip and unceremoniously fell to the ground between Cleo and me. Cleo is a Lab mix who just witnessed her 12th birthday the other day. She is slowing down, picking her fights. The stunned squirrel didn’t move for several seconds… if this had happened just a few years ago Cleo would have snatched that little sucker up. She did jump to her feet, but then stared at it as though to measure the cost/benefit. Once the squirrel came around it wandered back toward the tree in something like a drunken stupor – unaware of its close run with death.
Delta passed to our east, leaving us with so few drops that the few to hit my newspaper were inconsequential.
Still not a “fresh blog post”… but if Michael and Brutus leave a paragraph or two to this and Hotrod’s… it may come to something. 🙂
Becky, our stockdog, also is twelve. She moves very slow and unsteady, is deaf and doesn’t see that well. Her teeth are horrible and almost useless. But the sheep have only to see her appear and they run to wherever they think she wants them corralled. Such was the power of her youth!
Delta: two inches.
BTW We had a certain “Brutus” staying with us as a guest this weekend.
Drier weather would be fine, yes; the strawberries need replanting.
Less death and cancer around me would be fine, too, but then those have their cycles.
Reading about bloody puddles over at Ecosophia, and about a red shawl leading Poirot astray.
Trying hard to spool up Father Time’s ejection seat to get to spring cider blossom time a bit sooner. And perhaps to a slightly larger harvest of Margil this time.
Will get to those squash on Thursday.
Michael,
My best to you and your family.
Brian
Indeed, it was my visit to South Roane County and Winged Elm Farm that sucked up most of the time and attention of our intrepid blogger, with the result that he put up a placeholder post. Apologies to other avid readers for having blocked a longer missive this past weekend. In time, I’ll have my own blog post about the visit.
No excuses on my part. I should have had it in the “can”.