Short weekend

So my garden club, the Elk-Camden Garden Keepers, had a booth at the big garden show yesterday. I spent some time helping set up and take down, and sat around and watched the knowledgeable make sales and take money. I'm not wise enough or smooth enough or strong enough to be truly useful, but I was there anyway. I think we did well, but the numbers aren't in yet. I'm tired just from watching everybody else work so hard – Barbara and Pat were on their feet all day, the rest of us pitching in for a few hours.

Picked up an excellent old wheelbarrow at the Goodwill Outlet for $6. Bought asparagus from the Boy Scouts' roadside stand.

Working on the fence a bit, but it's hot out there in the sunshine. Might shear that last sheep, or pluck some bunnies. Em is coming out to putter.

C. planted the rest of the yellow sweet Spanish onions, and carrots, spinach and mustard-spinach. Mulched them with shavings from A.'s duck pen.

Yes, the sheep was sheared! Suddenly the big, puffy black sheep is a tiny thing. And that means the sheeply pecking order must be reestablished.

The bare patches are where Tricks' fleece "rooed" or shed; the rest was sheared. Weird peek-a-boo effect, no?

One sheep walked right at the other, who backed up, and around the field they went, head to head. Then THUNK! a head-butt. Eventually they settled down. Yes, we do plan to catch Savvy and neaten up that haircut. Maybe she'd like some peek-a-boo spots, too.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

I'm back at my desk job, but C. is (of course) gardening. Yesterday she planted carrots and beets, and transplanted another chunk of tomatoes into pots in the greenhouse. We've got over a hundred tomato plants, for sure. As usual, I'll sneak around and give some away at work and get the number down. How many plants do we need to feed two people all year? Even with delicious broiled tomato sandwiches for supper all August-September? I suppose we should always have extra in case of a poor tomato year.

Last year was a poor green-bean year. Haricot vert (ooo, aren't we fancy, with the French) are a staple around here, for people and for dogs. And for deer, last year anyway. White-tailed bouncing bastards.

Actually, we do not grow haricot vert. We grow good ol' 'Merican green or string beans, variety rattlesnake, a shorter, chunkier variety with purple splotches. The French version, predictably, is more elegant: taller, thinner and, like the werewolf of London, always beautifully dressed. Effete bastards, haricot vert.

I need to get off to work before I insult anyone else.

May already

I took a couple of extra days off work this weekend, planning to kick the ass of the goat-moat fencing project. And shear sheep. And 50 other jobs.

Started out by making chocolate-chip-oatmeal-pecan cookies. That's how I launch a weekend. Mmmm. The demarara sugar makes them crunchy, and doubling the chips is always a good idea.

Savvy the sheep had complained of heat and itchiness, so she was first. Plus, she's friendly. Our newly sharpened and tweaked shears were brought into play. Our shears are rusty old things picked up at estate sales over the years, and while we could get them sharp, the blades were never "set" right, so shearing has been frustrating. And the sheep get pissed. But we prevail. (Sure, we could hire it done for $35 a sheep. But a) we like to do things ourselves, and b) we don't have $70.)

She looks a little moth-eaten, but cooler!

This year garden-club good-guy Jim (who has a couple of sheep and is really good at sharpening things) worked on the shears, with some help from garden-club good-guy Tim (who has over 50 Jacob sheep – you know, the spotty ones with crazy horns), and they cut a whole lot better. It still took us a few hours to do one sheep, and the shears weren't exactly right so we again used scissors for the fussy bits, but it was a big improvement. (Yes, I know that champion hand-shearers can do 50 in a day, better than one every 10 minutes. Pfffft.)

So one sheep is done, and though I might have walked funny the rest of the day, I was pleased. Savvy was feeling better, too. I caught her making lamby hops down the hill. Goofy old thing.

C. left her a little tuft on the end of her tail, lion style. 

I transplanted half of the remaining flat of tomato seedlings into larger pots and moved them into the greenhouse.

Tomato plants get set deeply into their new pots to develop roots all down their stems, so they look pretty puny here. They'll grow like crazy in the next couple of weeks, and we'll set them deeply again into the garden beds.

Saturday, all sheared out, I devoted to fencing. I'm putting up that old snaggletoothed picket fence we picked up from a guy a couple of years ago. There's about 150 feet of it. It's roughly in place and I chopped out a section to build into a gate.

C. continues to work and dig and plant and mulch in the garden every day. Did I mention that both her dad and granddad were named Gardiner?

And the peas are up. Below, these are Cascadia edible-pod peas and the sticks are their trellis. The striped line is the soaker hose that will hook up to the watering system that I'll get back to as soon as the goat moat is up.

So Sunday I fenced a bit, but wore out early. And Monday I took the box of sheep shears over to Tim's place for some more tweaking. No wonder we've struggled with them – the blades have to be beveled just right, and slightly cupped, and the edges have to meet just so, touching only at the spot of the cut. It helped a lot to look at a pair of Tim's for reference. We've never had a new pair, just old beaters. When they are just right, you can take great swaths of wool off with – almost – ease. I think I learned enough to keep three pair cutting well now that they are set correctly. Two pair proved too out-of-whack to ever cut wool again, so they'll be garden shears or knife blanks or something.

I owe these guys some cookies, at least. Sure appreciate them sharing their expertise. I should film them for YouTube so other folks can learn this stuff. There is nothing on the web about adjusting hand shears. I looked and looked and cussed and then played Bookworm.

Anyway, my long weekend is over, and I'm beat. Ready to go back to the comfy desk job.

The Dogly Dinner
The dogs had brown rice, hardboiled guinea and chicken eggs, and tofu wiener bits for dinner, in a lovely red sauce (the water from soaking the dried tomatoes we ate in our mac-and-cheese).

Garden report

Yesterday C. transplanted half a flat of Rosa Milano onions into the garden, and planted Lincoln peas, and transplanted half the tomato seedlings into larger pots and I moved them into the greenhouse. Day before, she planted leaf radishes and white Russian ruffles kale and matador spinach. On the weekend she planted two beds of potatoes. Planted a few shallots (can't find most of the ones she saved for seed). Transplanted strawberry daughters. Planted pod peas. So we have three or four fat rows of peas (I requested more shell peas last year and boy am I going to get them!).

The little cabbages have come up in little hoop house, but aren't doing much. The leaf radishes in the greenhouse have been appreciated by the rabbits as the first greens of the year, but they'll be pulled out to make room for the rest of the tomatoes. We'll be watching the forecast carefully, and pulling out the electric heater if needed to keep the tomatoes alive. They grow like crazy when they get out from under the plant lights and into the greenhouse. And weather willing, we can put them into the garden in a couple of weeks.

C. puts in long hours in the garden every day, planting, raking, spading over beds, reinforcing terrace walls. It's looking good.

Nobody is talking

Mysterious events Sunday led to Kewpie the peke being caked to her fat thighs in clay, Earl looking nervous, and two rabbits lurking in the subterranean concrete stairwell outside the boiler room.

The rabbits were supposed to be in the rabbitat, the chain link run outside their quarters. Kewp was supposed to be in the garden, helping C. dig and plant. Earl was supposed to be helping me fence.

The pile of school-supply clay (very plastic and sticky) outside the north door is full of dog prints. There's a big wad of angora rabbit hair on the patio. And a tunnel under the rabbitat wall.

I've tried threats, bribes and feigned appreciation for criminal cleverness, but none of them will grass.

They're grounded.

Beautiful weekend

It's been 70 degrees out, sunny and gorgeous. I'm working on a PVC watering system for the garden, and Em and Richard came up and we worked on the new goat pasture. Their come-along sure makes fence-stretching easy. We got the south side nearly done, from the chicken yard down to the pump house. It was a gnarly job since the posts are in an very uneven line going down the rocky hillside.

C. is getting the garden in shape. She's planting kale and shallots today, and maybe some spuds from our sprouting stores.

Spring is definitely here. The skeeters are out. And the pair of swallows has moved into the gym ceiling. Makes it kind of fun to go in there and see them darting around.

C. is really good at finding things. Here is a crap photo of an amazing find – she lifted a rock and there was a wiggling blue-tailed-skink lizard tail. Just the tail, wiggling like crazy. Skinks can discard their tails when threatened by predators. As a survival technique it worked perfectly – we were so distracted by the bright-blue tail we didn't pursue the black-and-white lizard. He must have been completely freaked out by the lifting of the rock. On the right, a Wikipedia shot of the whole lizard.

Another sign of spring – a tiny bumpy tree frog on the north patio.

Big moon April

The moon is full, and the swallows are back! A pair came zipping by me on the south porch yesterday, making loops in the yard, then just over my head. Must be how a swallow says "howdy." They live in the boarded-up north-classroom window, between the plywood on the outside and the sheetrock on the inside. Beautiful birds.

I have now grafted seven? nine? apple trees. Feeling pretty accomplished. Though we won't know if any of the grafts "took" for a month or so. Jim from the garden club set up his grafting-class equipment on his porch, showed me what to do, then let me practice on his trees since my rootstock hadn't come yet. And when my trees arrived a week later, he set me up again and supervised as I cut and banded and planted. Thanks, Jim. That was awesome!

I've been working on fencing all weekend. In slo-mo, of course, which is how I roll. I borrowed a come-along, drug out some chain, and pulled tight a stretch of no-climb fencing I got at the scrap yard. Then I popped the clips on, using a screwdriver like all the cool old guys on YouTube. In the olden days, about a month ago, I used to painfully wrap the clips with pliers. And my wire was too loose. The internet has made me a better farmer.

Em and Richard started putting up the old white picket fence we got from a guy on Shady Slope Road. I like it – it's kinda snuggle-toothed, and already looks like it's always been here. It's going up at the bottom of the garden, and will be one side of the goat moat that will (I hope) keep the deer out of the green beans. And the goats out of the beans, as well. You can see the remnants of my plastic orange deer-attracting flags behind the fence. Foolish me, I thought they would repel the deer.

We have bad news on the dog front. One-Eyed Jack and Earl had a brief altercation, and Jack is now None-Eyed. He's always been a pugnacious little butthead. Now he's a blind pugnacious little butthead.  He's adjusting pretty well, bobbling around the rooms like a little Roomba vacuum. It was a horrible, horrible experience and I will spare you the story and photos. C. says Earl will have to find a new home, but I'm hoping things blow over. Earl is a big doofus, and not mean. He's my farm dog.