Where did summer go? ..a late summer summary

     The best growing summer ever...albeit a bit dry, but lots of heat for the tomatoes and peppers. I sold loads of salad mix to the local restaurants, greens can be a challenge in hot weather so this was a summer to experiment with different varieties. The green and red varieties of oak leaf lettuce became the basis of my salad mix, augmented with spinach, bulls blood beet leaves, arugula and various mesclan mixes. Seeding every 2 weeks gave me a constant supply of fresh baby greens.
     I started a new garden for next year, had a tractor mounted tiller come in and chew up a piece of the pasture, which was then limed, manured, and seeded to buckwheat as a green manure.
     The blossoms  were so lovely and the bees flocked to them, but the buckwheat had to be tilled under to fertilise the soil before it went to seed.
      Trusty old Big Red, vintage 1978, chomped his way through the tangle of buckwheat, and once mixed with soil the plants began to break down quickly.

    

 Darrel came back for his horse and chicken fix.

It's such fun to watch him having such a great time with the animals, and they really seem to be drawn to him.

Avery came and said his goodbyes to the horses, and then was on his way back to Ontario. I miss his frequent visits.


The weather forecasters had us thinking hurricane Earl would blow us all to kingdom come, so we tied down everything important.

In the end it veered off to Nova Scotia but we did get a welcome rain out of it.

We had record breaking high temperatures in late august and the hottest day ever was Sept 1. I'm so thankful to live on the coast as no matter how hot it gets here, its always hotter inland. Counting my blessings these busy end of summer days as I'm up to my elbows in ripe tomatoes, canning, making pickles, preserves, and freezing summer's bounty.

The To-Do list

The spring chore list is gradually getting whittled away but its not getting any smaller because new chores keep getting added to the bottom of the page. Like this one.

The first load of next winters wood arrived today, yes the first load, theres more to come. This is my right hand man's chore. I once had a wet heavy chunk of maple land on my ankle, followed by a trip to the emergency room, followed by my hero announcing he would do all the wood piling henceforth, bless him.

Today the first of the potatoes went in, we should be having our first taste of tender new taters by late july. The cloth is covering rows of turnip and radish to protect the leaves from the voracious flea beetles. They also love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower which they chew to resemble lace so they all need protection until they get bigger and tougher. I found this fine net type material cheap at a Fabricville sale last fall.

All the leafy stuff is in now, chard, spinach, onions, 5 kinds of lettuce, onions, and the garlic is up 6 inches.

In the corner of the photo is my other right hand man, Big Red. My Troy Bilt tiller I bought new in 1978, the only piece of machinery I have ever truly loved. He has some new parts mind you, (my favorite ever Christmas gift from Mr Hero was new tractor tires for Big Red)

We are off to the farm auction today in Sussex to scout out some laying hens and look at something besides a chore list.