(Nearly) the end of another fruitful week and today is our first day out of the field. A new generation of no see'ems has hatched, making outside work unappealing and frustration-filled. But our time isn't wasted. Instead we're working at making the 'living areas' a bit more liveable. The Hornets Nest will soon have a new, varnished wood floor to replace the cardboard we walked on and Wwoofer Hollow is pruned, trimmed and tidied ready for a new influx of wwoofers in a week or so. The sun came out this week after a Summer solstice deluge last Saturday night/Sunday morning. An inch of rain plus hailstones and high winds eventually gave way to clear skies and sunshine on Sunday evening.....oh, and a frost. 8.30pm on Sunday evening (the first day of summer!) found us unravelling lengths of row cover over the tomatoes, peppers, squash and whatever else was deemed too frail to survive the plummeting temperatures. And it was lucky we did as 5am on Monday morning saw a low of 30 degrees. brrrr.
But thereafter, it's been nothing but hot sunshine and blue skies and the field has flourished as a result. The beans have started to seek out their beanpoles, tiny melons have appeared, cabbages and cauliflowers have shot up and even a flower or two has poked its head above the ground in the spiral. We planted more herbs, corn, tomatoes, bok choi and of course the Hugelkultur. The Hugelkultur used to be two empty trenches filled with a bit of raggedy compost and is now two (admittedly wonky) mounds of earth underneath which is a carefully planned network of sticks, sage brush, plant matter and dirt. On top of the mounds are trenches in which we've planted long lines of tomatoes and squash, all doing their best to survive. Fingers crossed. Thank you Elsie for your help and Garrett for your tractor - without it we'd still be shovelling now.
What else.....we finished the Lake City Pumpkin patch and the chickens Wayne and peeps have settled into their new lodgings across the road. Locavore Farms and its inhabitants continue to thrive.