Another Busy Day - August 16, 2024 @goldenoakfarm

On Friday I was up at 5AM and got the post up, then got the kitchen cleaned up. I went out at 7AM to pick all the green beans. But there weren’t very many. And many had been chewed on.

So I decided to see what else there was. These little artichokes in a small bowl needed to be eaten.

There were some small tomatoes, due to lack of foliar spraying all summer.

There were a good number of secondary heads of broccoli. By the time I got all of these in the house, my helper friend had arrived at 8AM.

There weren’t enough green beans to keep both of us busy, so I sent him outside to pull up the beans, as they were done for the year. A couple of the broccoli plants hadn’t looked so good, so I asked him to pull those too.

He came in and said we should mulch the bean row so he headed to the barn to get 2 bales of hay and he did the bean row.

While he was doing this I got the broccoli soaking.

Then he used what was left of the hay on the places he’d pulled broccoli.

Next I sent him on an errand I hadn’t gotten to when my #2 intern was here this week. While he was gone, I got the beans washed and ready to blanch for freezing.

While I was waiting for the blanch water to boil I got a hold of the lawnmower guy and he said he’d look at the weedwacker. It sounded like it needed a new carburetor. I said my helper friend would bring it over before noon.

The mulch hay guy had called and said he wanted to bring by about 25 more bales of mulch hay at 11AM. My helper friend would be back by then and could help.

I managed to reach the amendment company and they had the answer to my question, it was a percentage. So that part of the amendment project was done.

The water finally boiled and I did the beans, drained the broccoli and blanched that and got this for the freezer. It was just 11AM so we headed up to unload the mulch hay.

There are 2 access doors into the hay stall and we filled the first one. These new bales were really heavy and I was glad I had my helper as I couldn’t have lifted them this high.

We moved down to the second door and put the remaining ones in there. There were 26 actually. My helper friend had loaded the weedwacker into his truck before heading to the barn. As soon as we finished he headed to the lawnmower guy’s place and got back just in time to sign out and head to his next client at noon.

I got the kitchen cleaned up while he was gone and had some lunch.

source

The van from the Senior Center was picking me up at 12:45PM for a music event. This performer uses a laptop as his “backup band” but his primary laptop died. He was trying to use his backup laptop and the battery died.

So for the last 20 minutes we were all thinking of songs we all knew and singing with him. It was great fun, some songs I’d not sung in decades, like She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain, and I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.
I got home at 2PM thinking I would get a nap but ended up talking with my sister off and on all afternoon.

After supper of artichokes and seasoned ground chicken with cheese, I watched a movie and went to bed more or less on time.

On Saturday my brother will help me get the tarp off the line and either spread it out on the wood to dry, or fold it up if it is dry. Then I have to mow the lawn, a shorter job this week as I will be skipping the barn mowing.

The grass isn’t very high, but it is very lush, so I’m expecting it to take around 3 hours, especially if it hasn’t dried well.