Quiet Sunday

I'm sitting here inside out of the hot sun waiting for someone to stop at the store and buy something. Sundays seem to be the slow day of the week for the store. That's okay after Thursday, Friday and Saturday I can use a slow day.

Yesterday it rained most of the day (had a stormy farmers market which was interesting, to say the least) so the ground is wet making it easy to do weed pulling and that is what we did this morning until a bit after 11am. Sat in the grass in an aisle way and pulled lots of different weeds from in between scallions. Got bout 2/3 of the bed done before I realized it was probably after 11 am and the store needed to be opened. So now that it is 90˚F/32˚c I won't be going back out until after 6pm. Eugene, on the other hand, seems to like working in high heat

While I was weeding the scallions I was thinking this is a part of the of what we do that is kind of similar to a home garden. than I thought "but if this were a home garden I would have been done weeding the scallions a while ago because no home gardener in their right mind would have 3 50' (15m) rows of scallions for any reason". So, once again I came to the conclusion that what we small market farmers/gardeners do is not anything like what a home gardener does, even a gardener with a huge home garden.

If I go back to having a non-commercial garden it will be anally neat and clean, unlike what we have now which, because of all the rain and now heat, is becoming a weed patch. Eugene has been keeping up decently with hoeing/tilling but lately we have had a lot of rain and a lot of heat so all the plants are growing fast and it is too wet to hoe so the only thing to do is hand weed which is around 20x slower than using the wheel hoe. Plus we have found over the years having some weeds in the garden beds is good for things-they add different nutrients and do different things to the soil. You just can't let them get out of control and take over but you also don't need to worry about getting every last one, either. This idea of the perfectly weedless garden has been brought to us by the chemical companies who sell herbicides. The more we believe is the virtue of the weedless garden the more herbicide they sell.

Did a load of laundry and Eugene vacuumed the dog hair off of the carpets (the dogs seem to be perpetually shedding). Yes, I realize it is still shedding season but these guys seem to have copious amounts of fur coming off even with brushing. Granted, Danny is the main culprit with his chow/border collie long coat of wispy blond hair and a dislike for being brushed or trimmed. this makes it hard to brush his entire body as he either walks away or if I tie him up he than sits/lies on his side or in some other way contorts his body so I cannot brush him. I guess I need to find the horse ear clippers, drag the dog into the barn and shave his furry ass and be done with it. Personally, I would rather body clip a horse than shave this dog, even though Danny is under 40 pounds and has virtually no teeth.

After morning cleaning had a breakfast of eggs and bacon (all from local sources-the bacon I bartered for spinach at market yesterday. Also bartered spinach for fresh pasta, foccacia, lamb chops, lamb steak and whole wheat bread. It was stormy and slow at market so everyone had stuff to trade. I love days like that). Than went and started in on the scallions which brings us back to now, me sitting here blogging and waiting.