Labor Day

Happy Labor Day. I wish farming allowed us to take this holiday off, but sadly, there is harvesting to do, food to put up and other late summer activities to do. Farming means rarely having a day off during the season (for us that is April through November). We are slaves to the farm but that is what pays the bills, allows us to put new windows in the house and eat like royalty

If it would rain we could kick back (and we could really use a day or two of rain). But unless Hurricane Gustav comes up this way as a heavy rain event towards this weekend I don't see us getting rain for at least another 10 days. So we work; harvesting, putting food by, marketing, tilling, planting, seed saving and all the other fun and glamorous things we small farmers do.

The good news for us is the store is NOT open today so we actually can kick back more than normal. Mondays, after all, are our (ahem) day off, meaning we don't do any marketing and sometimes we go away from the farm to shop for necessary items, often in Richmond, IN (our version of "the big city").

Days off do not often mean no farm work. I know apples, pears and leeks need to be picked/pulled. There are also greens such as chard, parsley and basil that will need to be brought in this morning for market tomorrow. We would harvest these thing tomorrow morning but tomorrow morning we have to go to the bank, post office and run other errands before going to the farmers market because many of these places are closed today for the holiday. So we are switching up the harvest schedule a bit so we can get everything done.

Maybe we will go fishing this afternoon evening, we have not made time to fish the pond in months. We have not had time, it seems, to do anything but deal with farming and its' myriad of aspects since May. I will be glad when fall arrives and the work load goes way down for a couple of months.