Rain and Boredom

It's raining again for the 15th or so day in a row (except last Saturday, the one warm and sunny day in the past two weeks).

We have gotten well over 14" of rain during this time and that means it is too wet to do much of anything outside now. We cannot transplant, we cannot hand weed, we cannot hoe, we cannot plant seed, we cannot mow, we cannot foliar feed.

About the only thing we can do is a bit of harvesting. We do have asparagus, rhubarb, early herbs (tarragon, chives, garlic chives and parsley), lettuce and spring mix that can be harvested (and will be  today and tomorrow for our Farm Share Initiative members).

The other thing we can do is make soiless mix for soil blocks, make soil blocks and start seeds in soil blocks. We can do everything but start seeds as we really don't have any seeds that need to be started in the next couple of days now that the tomato seeds have been started (that was yesterday). of course we will have to make 7 to 8 trays of large blocks for the tomato seedlings when they germinate in a couple of days and than put the best of the seedlings (i.e. the seeds that actually germinated and aren't too weird looking) in said soil blocks.

It has gotten to the point where we are getting bored. We should be working 7 to 10 hours a day right now getting things transplanted, hoed, harvested, sold, etc., and because of way too much rain we are in a holding pattern. This does allow us to get other things done like cleaning out the barn, putting an old Sears tractor back together (for mowing, which we cannot do), think about our marketing plans, clean parts of the house that have been ignored and waste time on Face Book. But we need to do farm work and that simply ain't happening

Lawn Morels!!

We have had record setting rains this past week (10 days now, I believe). These weather conditions have made farming difficult to impossible but these conditions are just perfect for morels and they are coming up EVERYWHERE, including our lawn

The Depths of Winter

It's cold and icy and there is not much farming to be done right now. This morning at 6 am it is hovering around zero Fahrenheit.

It is way too early to start most of the seeds. we have onions growing in the seed room and should start some leeks this week and shallots as soon as the seed comes in.

It is way to early for tomatoes, peppers, melons, zucchinis, etc but I suppose we could think about starting lettuce, kale, chard and other cold hardy greens inside this week so they are ready to go in a hoop house in 3 to 4 weeks.

We do have quite a bit of pruning to do but right now the conditions are bad-ice all over the ground means that you cannot use ladders safely nor can you cut out raspberry canes.

So we sit around doing non farming things (lots of baking, deep house cleaning, watching movies, playing with the cats, taking long walks in the snow, removing ice from all surfaces, snow shoveling, reading, blogging, etc..) and even being a bit bored.

We will savor these quiet days when we are too busy for sanity (and it is hotter than Hell as well)

Tuttle vs Snowmageddon 2011

Pharm Photos late summer/fall 2010

It's picture time (AKA the lazy blogger's way to post)

Nate

Sunflower ready to harvest

Popcorn not quite ready to harvest but it had to be any way and did end up coloring up completely after a few days of drying.

An early October Farmers Market

Late September garden. The row cavers are there to keep as much moisture in the ground as possible as we have been in a drought most of the summer

Eugene watering the market garden

Garlic, garlic, garlic!

pears on the tree (taken about 5 minutes before they were harvested)

Random Farm Pictures Time

A small percentage of the 2010 onion crop

Galia melons fresh from the field

a couple of tomato beds

Queen Anne's Lace in the morning light

Plums

Eugene

Me at the farmers market in early July

Betty helping Eugene in the zucchini beds

Costata Romanesque and Sunburst patty pan squashes

Sugar snap peas in June

The Joys of Farming

I was going to post a bunch of pictures of the farm but have decided that I need to vent instead about various things having to do with my profession-market farming.

First off our season is pretty sucky. The weather has been either too wet or too dry and always too hot and humid so we can get less done in a day than is needed. This means getting weeds under control has been herculean task. Even the crops planted on mulch need to be weeded. Today i pulled about 200 pounds of crab grass and purslain from 2 beds of peppers. Still have another 7 or 8 to go. Eugene has been using the wheel hoe to weed the beds that are not cover with landscape fabric whenever it is dry enough to use a hoe but before the ground resembles concrete. I believe we have 4 days with those conditions in the past 6 weeks but, of course it was very hot and humid on those day with highs in the upper 90's.

Because of the hot humid conditions we have loads of Japanese beetles eating and copulating. I have become Ms Coitus Interruptus as I kill any mating JB's I come across and can get my hands (AKA deadly weapons, as far as the past bugs are concerned). We also are getting hit with various soil born diseases on the tomatoes. I did hit them with grapefruit seed extract a week ago and that really did a number on the various fungii attacking the maters but the rain early this morning made whatever was not destroyed by the GSE bloom abundantly so now there are many yellowing mater plants where yesterday there were 3. By many I mean around 50 to 75. At least most the plants have fruit on them so we should get a lot of maters in another 2 to 4 weeks. And I am not too worried about this as we get this blighty ick that is neither early or late blight but still kills the plants by September problem every year.

On top of that our tillage equipment is broken and Eugene so far cannot figure out what is wrong and the BCS manual is of little help other than the fascinating photos of various parts exploded so you can see the individual parts but absolutely no explanation of what they are, do or where they should actually go in order to make the machine run. I would say this is the polar opposite of a Chilton's Manual. Maybe this is Italy's revenge for losing WWII and any other complaints they have towards us Merkins.

So for the past month we have been using hand tools to keep beds weeded and prepped for planting. At some point Eugene will give up on trying to figure the problem(s) out himself and push the 450 pound 2 wheeled tractor up a hill and into the van and take it to the Arcanum Hardware store where they have a guy who works on BCS equipment. Hopefully that person can figure out what is wrong and order the parts needed and than we will wait 2 to 4 weeks for the parts to come in as they come from Italy and it always takes a while for them to send the parts to us.

Betty has been good for a dog her age which means she has not destroyed all the market garden but she is trying. She did in a lot of green beans killing a young raccoon who was doing a huge number on the Latham raspberries the past week. Since the bean patch was the first one of the year and old and we have 5 others just about ready to bear fruit this was not a big deal. And we would rather lose 20% of a green bean bed than 50% of our raspberry canes (and God knows what else) to a coon. But than again the raspberries have been a bit of a disappointment. various things are killing them and we have lost 100' this year to borers, fusarium and perhaps pythium. so that means the raspberry harvest is way down. but it turns out that is not such a bad thing because our sales, despite having the only raspberries in the region and dropping our price 33% are way down this over the past 5 to to years. I guess people just don't want poison free red raspberries anymore, I don't know. But I do know that in the past, the raspberries were one of our main revenue generators for this time of year.

And that bring me to our marketing. our sales are down across the board. we don't get a lot of people coming into the store and more and more the ones who do come buy nothing because the think the prices are too high (and generally are pretty damned rude about it too). If we lower them any more we will be back to making around $2 a hour and will no longer be able to pay the mortgage, gas and electric and will have to get rid of the farm. the CSA is beginning to get more members and it seems that most seem interested in doing it again next year but we have less than half the members we had at this point last year. I really think the fake CSA-companies that buy and resell food, claim to offer local food but rarely do and even when they do it is less than 15% of what the sell-have taken a large share of our market. And the sad thing is I personally know people who have joined them and have told me proudly the are CSA members. Sorry folks, but if you buy food from one of those fake CSA you are not participating in a CSA that grows all of it's food, and the members share in the risk and bounty of their CSA farm. It distresses me that people who should "get it" do not. Some of the people I know who use these services work closely with farmers markets and local farmers. Just makes me shake my head. Such disconnect. But I guess price and convenience always trumps the real deal of picking up food freshly harvested at the farm and getting to talk to the people that grow the food you will eat.

The positive thing about this season's CSA is our members. I really like all of them and I really enjoy puytting together the shares and news letter for them every week. Oh and despite issues with weather and the garden we have had some really great shares this year (pretty much all of them)

The farmers market in Oxford is taking a turn for the worst. Overall our sales are way down despite the fact we were able to harvest 1/2 of our asparagus full and the other half 30% this year meaning we had about double the asparagus we have ever had in the past. We also grew and sold a lot of lettuce which made May a good month for us. But June and July have not been so good. I think there are several factors going on. 1) there are 2x or 3x as many farmers and no increase in customers walking through the market, because 2) they banned dogs from market which has lead to a marked decrease in customer traffic the past 3 weeks (a lot of people were royally pissed off over this decision by the market board which I agreed with at the time, and I believe are boycotting the market.) 3) The market is getting too crafty/artsy and the farmers are losing importance. It seem that the Oxford Farmers Market Uptown is more of a social event than a place to buy locally raised foods. 4)There are more and more people selling prepared foods at market which is great for the customers but I do not believe many, if any, are sourcing the ingredients locally from us growers so that too is cutting into our bottom line. And finally, 5) we seem to be in an economic depression and people percieve farmers markets as places where food is very expensive. And This is true for some things (usually things you cannot get normally at Kroger's or Wal-Mart, like 45 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes, or other heirloom fruits and veggies that cannot take the handling to be sold at any chain. But for most things the prices are the same or even less for food that is a whole lot better.

These are just some of the joys of farming.

Betty's Emergency has Ended

The Betty Emergency has ended, today her stitches came out.

She has been allowed complete run of the farm since Friday and she seems hail and hearty.

The E collar was a godsend. That kept her away from her stitches and allowed her to heal. But sadly the Ecollar did not last very long. By tuesday it had gotten broken some how be ause we were allowing Betty to run around in the fenced back yard and while i was not watching she ripped the thing apart. but it was nothing strips of duct tape could not fix. So for two more days she sported the latest in e collar/duct tape fashion before ripping the thing apart again. Since the vet people said she could get her stitches out as early as Friday and she was not bothering them we left it off and we had one happy pup on our hands. Freedom to run and no stupid lampshade thing on her that kept getting in the way of everything.

All in all she was a good patient. Much better than I expected. We did have to stay with her pretty much all the time while she was wearing the e collar or she would do things like rip up carpeting but we live a life where that can be done. And it was hard Friday and Saturday after the emergency surgery. We could not easily stay with her on Friday and get all the stuff done that must be done to prepare for the farmers market. So the solution was to put her on a chain near where i was washing produce in the morning. Early afternoon is always nap time so we could leave her be for 2 hours but than late afternoon both Eugene and I had to get things bagged and bunched and Betty did not want to be alone so we took her to the store which she really disliked.

Saturday was worse because we both went to the market. We had considered one of us staying home but decided we both should go. So we went and got through a cold and windy market. came home and found Betty had chewed up a part of one of the carpets. Bad dog! But we were able to stay with her pretty much all the time for the rest of the time she had to wear the e collar and once that came off she quit being so needy and destructive.

We are very appreciative to all the people who have contributed to the "Betty Fund". This idea came up on Face Book conversation about the Betty Emergency, via Rose Campbell-Blake who commented that people should donate towards paying off Betty's emergency surgery. And what do you know, this has happened and the Betty Fund was born. Betty (and Eugene and me) have way cool friends.

I wish I could say the same about the vet we used. we have not been able to talk to her since the emergency surgery despite having been in there twice. We will not be returning there.

Winter Farm Fun

I had a spring mix order to fill for tomorrow so that meant going up to the salad house and seeing what there was to cut. So Eugene and I went up to see what's what and among other things, found buried in the area that is supposed to have onion seedlings a deer leg. Nice.


So he moved the leg out of the garden and we proceeded on to the salad house, went inside and found it nice and warm-a good 10 degrees warmer than outside. Nice conditions for the arugula, lettuces, mizuna, mustard and weeds growing in there.

We keep row covers on everything to keep the risk of frost damage down and so far this winter it has worked well. Though, in past winters, even with row cover and gallon milk jugs acting as heat sinks, we have had major damage to the crops. But not this year and it has been real nice to be able to eat fresh greens in deep winter. But using row covers means we have to remove them to work the beds

and That is exactly what Eugene is doing here, removing the cover over the arugula and mustard bed. And you can see the beds beyond him and next to him have no covers over them because I took those off so I could cut greens.


While I cut Eugene hoed. Even in winter we have to do some weeding. But the weeds and crops grow slowly so it is relatively easy to keep up with them. This arugula/mustard bed was not too bad and the soil was dry enough to work


But this lettuce bed to the south of the arugula/mustard bed was quite wet and hard to hoe. But it has to be done before these weeds all flower and go to seed


and you can see already some of the winter hardy weeds are beginning to flower. That is because in the hoop houses it is already late Feb/early March.

So for about 30 minutes we hoed weeds and cut salad. I harvested a pound of spring mix in that time. In warmer months I would have easily harvested 15 pounds in a half hour of cutting and within 10 days the cut beds would have grown back. This time of year it takes about 8 weeks for the greens to grow back. though this will change in a matter of days, by mid month the crops in the hoop houses will have broken dormancy and will start growing again.


About the time we were all done with work in the hoop house and were debating whether or not we should call it quits or not (there was a little bit of hoeing that could have been done) betty makes the decision for us by appearing outside the hoop house-we heard a noise and the next thing we see black paws on the side of the house. Betty had escaped from the fenced back yard. how? We do not know.


So we leave the hoop house taking our harvest and tools with us and see what Betty is up to.


Betty is hunting mice because she remembered that yesterday she caught her first vole right out side this hoop house and she hoped to get more (and she will in the fullness of time). So We let her poke around the perimeter of the hoop house for a bit than eventually went back to the hiuse. okay Betty and Eugene went to the house and I went to the store to bagged the Spring Mix for tomorrow's order.

The New Pup

Meet betty, a rescue dog we took in yesterday evening. She is a Newfoundland/chow cross. She's around 3 months old judging from the teeth and so far a sweet girl. Soon she will become one of the dogs that guard our crops from deer, bunnies, voles and anything else.

Investigating a shovel removing ice from the deck-Boy that was fun!

Here she is bothering Danny and showing the white of her eye

Wintry High Wind

Yesterday winter came storming in. The day started off with thunderstorms-thunder, lightning, heavy rain and heavy winds. By dawn the rain and thunder had moved eastward. The winds picked up so that by 9 am they were howling and we were getting gusts over 50mph with sustained winds around 30mph.

it was farm share day as well but since we were aware that the weather would be less than ideal for harvesting I got in what I needed the day before in cold but much calmer conditions. Eugene, on the other hand decided to get in kale, cabbage, red turnips and broccoli before the big freeze occurred.

Personally I avoid harvesting in high winds as the winds can do a lot of damage to harvested crops, especially to leafy greens if they are not well covered. I use towels to cover the harvest and they are not always easy to secure to the picking crates and will blow off (I have yet to have one blow away). But sometimes you cannot avoid unpleasant situations and this was one that was unavoidable.

So the morning was spent harvesting things that did not have enough protection to get through a 17F degree early morning. By around noon more and more time was being spent trying to keep the plastic on the hoop houses tight. Eugene was also spending way too much time trying to keep the row covers on beds-this will not work unless one takes about every row cover rock we have and puts them all on the 15 or so beds we have covered. Even than a lot of the covers will come open in high winds or rip themselves to shreds. In the past I would simply go and open all the covers and secure them to the ground so they cannot harm the plants they are protecting by being blown around in the wind.

This time I did not do that because Eugene thought it was a bad idea. And he was correct on that. if the covers were removed yesterday right after a rain even they would have ended up folded and frozen to themselves and the ground and would have been useless to use until the outside temp went above 32F. So now we hope that the covers did not blow off the beds and stick to the ground (but it looks like we will be well above freezing in a couple of days so we can use them again very soon)

After lunch (temp around 34F) I got to work putting together the shares for the Winter FSI and Eugene went out to harvest turnips. I could hear the hoop houses snapping and growling in the wind but up until 2:30 they all seemed to be staying together. I went back in the house around 2:30 and thought I had nothing much to do with the rest of the day. I reveled in that delusion up until 3:30 when Eugene came in and said he had to warm up for a while and than go back out and take in the rutabagas.

I looked at him and said "rutabagas? You mean the rutabagas in the hoop house?" he replied" yes the rutabagas in the hoop house". Than I said "I take it the hoop house is no longer covered with plastic" and he replied"pretty much".

And with all that I found a hat and gloves and put on a work coat and we went and pulled and topped rutabagas. it was interesting working in an area that was quite warm under an hour before we got there. The soils were still warmish when we started but but by the time we finished they were freezing up. As were the greens on the rutabagas, they looked so sad. The same could be said for the broccoli in the bed next to the rutabagas that had been coddled and protected up until yesterday afternoon. Fortunately we were pretty much done with the broccoli so its' demise is not a big loss.

And with the plastic off it will make it a lot easier to clean out the beds with dead green beans, dead broccoli and a scant few rutabaga runts. Than we can fill the beds with the lettuce seedlings we have ready to be planted somewhere. I don't know if that is what will actually happen but right now it sounds like a pretty good idea.

The Fall Carrot Crop

The past two days have been all about carrots. Monday we spent the day digging 4 beds of carrots, removing the tops, getting off the excess mud and putting them into crates. The weather was cool and cloudy with occasional sunny breaks which were very nice as the sun warmed us up. Otherwise we were cold.

Tuesday afternoon was spent washing the carrots. It was a lot warmer Tuesday than it was Monday and sunny to boot. So the job was not too bad, though getting soaked from the waist down in 50F weather is not exactly my idea of fun. But it was certainly more fun than doing this job in 45F or colder weather.

The mud did not want to come off the roots but with enough water pressure any thing is possible and I ended up with 7 full crates of field washed carrots. Field wash means 99% of the dirt is off of them but they are not 100% clean.

We have a primitive wash station. It consists of a hose and a metal stand to put a crate on. Oh, and I use empty dirty crates to put crates full of dirty carrots on so they are not directly on the ground (keeps things sanitary and also keeps slugs from crawling into the crates and eating holes in the carrots). What I do is first spray down the crates full of dirty carrots to get the dirt on them wet. This is a kin to soaking them. Than I grab a full crate of wet, dirty roots and dump about 1/6th of the contents (maybe 10 pounds) into the cleaning crate (which is any empty crate that is on the metal stand) and spray the carrots off, making sue to roll them around so all surfaces are washed. Than I dump them into a clean crate for storage. Repeat that about 40 times and you have 7 crates of clean carrots ready to be bagged up for sale.

It's a good thing we dug the carrots when we did. They were all harvested because we were under the impression that it was going to get really cold and start snowing. At least that was the forecast 5 days out for this week. As it has turned out it will rain today and it will dip below freezing at night from here on out but it looks like we will not get 12"+ of snow nor will the soils freeze up any time soon (like in the next 10 days). But despite the lack of winter we are finding a lot more damage on the carrots vs the last time we harvested them, about 10 days ago. Up until this final carrot harvest I would say the damaged carrots made up less than 1% (and some weeks there was zero damage). But this batch had around 5% damage, mainly from slugs, though a few carrot tops were chewed off by mice or bunnies. 5% is not bad at all for damage. The summer carrots had around 50% damage from mice and voles and carrot maggots. The summer carrots also were not nearly as big and beautiful nor did they have the wonderful sweet flavor of these fall beauties.

But as I was saying, it is good we got these carrots out when we did because I believe we would have seen a lot more damage from the slugs and mice had we left them in another 5 to 7 days. It was obvious to us that the critters are getting hungry and would have started dining on the carrots in earnest very soon. But now the carrots are safely put away out of the reach of the vermin and ready to be sold to SW Ohio and EC Indiana Locavores and distributed to our farm share members

Frost Warning

Prefrost peppers and eggplant

Got back from the farmers market Saturday afternoon with every intention of relaxing for the rest of the day (farmers markets really take it out of you) but than realized that the weather prophets had issued a frost warning for Sunday morning. That meant we had to do something about what was left of the summer garden. The tomatoes and eggplant are pretty much over except the late tomatoes that in theory are in a hoop house but in fact are not (they have a hoop house frame over them but no plastic on the frame as Eugene did not want to dig in the plastic knowing that he would in all likelihood move the house to another crop such as broccoli or kale) but we had a lot of peppers.

The (probably) last pepper harvest. That's around 400 pounds of bell peppers

I have been picking the peppers green with just a bit of color all summer. I have discovered that peppers, like tomatoes, will ripen up off the plant just fine. And by harvesting them early, the peppers do not get hit badly by bugs or disease. Instead of losing 50% to 80% of the peppers when left on the plant to ripen I now lose under 25%.

So it is now around 3pm. We have eaten lunch, unloaded the van and put away everything from market and most weeks we would be preparing for a nice afternoon nap. But as i mentioned, the weather service was predicting frost Sunday morning. So we had to forgo the nap and go back to work. We started with the peppers. we took out 6 crates and piled them high with mainly green peppers. That took about an hour with both of us working.

Next we were on to the green beans and haricot verts. They needed to be harvested than covered with row cover. We got under 5 pounds of beans from both beds.

Next the spring mix and beets beds needed to be covered. That took very little time as the covers were already there. They just needed to be pulled over the hoops and secured with rocks. But we realized the broccoli also needed a cover. Granted, all these crops can take cold conditions but they do so much better if they have protection. So Eugene found a cover for the broccoli and put it over top of them.

Freshly harvested ginger

While he did that I harvested the ginger. Yes we decided to try to grow ginger in SW Ohio. And it worked decently. But ginger does not like temps below 50F (the poor plants had to deal with a lot of nights in the mid 40's). I figured 33F would kill them so I decided to dig them up and bring them inside. Now we have a lot of ginger plants that need more time in the ground to make more ginger. And we have about 4 ounces of finished ginger. While I like the idea of local ginger I think it makes a lot more sense to buy the imported stuff if you use a lot of ginger. Because ginger requires a 10 to 12 month growing season and needs to temps to be above 50F (I suspect 85F is where is it happiest) it makes no sense to grow this on any kind of commercial scale here in Ohio. I believe the carbon foot print of doing so would far out weight the carbon foot print of importing it since a lot of heat would be required in winter and that heat would have to be more than passive solar. That said it is great house plant. It is beautiful, smells good and if you can keep the plant alive (which is pretty easy) for more than a year you can harvest your own ginger and divide the rest of the roots to make more ginger plants.

So at dusk we had the garden ready for frost. We were exhausted and went in the house to eat and eventually go to sleep-nothing like a 12 hour day of hard physical work to make you feel tip top. The next morning I get up and find that the low temp is no where near freezing, it is 37F.

Now we are ready for cold weather in the market garden. Bring it on Nature, bring it on.

The New Farm Sign

The old sign circa 2007 (the white one, not the yellow one). As you can see, you cannot read it from any distance. This is an example of a horrible farm sign

After 5 years of having really bad signage we now have a very nice sign for the Farm and people should start noticing that there is a produce farm on US 127. And it has already had effect. Before we even have the sign completely done people stopped and said they had never noticed the farm before.

The sign has been 6 years in the making. We bought two of them from a local Dunkard who was getting out of the clock repair and sales biz. He had been bothering us to buy his 2 huge signs for about a year and finally he offered the two signs for $50 each (they cost him $1500 each). We at the time had no real use for the signs but we went out on a cold windy day and cut both signs down. one fell on me and almost caused me great harm. The guy's father saw us taking one of the signs and assumed we were stealing his son's signs and almost called the sheriff on us. But we explained that his son had sold us the signs so he called him first and found we were telling the truth and left us to our work.

The signs laid around the Crubaugh Rd farm for a couple of years than were moved to this farm with the intent of getting at least one erected within a year. But since I did not want to go the vinyl letter route-I hate vinyl lettering- it took a bit longer. I wanted a proper sign that was painted by an artist. I was hoping that perhaps my father could do it but by the time we got around to getting our shit together enough to get one of the boards painted my Dad was in failing health. So that did not happen. I asked around to various artist friends and acquaintances I know and no one wanted to do the sign (I was pretty amazed, especially with the younger artists, that no one seemed to want money for their art. I guess sign painting is considered too low brow). Finally, our friend, artist and farming colleague Debra Bowles said she would do it.

So we got the big board we planned on using prepped for her (it had been, in a former life been a clock repair and sales shop sign) and took it to her farm in the spring of 2008 and waited. Many months went by and nothing had been done on the sign. Autumn happened and Debra told us she still had not had time to work on the sign because of family, goats and other issues and and now it was getting too cold to paint her unheated space. My brother visited for Thanksgiving and we told him of our sign progress and he made the observation that we were using a hippy artist and we would just have to be patient. That the result would likely be wonderful. I believe he said the fact we were using a hippy artist was perfect for us (and one who learned her craft under the teaching of Crossan Curry, one of my Dad's best friends, a person I have known my entire life and a wonderful master artist in his own right. So keeping all this in the family, so to speak).

Winter passed and spring and warmer weather was upon us and still no sign.

At this point (early May) Debra implied that perhaps she was not the person to do the sign after all. This hit me hard. Now we were looking at paying someone close to $1000 to create a design in vinyl, resurface the sign (which had been primed for pain by this point) and apply the design. Yes, we would have likely gotten a decent sign (and far, far better than what we had) but it would have been vinyl. Somehow she seemed to feel my bitter disappointment and decided that she could do the sign. So in mid May the project finally was started in earnest and by mid June she told us it was finished and we could pick it up. We drove to her farm and put the new sign in the back of the van and took it home where it languished on the front porch of the store until yesterday.

We now have a beautiful new sign and just in time for the 127 Yard Sale. I suspect this will increase business by several hundred percent in the next few weeks. I cannot use this coming week to gauge as I expect business to increase by at least 2000% during the yard Sale (as it has the past 4 years)

Eugen dismantles the old sign

Digging out the eastern post that had been cracked in half 3 weeks ago by a truck that had hit it

Surveying the work so far-old sign down, new sign about to be erected



First post being put in place

Second post erected and Eugene with his trusty level is getting his bearings on where the post need to be exactly in their post holes so the entire sign is level

Sign is up but not quite finished. Eugene is bring a rope to put around the sign so the side bolts can be tightened

Sign is up and almost finished. Still needed to pour concrete in the post holes and than the final step is painting the white horizontal board so it matches the rest of the sign.