My intern was here on Wednesday and the first thing we did was clean up the huge sheets of plastic and fold them up. Next we got them and a huge pallet over by the driveway, ready to be loaded into the truck to go up by the hay wagon.
Using the truck, we moved 7 pallets out of the barn to down by the hay wagon. We got them arranged and then brought the big pallet and the plastic up. I had a narrow piece, 8’ x 36’, and we laid it on the pallets as a base and anchored it with hay bales.
Next we got my bag of baling twine and sat and made long ropes for tying down the plastic. The 2 young men arrived to move the hay right on time so we left them to it.
We finished the southern rows of garlic, all mulched, and the area around them.
We’d gotten this far on the northern rows when I realized I hadn’t told the guys to count the bales, so I’d know how much to pay for. So we went up and got a count on the bales, 137 roughly.
They had nearly finished so when the last bale went up the 4 of us dragged the huge sheets of plastic over the stack. The plastic sheets covered it very well. We anchored them really well as there was high winds predicted to start at any time, as we finished. I decided to bring some of the wood I’d used to hold the plastic down in the garden up and anchor the bottoms. Just as my intern and I were loading the wood, the wind started to come up.
Big garden: Walla Walla Sweet onions, lacinato kale, Vates kale
We got done and ate some late lunch as it was 1:30PM. Then we cleaned up the garden equipment, caught a loose hen, and she went home and I went out to get photos before the storm started.
Big garden: calendula
Autumn color with the storm moving in
New Herb garden: Row 6, calendula and snapdragons
New Herb garden: Row 7, echinacea purpurea seedheads
This, I had hoped, was to be a gold colored mum. But it is a bright splash of color by the front steps, as is its mate on the other side.
My husband managed to get the outside cover off the washer before his back made him quit. It’s been 2 weeks now with no washer. But it’s not to be helped, with his back as it is.
The storm came through, with the predicted high winds, lightning, torrential rain, and pea sized hail. Then the power went out and didn’t come back on until 1:15AM. I broke out the oil lamps and we read until bedtime.
Thursday my helper friend is here and I hope to finish the Big garden planting and mulching and move onto the Small garden and start planting that garlic. I am going to have to bring more wood to the haystack, as the bottom of the plastic blew around a bit.