Friday, July 9, 2010

Beautiful Rain!

    That heat wave we just had has resulted in the peppers growing fairly quickly. The tomatoes are doing well also. Wednesday turned out to be a bit stressful for me as I was unable to water my crops. I bought an irrigation pump about 6 weeks ago from princess auto. It worked a few times then quit so I returned it. They gave me my money back no questions asked. This week i picked up a new one and it worked for about 3 minutes before it also conked out and wouldn't restart. While their stuff is cheap, their in house brand "Power Fist" (no comment -lk ed.) products seem to be poorly made and not worth buying at any price. Again they gave me a return but this left me without a pump. Hopefully we will get a Honda pump some time in the near future if i can scrounge up the $600 for it. I checked the weather forecast and decided to give it a couple of days and if it didn't rain then i would go up and borrow Howie's Honda pump and water everything. Fortunately the rains came today just when they were needed. It is beautiful to see the rain falling and think about the life flowing into the crops. They should be alright on there own until Monday.
    That said, i still have a ton of tying up to do asap. Anyone who can come up early this week can email me at grantdmacpherson@gmail.com. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
   Next blog entry will be the "Tale of Elwood's Crooked Swede". The story of a spuds journey from the old world to my fields, so don't miss it!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Canada Day

    Canada Day was fun. Lainie and I went up with the lovely and talented Alex Castillo-Smith and spent the morning weeding and pounding spikes into the ground. Then a little lunch at Ravine Vineyards. It was a great way to spend the morning and productive too. Thanks for your help Alex.
    At the farm there are thousands of baby tomatoes. Its very exciting. I will be heading up tomorrow morning to begin staking up the vines. I am using steel posts that I got from Howie, and some old grape trellising wire. The plan is to tie a piece of sisal twine to the top wire and then to each vine base and wrap the vine around the rope as it grows. Its only a few weeks before the first tomatoes will be ready for harvest!
    A pleasant surprise awaited me at the farm. You may remember that the bunnies ate most of the bean plants. I was planning on reseeding them this week but it seems that even though they where cut down to stumps they where not ready to give up. There are new leaves spouting on all of them! Nature is truly inspiring.
   Another day of weeding, watering, and trellising awaits in the morning so its off to bed.