Miraculous - 4 days without rain!

We typically shoot to put frost-sensitive crops in the ground around June 1.  This year, as is plain to see, was not going to cooperate with our plans.  We planted our pumpkin plants and some other squash Thursday night (June 13), only about two weeks too late.  It's been a real struggle to not only get plants in the ground, but also do all the other necessary things to get them to produce: cultivate, hoe, and fertilize.  Instead, plants just sit there looking short and weak, unable to grow in cold rainy weather where saturated ground chokes plants of necessary oxygen.

So, you can imagine my surprise yesterday when I woke up and it hadn't rained!  REALLY?  Ever since the snow melted, whenever there has been even a 40% chance of rain, we got rain.  Since there was a 60% change of rain on Friday, I thought for sure I'd be spending another Saturday looking at weeds growing in the fields and thinking about how far behind I've gotten.  There would have been nothing new in that; I've had a number of days worrying about work I have to get done without being able to do anything about it.

Instead, we finally started to make some headway yesterday.  I was able to hoe and fertilize a number of crops like onions, brassicas (cabbages, broccoli), and garlic.  We also got the pea trellis up, which is always a nice image.  Some jobs on the farm are hard to see, but putting up trellis makes me feel like I've really accomplished something since it's so visible.

 

Pea Trellis on Lida Farm