Harvests, Corckscrew Fire 10 Miles Away, HOT TUB, Flat Tire, Beans ...

What a day! The squash gave me 15 pounds which is half of what I needed to make my order that I deliver today. There was a coating of fine white ash over the entire garden and I had to keep blowing them off to keep the fine stuff at bay. I left enough to grow over night that I will have enough for the 80 pounds.

The squash in the sheep pen are actually growing some with not one drop of water provided by me. Incredibly the plants are growing quite nicely in the arid conditions.

The sunflowers are well over 12 feet tall and are growing some nice looking heads. They are all skyscraper variety which has large enough seeds to eat. The wall of them works nice to help protect the rest of the pole garden from the sheep pen.

Beneath a tree next to the house I found a dead chipmunk. My first thought was "where the hell did our cat find a chipmunk?" but that rapidly vanished as I remembered that we don't have them around our farm. I have never seen one here, just the squirrels. I am pretty sure that an eagle or maybe an owl dropped it after landing on a branch of the tree overhead. It's really the only explanation since chipmunks are not here.

More time in the garden picking and I got 22 pounds picked in 2 buckets. I had the amount needed for today already so these got bagged and set aside for the next order days.

Hive account@stryeyz took off from work and got home near 1pm. When she parked and got out she heard a hissing and found a screw in her tire. I pulled the tire off and tossed it in my truck and we went to town. We dropped the tire off at Tire Rama to have them fix it and we went to lunch at Nudo.

After lunch we went and finally did what we have been talking about for years, extra seriously the past months, we put half down on our new hot tub! The model they have on the floor is perfect for us, the color is great, it is in stock, and it will soon be on our farm. We are extremely excited but I do have a lot of work to do to get everything ready for it. We are getting a site visit from the spa place so I can make sure my plans for the pad and electrical will work out right before I start digging.

I have to do the call for locating, rent a tractor to dig out the pad, haul 2 ton of rock for the pad, run electrical from the house, along with my daily tasks. It will be worth it though as we will have our hot tub finally!

While waiting for our order at Total Wine this early 60s corvette pulled up and rumbled as it idled. Such a gorgeous car and the engine sounded sweet. The older gentlman let his elderly wife out at the front door then pulled around and parked a row over.

Driving home after picking up the now repaired tire we saw the plume of smoke from the 8000 acre fire that is only 10 miles from our farm. The winds have pushed it north and east but still away from us. The fire has burned through areas where we have friends and number of them were forced to evacuate. So far it sounds like their homes are all okay but we will know more today.

Looking at the fire from our farm. The smoke has been blowing to the northeast pretty consistently so we were not inundated with smoke all day.

The beans needed to be bagged so we spent a couple of hours getting that done in the evening. Ended up being 145 half pound bags for 72.5 pounds. There is at least another 50 pounds in the garden even after the 20 pounds I picked yesterday.

This morning I have to pick the 15 pounds of squash I need for the order, then I drive the order to the valley. Today I am calling 811, picking more beans, we might get some rain and thunderstorms this afternoon, and hope the fire gets under control.