Weeding, Melon Garden, Spinach Harvest, Moving Junk, Fire, Studio A...

After our 80 degree day yesterday was only in the low 70s and it took until mid morning for some clouds to start to creep in. Despite that I ended up giving myself a gnarly sunburn on my back.

The fruit trees have needed a healthy dose of copper fungicide and I mixed a bunch up in a bucket and poured it into the tree wells. The leaves are curling and one of the nectarines is about dead. The cherry trees are doing good but the curl is getting to them and I have to keep on top of it.

I have no clue what this thing is but I saw it bright in the sun on a leaf. I nudged it and it crawled off down the plant and hid under the plastic mulch.

Mid morning I got to weeding again and spent the next hour hunched over. It was warm enough that I had my shirt off and by the time I was done with the 2 rows my back was a nice toasty red.

The sheep were all super happy again to have another line of greenery to munch on.

With it not raining now I loaded the boys up in the truck and we headed up to the melon garden where I found that my germination rate was the same shitty 25% as my summer squash. I setup the irrigation and ran it for a bit then pulled weeds and counted plants and of the 100 spots only 25 had plants growing. The acorn squash are doing wonderfully and I have 6 watermelon plants doing well so far. Today I am going back up to reseed everything and hopefully I have enough time to get a melon harvest. The little Minnesota midgets are small enough that they shouldn't have a problem producing.

Back on the farm I headed to the spinach rows with my shears and topped all the plants. They had started to flower and bolt but as I began to cut I noticed they were putting off new growth from the crooks of the leaf stems, so the topping seemed the best idea. Hopefully they don't just go straight to flower and give me a little more growth.

1.5 pounds from the first row.

1.25 pounds from the second row.

and .75 pound from the third row for a total of 3.5 pounds of spinach. The three rows have given a total of 6.5 pounds of spinach this year.

The German giant radishes got pulled as they all bolted and stopped swelling the root. I have such a hard time with radishes and getting them to actually produce. They always bolt on me. The sheep got the discards.

When I pulled the carpeting from our bedroom when doing the laminate install I had piled it outside and I have been wanting to move it to the dump pile for a while. So I backed my truck up and loaded the one pile into the bed. I unfortunately disturbed a bumblebee nest where she had a single egg laid but it ended up squished. I felt a bit bad about that as the bumblebees don't have huge hives and tons of offspring.

I then backed the truck up to the studio and loaded a bunch of carpet padding from other carpet removals from the house. I drove out to the pile and dumped it all with the roofing materials.

I got a good sized fire going in the pit for the afternoon before heading up to the craft studio.

The a/c needed to be installed in the upper window and first thing was to fix a shelf to the outside for the the unit to sit on. The window is a side slide and not top slide so the standard method of keeping the unit in place wouldn't work.

The unit is meant for newer windows as the bottom brackets that the side curtains slide into were over an inch wide and wouldn't slot into the window track. I ripped them off so the curtain brackets would fit. I had to hack one curtain down a bit so the bars wouldn't overlap.

The unit sat on the shelf with the right angle and I measured the opening that I needed to fill.

I cut a piece of OSB to size on the table saw and ripped a few shim pieces.

The board fit perfectly and I was able to hammer one shim in to the top which really locked the board in place.

I installed some foam on the edge then locked the window closed with a board. Some screws to fasten the curtain in place and it was setup. I left it running on high to see how well it cooled.

The railing pieces had to be pulled from under the studio as I don't want to have to climb under the deck to pull it all out later. I tossed it to the side out of the way of the construction zone.

While waiting for dinner to be ready I did a little more weeding and got through about half of another 2 rows. I only have to finish the two then another two and the main garden will be weeded. I only have the beets and chard row by the strawberries to weed after.

I had coated my back in thick layer of aloe vera mid day which helped a bit but damn did it hurt when I lowered my body into the spa. Then every time I would sit up my skin would cool and as soon as I sat back again it would sting and burn until suddenly it didn't. Another good coating on my back before bed seemed to help a good bit overnight.

Today I need to work on the a/c for the pantry, finish weeding the garden, reseed the melons up top, hopefully work on the deck, get a fire going for grilling this evening, and I need to pick through the small radishes to see if any are still producing.