My new helper and I got out to the Big garden around 6AM and started harvesting the garlic. The humidity had dropped to 63% and it had been a cool night in the low 60’s. It was relatively pleasant working out there.
I had seen a video recently of someone using a broadfork to harvest garlic. I’d always used my straight shovel, but last year I had hit lots of bulbs. So I tried the broadfork. It worked much better and I only hit 5 bulbs.
We got 2 full totes and a little in a 3rd one. Once the garlic was all up, we set up in the shade to process it. I prefer to wash the mud off the bulbs rather than peel off 2 layers of skin. I think the extra skins help it store better.
My helper took the cleaned bulbs with stalks, cut away the roots, tied them in staggered bundles of 8, and hung them in the woodshed alcove. They will stay there until they cure, about 2 - 3 weeks.
These were the damaged ones. We will use the undamaged pieces.
I had to go inside for one of the MassHealth appointments at 9:30. We had finished the garlic by then. I’ve never gotten the garlic done so early, but then, I never started at 6AM either.
My new helper weeded some of the north side flowerbeds until it was time to go. They had gotten quite overgrown with weeds.
The upshot of the MassHealth is that they never sent me for disability evaluation after 2014 but I was on the disability health insurance up until the end of 2020. The last evaluation expired in 2014, and apparently, so did my disability. But I was never notified of this.
This means it’s highly likely I will lose my health insurance, have to appeal, then be sent the disability application to do reams more paperwork, and then be sent to their specialists for evaluation which takes months, and then wait even longer for MassHealth to make the determination.
I’ve changed doctors long ago and I have no idea if the new one has kept as good records as the old one. It was the old one’s records that got me the determination in the beginning.
The second appointment was an evaluation for a supplemental program that may help me to get insurance when I might have been denied. But it is all determined by income and I think mine is too high. It doesn’t matter for the disability health insurance, but that’s currently out of my reach.
My helper friend arrived at 11:30 and we went up and inventoried and then emptied the last freezer running at the barn. I didn’t have time to clean it, we just shut it off.
We brought all this back to load in the 2 freezers in the cellar. I also cleaned out the freezer in the spare fridge in the clean room and moved all that into the cellar freezers. They are both rather full now.
My helper friend gave the downstairs bathroom a thorough going over while I was in the second appointment. Once he left at 2PM, I was able to rest on the couch. It was still cool in the house with low humidity and Larry had a great time walking and laying on me on the couch while I watched a movie.
This window is his favorite place and when I had come in from the garlic, he had knocked the second plant on the floor. It didn’t break the pots, just 1 leaf broke off.
He must have drunk something because he used the litter box in the night. During the day, he tried to eat some of the pate I had put out. He gets seen by the vet on Friday afternoon, and we have an all day dental appointment on Monday. He ought to be very unhappy by Monday night. But hopefully he will be done, and able to eat again.
On Friday it’s to be cool and rain or thunderstorm all day. My helper friend will be here and we plan to put away all the freezer boxes and canning jars. I’d like to clean the freezer at the barn, but there’s no water up there yet. But there’s lots of other jobs we can do. Then we take Larry to the vet in the afternoon.