Big Grain Run, Transplants, Deck, Wood Cutting, Bon Fire, Turkeys, ...

With gas costs so high I am making one trip to town a week for grain and yesterday morning was this week's trip. At the first brewery I had 6 full barrels to load onto the trailer. Two empties went to the truck.

At the Steam Plant the sun was just touching the tops of the stacks as I loaded up the barrels. I shoveled one barrel out into the tops of the 6 on the trailer so I only had 4 to load into the bed of the truck. It gave me just enough room for the two empties that I then went to drop off.

There is construction going on by the Saranac house and I just had enough room to stop and off load the pair of empty barrels.

The city is pretty mellow before 6am.

Once home the sun managed to show itself again, but it didn't last that long. The rest of the day was overcast as the storms rushed up from the south but all missed us to the west.

It has become a bit tough finding places to put the grain now and I had to pull the fence open in a new spot to allow me to back the trailer in. All 6 barrels got emptied out in the corner where I had yet to put any grain.

I unhooked the trailer then drove my truck down below the lower garden and emptied the 4 barrels from the bed of the truck. I just dumped them out in piles intending to go spread them but I got side tracked.

My next task was to transplant the tomatoes and one tomatillo from the main garden. They were all volunteers but I was out of room in my tomato row so I had to go to the pole garden to plant them. The Armenian cucumber row had not one sprout so I turned it into a tomato row and put the tomatillo on the very end where it can be herpes all it wants, away from the main garden.

I planted all but one of the volunteers and the last one was a healthy sized plant which I decided to put into a pot on the deck. I got it in an old pot of soil and on the deck then got side tracked by cleaning the deck. The boys had done some clay dinosaur excavating kits and the clay had gotten on the deck. I sprayed the deck off and scrubbed it with the coarse push broom.

All the plants got moved from the deck table to the plant stand which opens up the deck a lot.

Side tracked again I cleaned up our washers pit and cut all the grass and weeds then raked the soil back up around the outside edge and leveled the gravel within.

The tomato plant got a cage after I put the garden tools away.

The tomato row in the pole garden. The tomatillo is on the very end.

I had gotten the fire going in the pit and wanted to get a good sized fire going to dry out all the ashes in it and to burn down all the remaining wood and paper so I can shovel it out today. The sections of the tree that was topped were still sitting where they left them so I got the chainsaw out and cut the 3 logs into pieces.

I carried the saw back to the shed with a round and J set about trying to split it right away.

All the rounds fit on and in the wheelbarrow and I pushed it up to the yard where the boys tried splitting what they could.

J got one round to split which opened it up cutting across the grain diagonally and gave a wild texture to it.

Our cherry tree is setting a lot more cherries this year and hopefully we can actually get a harvest from it this year.

Off the end of the deck is this sprout that caught my attention. It is a veggie or fruit of some kind and has me thinking it is a watermelon, but I won't know until it starts to produce.

Got the fire built up nicely and the heat emanated over 5 feet away and was hard to stand near.

All the older birds were perched on the pallets by the pen and it looked like it was their afternoon meeting.

Been seeing this in the yard for a while now, the base of an old scale. Looks like it has seen some shit!

The turkeys are pretty funny and are rather docile. This hen let me pick her up and only fussed a tiny bit.

The axe and maul storage works great. I moved the rest of them over and they all fit perfectly width and height wise. The overhang keeps them dry but they are right next to the wood pile so super accessible.

The burgers went on the grill and once they were done the buns got a quick toasting over the coals.

We got a bit of a nice sunset with some cool coloring to the sky.

Got out to soak later than hoped for as R has been getting in trouble all day long and needed disciplining. Only stayed in a bit as I had to get the birds all to bed and I was beat from being up at 4:30 in the morning.

It rained a little bit overnight but only lightly. Today is calling for rain in the afternoon so I have time this morning to get some things done around the farm. The never ending weeding needs to be worked on, I have to wash my clothes, spread the grain below the garden, pull weeds in the pole garden and watch for other volunteers, and likely grill mid day since the boys have a birthday party this evening to go to.