Well, Ron had another wild thought. He found a listing on Craigslist for a tiller; several emails later and he had arranged to meet with woman selling it out in Auburn. Ron took Jo and off they went yesterday. With the newly repaired Transit. We just got it back again, they had to replace the transmission that they just put in two weeks ago. Right now, every noise is cause for alarm. My fingers are crossed that it will stay fixed, for the next 3 years at least.
As they were going to be in the neighborhood, and I have told you before that I am a huge fan of making a trip worth it, I had them stop at Costco and pick up a cat tree. I had spotted it 2 months ago but we were in the Camry so no way it was coming home with us. Ron and I were out there last weekend. As we were making a run to the Syracuse Regional Farmer’s Market (fabulous place), the Real Food Co-op, Wegman’s, and JoAnn Fabrics, Costco was an easy add to the day. But again no Transit so even though the cat tree was now on sale, it stayed there in the store. But, yesterday they not only had the Transit but the trailer as well.
I had a lovely morning with the house to myself. Got caught up on a couple of my shows while I did laundry and assorted chores done. On Friday night I had decided to get a start on dehydrating our garlic. Ron helped by busting apart the heads for me and I peeled them and ran them through the food processor.

All those slices look beautiful but they are sticky beyond words. I spread them out on the plastic sheets, set the temp on low and left them alone. Don’t tell anyone but the dehydrator is sitting in our garage. No way we could leave it set up in our dining room. I do love the smell of garlic, but not that much. I ran a batch of leeks through it last week and that was almost enough to chase us out of the house. The garlic would certainly have sent us running.
Back to Ron’s wild thought- he wants to try growing our garlic out on THF next year. Not waiting until 2016 to get it started. The garlic he ordered arrived in a big box on Thursday and this might have been the kick start. You have to order garlic early if you want to get that certain variety you want to grow. We are going to be growing 3 varieties – German White, German Red and Italian White. So not only are we growing this out on THF but we have to a plan to keep each type separate so we can easily identify them come harvest time. This morning we loaded up with the usual tools, but adding our mini grill, hotdogs and buns. We were going to have a cookout. Ron showed me how to use it and I ran the bush hog over a small section of the field and then he fired up the tiller. This was a learning process as he had never used one before. It became quickly apparent that we really do need to have a rock picking party with lots of attendees. Jo and I did our best, but

there was no way the two of us could keep up with Ron’s progress.

Ron would love to find a way to sell these things. Organically grown rocks. Surely there is a market for them.
After several hours in the hot sun, we were so done with this.

It was time for our cookout. Ron got the grill going and we sat under the trees and enjoyed our hotdogs. The only problem we had was underestimating how much water we needed. Next time we have to bring bigger bottles.

Jo has to work tomorrow but Ron and I are going back out again tomorrow morning. We have lots of room on the grill too add a hotdog for anyone who has a couple of hours to spare . Any takers?