Poor Ron.  He had rock solid plans (pun intended) for the 3 of us to get at least one row in our soon to be garlic patch ready for fall planting.  This involved shoveling dirt and rocks into his sifter.  The nicely filtered dirt falls down in a pile and the rocks, of all sizes tumble into our wheelbarrow.

We had already spent two long hours the previous Sunday giving it a try out.  The plan itself sounded pretty straight forward.  Letting the machine do most of the work was fine with me and Jo.  Of course it didn’t work out that way.  Never does.

So we shoveled away, dumping the dirt onto the sifter.  Jo’s job was to help the process along.  After weeks of little to no rain in our area, we finally had a good soaking last week.  And there in lies the problem.  We weren’t dealing with the dry dirt we were used to.  This time we had clumps to deal with.  Jo had to break them up by hand before the went off the end into the wheelbarrow.

But we kept at it and by the time the heat really hit us, we had dug out five holes along our row. Thank goodness we don’t have to go down too deeply when planting garlic. Our goal was to get about shovel deep and let it go at that.

Saturday morning we were up and out at 5:45 am.  First job was to get another batch of logs into the tanks for a 4 hour soak.  These logs are the newest ones and we don’t expect to see any mushrooms from them until next year.

Then we got ready for real work.  On Friday we got pouring rain out on THF.  Most of NY State has been in drought or near drought conditions for 2016.  The expected rain is a good thing for us overall.  Great for our pawpaws and elderberries, but not so much for sifting dirt.  The rain did make it much easier to do the actual digging.  When we were garlic planting there last year, it was some seriously hard work breaking up the compacted dirt.  Rocks do tend to be easier to pick out of dirt that is not bone dry.

This time the clumps were even worse.  And the wet dirt was actually sticking to grate on the sifter and clogging it up.  So both Jo and I were kept busying trying to break up the clumps and force the dirt to drop down on the ground and not end up in the wheelbarrow.

It was just 7 am and already very muggy, so after an hour of work, Ron called it quits.  The effort we were being forced to put out was just not seeing an equal return in progress.   To make the day seem less than a waste, Ron and I went down the row and cut out along one edge while Jo put all the tools away.  With more rain expected over the next week, it was clear that this project was going to have to wait for some dryer soil.   Or find ourselves a much longer sifting table.  I figure if it was at least 6 feel longer, a few more of the clumps were be shaken apart.  As that is not going to happen, we shall find other projects to keep us busy while we wait for an improvement in our work conditions.

“Lucky” for me and Jo, Ron’s got a long list of things that need to be done.  There are always more rocks to pick out of our field, logs to soak on a weekly basis, frames to build, garbage to pick up, weeds to pull, research to do, grass to mow, planting areas to lay out, trees to cut down, and brush to cut back.  This does not include chores dealing with our home garden, daily life and work, farm paperwork, my blog, and learning more about Ron’s plans for the future.  Those plans of his, they cause me sleepless nights.  Wondering what will he come up with next is my constant worry.