One of the best bits of information we came home with from the Mother Earth News Fair was that we could wait a little longer before planting our garlic. The other thing we had re-enforced was that we needed to get the seed garlic ready the day before. No earlier. That makes our upcoming project a three day event. Thank goodness Ron and I both have taken next Friday off. Fingers are crossed the current weather prediction for our area holds.
In order to get ready (mostly) we had to dig up and sift at least one more 56 foot long row.
We started last Saturday morning, Oct 1st at slightly later than crack o’dawn. Now that fall is heading our way, the sun isn’t up as soon as we are. No sense in heading to THF in the dark. Brother-in-law Don was planning to join us again. He really does like it out there in Augusta.
Ron and Jo got our ball of string out and marked out the new row. While they did that, I decided to pick up the surface rocks before we got our set up started. They joined in and we quickly had the wheelbarrow filed.
Now it was time for the real work and we dove right in to it. Don arrived about 9:30 am and we quickly hit our stride. It was perfect weather for working, cooler with overcast skies. The hit is always what kills us and last week it was the wind too.
Major surprise when brother-in-law John showed up too. He grabbed a shovel and the dirt started to fly. I was in charge of unloading the wheelbarrow again. Don helped me get it down the row each time as I was going backwards with it. Getting the thing turned around in tight quarters is not easy. I had my trusty pedometer with me again and by the end of the day I had logged 17,377 steps. So much better that a gym membership.
At 2 pm, we were beat and hungry. I had brought hot dogs to cook on the grill and while I got them going, the rest of the crew made a dent at equipment breakdown. That is one of our least favorite parts of the this venture. We ate our late lunch and rested while the boys talked future plans.
We are still finding huge rocks in our field. Even though we are only digging down a shovel’s length, they have to be dug out.
Sunday was a no work day. Jo had come down with my cold and it was supposed to be rainy. The plan was to wait and go out later in the day, but that didn’t happen. A wasted day in Ron’s opinion. So the plan now was to put in a few hours after work each day.
Luckily Don was more than willing to stick this out with us. Ron headed home each day and got Jo and something for a quick dinner. I was always the one late to the party.
We lucked out the with weather again on Tuesday and left for home well satisfied with our progress.
Wednesday we were back out there again. Our pile of rocks is growing by leaps and bounds. We are again limited by the day light. We have to stop working; leaving ourselves enough time to safely breakdown everything. I refuse to agree with Ron’s suggestion that we start using headlamps.
Thursday was harder. We suddenly had summer temps to deal with. But we only had 5 more feet to go and were determined to finish it off. Do or die. And those few hours almost did kill us.
And there we are. Three rows done and ready for planting. With compost, azomite rock dust, and a earth friendly, all purpose organic fertilizer added in. Well seasoned cow manure will come later. Again, our friend Dick is going to come through with that for us.
Of course we are not really done yet. We will plan to plant these rows and see what seed garlic we have left. Then we will break out the tiller and do a quick, down and dirty row for the rest. That is what we did last year and the garlic we pulled was fabulous.
It will be sure a relief to have this done. Then we will be able to take a deep breath, rest for a day and then start on next thing. I shudder to think what Ron will come up with. I know that he has plans to keep the 3 of us busy with over the winter. I think I will have to come up with a family schedule so I can book “me time” that he cannot override.
I foresee some battles in my future. But you can bank on my winning.