We have had an unusual amount of rainy weather! However, there are always rainy day jobs that seem to keep us busy. The fire wood for next year is all cut and split thanks to our apprentices for all their hard work. Yes, we did use a mechanical wood splitter and chain saws, but it is still a lot of work. Hopefully, next year we will not need so much wood to keep our green house going. The new green house will have a large thermal mass of rocks under it to store heat. This season has really given us an appreciation for thermal mass to store heat. We have burned a lot of wood to keep the hoop house converted to a greenhouse warm. The good news is that the plants are doing well.

Our hoop houses crops are also growing despite the wet cool weather our dilemma is that the outside gardens aren’t growing as fast as usual.  I am thinking that the start of  our CSA season may be delayed a week due to the cool, wet weather. We did  get some early seeding done and covered it with row cover, but the last time I looked the plants still weren’t up.  Time will tell.

We have been mixing potting soil for all the greenhouse plants that we start indoors.  The melons have been seeded, but next week we will do another round of brassicas and we will seed our pumpkins, squash and early corn for transplants – that takes a lot of potting soil.  We mix it up like a big cake – passing everything through a sieve to get the lumps out.

Another rainy day job is getting the electric fence ready for the draft horses to go out on pasture. They are looking forward to the fresh grass. Every year the apprentices learn the art of fixing electric fence. In the winter the wind blows it around and the deer break it as they roam across the ridge.