Can't Believe It's August

Time's been flying faster than I ever imagined possible over here, and there are so many things I want to put down before they're gone forever.

Fabio and his harem

I assisted Naomi in digging some potatoes at the big garden at our old apartment a week ago today.  That would've been the 5th of August.  The potatoes in question were Yukon Gold.  From about a dozen plants, we got just over 11 lbs!  The vines were already dead, and Naomi wanted some potatoes, so we dug 'em up!  The potatoes were fist-sized, yellow with a slight red blush, and were mostly concentrated right under the vine, and not spread out from the plant.  They're delicious.  I had previously thought that this particular variety hadn't been performing that well, but they're probably just an early- maturing variety.  I could look it up, but haven't.  The first potatoes of summer is a joyous occasion!

Boily, our only senior chicken

We also dug up our garlic about 3 weeks ago now.  Most of it was growing under a canopy of jewelweed, was mulched too lightly, and just overall didn't perform well.  Due to the weed canopy, we didn't do an effective job of picking the scapes, and the bulbs just couldn't compete in reduced sun/ nutrient scavenging.  We didn't separate the varieties at harvest, or weigh the crop.  I'm going to order all new seed to plant this fall and start over.  Some of the varieties we had been growing were never great producers or storers, so we'll try again, but with less varieties this time.  We had about 12 different varieties until now.

We've been putting the chickens to work, as well as ourselves.  I think I speak for us both when I say that we really want a lot of this grass gone, or at least transformed into something more useful.  We especially need more garden beds for next spring, when I hope to have a lot of our favorite foods back in action in our lives and our landscape.  There are at least 3 brush/ wood piles on the property that we've found, and we've been mining one for it's accumulated leaf litter, and subsequent black gold that's resulted as a by-product of its buildup under a pile of brush.  The tricky part is that japanese knotweed has managed to begin colonizing the pile, so we sift carefully before transferring this basically free organic matter to our newly- turned beds.  So far, we've got two beds in addition to our tomato garden.  One is a nursery, where we're overwintering various plants until we find more suitable locations for them next year.  The other one has been seeded with fall greens, which have already begun to germinate!

Naomi's been mad-scientisting some sort of budding duckponics system.  We bought some (not cheap!) native waterplants to act as a biofilter for Penelope's duck pond.  We need a more reliable pumping system, but the whole thing has some promise to it. 

Our brother-in-law, Roger, has been helping us with a variety of tasks lately.  If Mr. Rogers had the woodworking skills of Ron Swanson, you'd have a Roger.  He came by while we weren't home to drop off a bridge that he made for us in order to cross the smaller stream in back.  This happened to come just in time, because I started slashing lots and lots of japanese knotweed, which is starting to flower.  I definitely don't want that setting seed around here.  The bridge now leads to an area we call "the goat pen."  It's a formerly fenced-in area across the little stream that looks like it might once have been a vegetable garden.  I say formerly because the fence is still there, but has mostly been knocked down or otherwise interred by leaves and debris from who-knows how many years of dead knotweed parts.  We thought it'd be a great place for goats- assuming the fence is goat-proofed because they could eat all the knotweed they want, and hopefully suppress it's devil's-dick shoots in the spring by trampling and nibbling.

inside the Goat Pen.  I still have a lot to clear out!

Roger also helped us make the cutting board shown above.  It's the slide-out type that fits right into the cabinet face.  The old one, along with all the other cabinets and hardware, was nasty.  Naomi did most of the work, under the guidance of Roger.  I helped out here and there.  It came out really nice, and I learned a lot about woodworking, although it probably doesn't scratch the surface of what there is to know.

Over the weekend, while attempting to transplant some root crowns of comfrey, my shovel was impeded by something metallic under the soil surface.  With the help of Naomi, I finally unearthed what was the iron frame of an old piano.  It looks like I was digging in Ted's old burn pile.  The piano frame is now leaning up against the pile of old cinderblocks on the bank of the brook.

Knotweed-slashing progress

and finally, a picture of Ms. Penelope!