Weekend at the Farm September 19 - 21, 2014

Thursday evening at Ciao Bella to celebrate Mom and Dad's  55 anniversary, Nathan's birthday, and Jessica's pregnancy.  Oliver was such a good  baby through the whole thing.  Took Friday as vacation, so drove to Burton that evening.

• Friday, took all the dogs in town to the vet.  $500, and we thought we got off easy!
• Napped for the rest of Friday.
• Saturday we went to Donald's place in Marlin to see his new house.  He had an old farm house moved to his property.  It is very charming.
• When I got home from Marlin I sprayed herbicide in the Orchard.  There is a very creepy fungus spreading on the gravel paths in the Orchard.  It has covered half the paths in the Orchard!   I'm spreading it when I walk on it in addition to it spreading by itself.  Really slimy and gross.  It doesn't seem that herbicide has any effect on it, but I decided to make a deliberate effort to stay after the herbicide-spraying to see if I can eradicate it.  Maybe if I spray ever weekend I will get it all.  I've queried the internet, but I can't find any comments about it.
• I sprayed herbicide in the Vegetable Garden.  There is fungus there too, but not very much.  It's actually pretty alarming.  Hopefully herbicide and the onset of winter will get it.  Well, I know winter won't kill it because it was a problem last summer as well.  But if it knocks the wind out of it, that would help the battle.
• My Edamame and green beans have sprouted.  
•  I decided to pull up my thin bladed arugula and plant a wide-leaf variety.  It's easier to harvest.  I made an arugula salad last week, and it was a painstaking task.  
• Sowed wide leaf arugula in part of the spot where I pulled up the other arugula.  I planted Red Sails lettuce seed in the rest of the space.  I cleared an area that had some miscellaneous marigolds and pepper seedlings growing and sowed a packet of Blue Lake 274 green beans that I forgot I bought.  That is the second packet of green bean seeds I planted for a fall crop.  If the first freeze of winter is late, I will have a thousand green beans.  If we have an early winter freeze, I will have none. 
• Gathered about 50 Excelsior Bluebells that had washed to the surface after the heavy rains we had last week.  I will plant them next week.
• I'm so impressed with my Candida rain lilies.  They are blooming their hearts out everywhere I planted them, a solid mass of white flowers.  So pretty.
• I read in one of my vegetable books that you can turn your French marigold plants under the soil like green manure for even better root knot nematode prevention.  The book said this method can work for a year.  What a great idea!  The book also suggested chitin, which is ground up crab membrane and shell, to help get rid of nematodes.  I ordered some on line on Sunday morning.
• Spent some time cutting French marigold greenery and burying it  in various beds:  the long bed where the Scarlet Runner beans are growing, the bed where the Edamame seedlings are growing, I buried some in the bed where the Nasturtiums are growing, and near my tomatoes, and in the bed where the birdhouse gourds are growing.
• Got up on the ladder and cleaned the bar lights and the kitchen lights.  Vacuumed on top of the kitchen cabinets.  Cleaned inside the stereo cabinet.  Cleaned both ovens.  Cleaned the ceiling fan in the living room.  Cleaned the master bath shower.  Pulled the armoir away from the wall in the living room and cleaned behind it.  Cleaned the a.c.vents and changed the air filters.  Cleaned the shelves and walls in the office space.  Cleaned the toilets. 
• Carol came by to say hello.  We returned her bat house instructions.
• Sanitized all the equipment and transferred the mead from the secondary fermentation vessel to the tertiary fermentation vessel. (Which means I used suction tubing to suck it out of the glass bottle back into the plastic bucket for one more fermentation period and separation of the mead and the dead yeast.)