Pain- Staking Saturday.

After Friday evening's storms did their damage, we picked up and did what needed to be done. Remember the bamboo from last month? We finally put it to use...

This was before the corn staking began...

And this was afterwards.... beat down, dirty, sweaty, hamstrings killing me, ready for a cold one. It was painstaking work... but, hopefully with some sunlight and the good Lord's help we might have some corn from this planting! If not, we accept it and will go buy from our farmer friends in town. So what did we learn from this? We probably did not plant the seeds deep enough. The rows are WAY too close together. And dirt has to be added around the bottom of the stalks so many weeks after they are planted. This helps support the stalks. We also learned Mother Nature gives us her precious rain, but she also gives us her high and fast winds. And therefore, always be prepared... physically in the garden and mentally to be able to deal with it. And having a back up plan helps too. Hence, our second planting of corn on 6/11 and having great friends in town that have a bumper crop of corn!

And the good Lord does have a sense of humor too... look what greeted us after we left the farm yester-evening after all that hard work. Amen.

Driving Posts & Cutting Bamboo & Work Bench Construction- Part 3!

One of the things us farmers do is check the weather. And we check it often. The local forecast has been calling for storms on this day since mid-this-past-week. As of this morning, the weather forecast was showing thunderstorms starting around 2-3pm. So the whole day is planned around that event happening in that time slot.... We started out heading to the closest metropolis, LaGrange for garden supplies and workshop materials... plus a trip to the grocery store. Home by late morning, on farm working by noon hour.

First off, Hubby went ahead and drove some new posts for me into the ground in/outside the run between my 2 rows of cucumbers. I am eventually going to build a tee-pee formation rack system up to these posts for my cucumbers to run up. But, the cuke plants are not quite big enough to starting "running" yet... so we have a little time before we have to construct it.





After all that manual labor of post-driving and once "BJ" arrived, Hubby retired to the barn out of the blazing hot sun... And Hubby and "BJ" were nice enough to start off by making me some stakes as requested. 18 inch long rebar pieces heated up and bent into a "J" formation for me to drive into the ground. I could tell they really enjoyed this task.











Once the stakes cooled down, I took them out to the garden and drove them into the dirt to pull the baling twine down closer to the pole bean plants. This will get them close enough in hoping the rain today would help the plants grow up and grab onto/run up the twine!





I did remember to pick up a few more tomato cages today while we were at the home improvement store... so I set those up on my five large tomato plants.



It was blazing hot today, but the boys still continued on with their welding and cutting today on the work bench.







This is going to be one heckuva work bench I tell ya!

I forgot to mention that "BJ" brought me some bamboo today. I am very excited to make some posts, stakes, etc. out of this natural homegrown plant/tree!
Here is what it looked like BEFORE I got a hold of it:



And this is the AFTER photo... after I ninja-fied it w/ an old dirty machete!

Pole Beans Stringing and Work Bench Construction- Part 2

Saturday was another productive day at the farm... Hubby and "BJ" spent all day cutting, grinding and welding up the support legs/arms for the new work bench/shelves. Hubby is an excellent layout man and "BJ" is a grade-A welder!!















All the while the boys were playing with their tough toys in the barn, I was working in the garden. It was time to wire up the racks for the cherry tomatoes to run up. I used my old wire racks from yester-years cherry tomatoes (grown on our back deck up in the City) and tied them together into a continuous rack for our four cherry tomato plants. Then, cut up pieces from our spool of light gage wire we got up at the feed store.





Next up was stringing up the cables for the pole beans to run up too. Boy, this project of zig-zigging the baling twine seem to take forever! The twine had a putrid stench and felt like prickly insulation... plus factor in the baking sun.









Hubby even came out at one point in the afternoon to help/get in on the action!



The final product looks great!

Staking the Pole Beans & Work Shop Construction - Part 1

Thursday was another glorious day off from work for us at Wilsons Farms. Hubby decided to spend the day painting his workshop area in the barn. This took most of the day...



As you can see, he had some great support/help along the way!



Later in the evening after we ate supper and temperature dropped a few degrees, we started setting the posts and wiring for staking our pole beans. We used some leftover T-posts that we had from when we had some barbed-wire fencing installed several years ago. We worked until it was so dark, we could not see the garden anymore!









Final shots of the completed workshop paint job!

Staking the Plot by Sunset

Weekday nights can be challenging for us to get to the farm after work and actually get something done. Monday and Tuesday were a bust since we both had to work late.

On Wednesday night, we laid out our plan using stakes and string by the sunset light... Marking where the perimeter fence would go, the location of the raised beds, where the garden rows would be plus our future muscadine lines. And then we carried the heavy wood raised beds out into the plot. We carefully set them into their exact locations for digging the holes later in the week.



Rain is forecasted for the weekend so we would have to do some serious work between Thursday and Friday. Have to order a load of topsoil first though.