Weekend Update

Weekends at Squash Blossom Farm are the best, when Rog and I can both be home and do farm work. But this week we lost one whole workday - I spent all of Saturday at the Think Green Fair and Rog was traveling home from San Francisco. Early Saturday morning, as I loaded my car with the CERTS display for the Fair, it was mysteriously beautiful and foggy.

Sunday we doubled our efforts. Our main goals were to clean out the center room of the barn (the room we envision someday being my studio), gather up the old hay to spread as mulch on the gardens and to figure out a fencing system to keep the dogs out of the woods and away from skunks. We started out gung ho in the barn--but soon realized we would need a pitchfork and a dumpster. It's a much bigger space than it looks, piled much deeper than we anticipated with hay, straw, scraps of building materials -wood, sheetrock, tile, pipes, wires,foam insulation, paint cans - and old broken furniture. Let's just say we made a dent - altho it's pretty hard to tell.

We have become regular readers of Craigslist,the Farm and Garden category. Lately we have been searching for two attachments for our garden tractor - a snowblower and a lawn sweep - and for fencing. Obviously, the snowblower is for impending winter, and the fence is to keep the dogs out of the woods. The lawn sweep is to gather up some of the deep layer of fallen leaves to mulch our gardens, but every time we've found one listed, it's already been sold.

Sunday we scored on the fence,though, finding a listing for 100+ feet of nice chain link fence (including posts and 2 gates) - enough to close off about half of the open stretch across the woods. We hauled our little trailer to Pine Island and picked it up. Then, while Rog laid it out along the woods, I went to town to get a pitchfork, 5/8 drill bit and post cement. At Menard's I began talking to a man and his son who were looking for a scythe--and it turned out they may have exactly the snowblower attachment we need for sale. I love when things like that happen!

It was a beautiful fall evening, so we built a fire and roasted brats on a stick over the fire for supper. It's kind of a wistful time of year, knowing that there won't be many more weekends like this before winter arrives.