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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 9, 2013 13:45:26 GMT -5
Many thanks to all who have written. Yeah, scared me pretty good. Fire is my most scaredy cat thing. As a child, the firemen came into our house with axes and pulled us out of bed. Our house was burning.
We stood on the sidewalk in our pajamas, barefooted watching. I was about 3.
For about 7 years, I would wake up at least once a week shouting fire in my sleep. Needless to say, this would scare my parents and drive them crazy.
We've finished about half the clean-up and the rest will have to wait.
It's all just stuff. And it's back to farming.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Mar 9, 2013 15:18:11 GMT -5
Fires are scary. I'm glad yours was "small" so to speak. Ours was too, just the shed. But still.... the fear factor can go off the charts. I've got a scar on my arm where I was so freaked in the middle of ours that I walked between our house and the propane tanks that were spewing flame like giant welding torches. Burned the right side of my face but not a single hair was singed. The hand of God? May your benefactor be blessed for his actions.
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Post by bunkie on Mar 10, 2013 13:50:58 GMT -5
yes, i agree fire is scary! so glad you two gals are ok. people around here burn weeds off their properties during the damnedest times, like when the wind is blowing and such. not cool! the first year we moved here we had 7 years of weeds in the fields and around the barn and house to dig up/turn in...too thick to burn. our neighbor in the back started burning his field and it caught on ours and almost burned our barn down. we were in town and came home seeing the blaze approach. just as the huge flames were 10 feet or so from the barn, they were snuffed by a downdraft. was amazing to see. the fire dept. here helped us control burn the rest of the fields. no more burning fro us.
snow's melting big time here and we're filling up the greenhouse with starts!
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Post by circumspice on Mar 10, 2013 22:15:03 GMT -5
Hey Holly ~ I'm so glad that your losses were minimal, but even small losses hurt.  What's most important is that you & all your loved ones were unhurt. |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 13, 2013 23:37:10 GMT -5
Finished peeling the last of the bean poles for the big dry bean smackdown I'm planning for this season. Cut 5 more black willows into pollards and turned the straightest limbs into bean poles. A few north of 300 poles. These are going to get put into a Chinese style A-trellis, I'm not confident enough for willow to hold up for a whole season as a traditional stand-alone bean pole like extremegardener uses. I'm planning to cut some hardwood poles like she uses as well, to compare the two trellis methods and materials.  |
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Post by steev on Mar 13, 2013 23:41:47 GMT -5
Very ambitious; good luck.
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Post by johno on Mar 15, 2013 16:46:49 GMT -5
I started 10 duck eggs in an ancient incubator yesterday. Fingers crossed.  The hen is part Pekin and supposedly part Mallard, but she is black and white. Not sure how that works... The drake is Pekin. We'll see how it goes, but she had one last year and it was about the cutest duck I had ever seen. |
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 15, 2013 19:04:46 GMT -5
I cleaned the barn to get ready for the season. It's here!
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Post by steev on Mar 16, 2013 0:18:52 GMT -5
Three years ago in June, I was in the kitchen fixing my dinner, when I heard breaking glass outside; stuck my head out the open window to see what's up. Holy shit! The house next door (twelve feet away) has a window and glass door with a torrent of flame pouring up from each! I punched 911; said there was a fire; he asked how many people were in the fight?; FIRE!, I said. Oh.
I went outside, meeting the first firetruck, just as the side of my house ignited from the radiant heat; I let them in the house, as the smoke was rising around the windows on that side.
I called the landlady, who was supping with her Father. "Are you sitting down? (Yes, now.) Everything that can be done is being done. Your house is on fire."
The tenant next-door was on a neighbor's porch, freaked about the fire that had driven her from her home of thirty years and her missing dog. When the firemen broke in the back door, the dog came out, none the worse (it had been a brain-damaged, incessant barker for years) .
She lost all her stuff, kept her dog, and moved into the family house she'd intended to go to in a few months. Fire is a trip. Shit happens. Keep some paper handy, or maybe a goose.
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Post by ferdzy on Mar 16, 2013 6:22:10 GMT -5
Wow! Just catching up here. Sorry to hear about your fire, Holly. Glad it wasn't any worse. And three cheers for helpful strangers.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 16, 2013 18:13:24 GMT -5
Glad you're back Ferdzy! Ox, why are you peeling them? You should not say smack down and beans in the same sentence..... There's nothing more depressing, than watching beans come tumbling down in a dust devil or downdraft. So, do you have all the pole beans you need? (Snigger)....  ;D ;D |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 16, 2013 20:03:05 GMT -5
They're all willow, I don't trust them to last the season without dry rotting if I leave the bark on. It wasn't really all that hard to peel them, I actually had a concave spokeshave that I bought at the world's finest hardware store a decade ago when I lived in Titusville, NJ. |
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Post by davida on Mar 22, 2013 17:49:34 GMT -5
Today at the farm store, I smiled and greeted an elderly man in the greenhouse while walking past the lettuce plants. He started a conversation by asking if I planted lettuce seeds. I answered yes and he asked me how did I plant them. I thought that he had a better way to plant tiny seeds. He said that an old lady taught him many years ago to put the tea pot on the stove when you go out to plant lettuce seeds, plant them "this deep" (as he spread his fingers to what looked like 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch) and then pour the boiling water over the row. He said that the seeds would be out of the ground the next day. Has anyone heard of this method to enhance germination time?
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 22, 2013 21:31:23 GMT -5
Nope,
But an old gardening friend told me she always puts lettuce seed in the dark for a few days.
One of these days, I'm going to do a lettuce trial where I try all the things folks have told me!
Today on the farm I harvested and delivered the 2nd basket of the season!
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Post by davida on Mar 22, 2013 23:06:43 GMT -5
Nope, But an old gardening friend told me she always puts lettuce seed in the dark for a few days. One of these days, I'm going to do a lettuce trial where I try all the things folks have told me! Today on the farm I harvested and delivered the 2nd basket of the season! I do not plant greens as deep as he recommended. Usually only use a light cover of soil but would like to be able to plant deeper to keep the soil moist longer. I am going to run a simple experiment with a tray of multiple greens planted deep using the boiling water and the other tray with my usual method. Another experiment that I want to try was mentioned in the article "Best Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors" in the Dec12/Jan12 issue of Mother Earth News. The author quotes a 2005 study from North Carolina State University revealing it's not the precise mixture but what's on top of the soil that counts most. Differences almost disappeared between commercial organic seed-starting mixtures and various homemade mixtures after all of the seeds were covered with vermiculite instead of planting medium. Holly, congrats on the second basket. Hope you get some rain and have a fantastic year with your CSA. |
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The hen is part Pekin and supposedly part Mallard, but she is black and white. Not sure how that works... The drake is Pekin. We'll see how it goes, but she had one last year and it was about the cutest duck I had ever seen.
