Today, I’m sitting around at a local cafe, waiting for the power steering on my truck to be fixed. This is the first time in quite awhile that I’ve had time to update this blog, so as always, sorry for the delay. The pond is coming along, and it’s about half done now. Here are some pictures from the scything.
There were five truckloads of hay, all smashed down like that. I hope you can make out the winnows in the other picture, but I’m admittedly not very good at taking pictures. All told, it took me about 16 hours to scythe an acre, but there were a lot of breaks. It really meshes well with the rough measurement that an acre is the amount of land that a single man could scythe in a one day. As for other doings, I’ve tied up most of the grape vines to the trellis and have spent some time picking Japanese beetles off of the grapes. I also fixed my leaky roof (maybe this is a bit too forward looking, because it hasn’t rained yet). I’ve got a better shower situation now, since my neighbor told me I could use the shower in the bunkhouse of his barn.
Eudaimonia Farm 
The Laws said
Nice post there, Farmer. Glad to hear you’re showering. These photos are pretty swell.. Just turn down the ISO to 100 or so on such sunny days, along with the exposure value (EV) on your camera. The truck looks like it’s been in winter service salting the roads and receiving its share too with it being so damn bright.
Any word on those rabbits or any piecemeal harvesting you’ve been doing?
Nathan said
Thanks for the pikcha tips. I don’t know how to do any of that, but maybe I’ll dink around with the camera sometime soon. As for rabbits, I haven’t caught any yet. And piecemeal harvesting so far has consisted of: snap peas, radish greens, turnip greens, radishes, broccoli, broccoli greens, okra (really damn good), basil, cilantro, saltbush, New Zealand spinach, cabbage, and probably other things that I’m not thinking of. In the near term, I’m going to have a bunch of tomatoes (and might even try frying some green ones soon), watermelon, squash, turnips, and kohlrabi. Again, there are other things, but I don’t know what all they are. There’s one mystery plant that I know I planted, but I just have no idea what it is. I think the seed was mixed up, because it doesn’t look like anything I would expect. I’ll try to take a picture of it using your guidelines. Oh, and I should also note that I’ve been collecting a lot of wild foods: mulberries, blackberries, raspberries, pokeweed, sassafras roots and leaves, and have also staked out looks on things like walnuts.
Basils said
haha! see you in 2 weeks!