Day 23/365 Our Day At the Farm

Back in the 1700's, this was the centerpiece of a homestead cabin. The cabin stood until the mid-1960s or so, then collapsed on itself. The chimney still stands -part rock, part handmade brick. Surrounding the chimney is a rock-outlined rectangle, maybe 20 feet long and 15 feet wide - those rocks are the original sill rocks of the old cabin.

Here in the 2000's, my mother's iris bed surrounds the chimney, and my dad's cold frame sits off the the right, ready for starting the fall broccoli and lettuce in the next couple weeks.

We spent yesterday out on their farm - approximately a little over 50 acres - full of their "retirement projects: orchards, a huge vegetable garden, catfish ponds and grape arbors.

At the moment our drought in town is bad, but nowhere near as bad as the one at the farm. Because they are close to a large lake, they have received no rain at all for 4 weeks (the lake effect and the differing temperatures over the water have a way of pushing storms away towards the north and southwest). The water levels in the ponds are down almost 4 feet, and within the next couple weeks dad will be moving the catfish to a much smaller, but spring-fed pond, in hopes of saving them.

Thanks to our trip out there yesterday and my parents generosity, we now have a frig and counters full of various heirloom tomatoes, blackberries, Asian hoisan pears, mountain apples, blueberries, Crenshaw melons and crisp huge green peppers.

So I'll be cutting, chopping, freezing and blending for a few days (while of course my own garden keeps pumping out those veggies). It's a lot like treading water at this point in the year.