Back In Blueberries

Heavy rains swept through Thursday-- no work. Today was sunny, but wet and cold. The temperature hung around 44F and felt a lot worse with the wind blowing.



The fields were still soaked through from the rains, so we were saved from plastic digging. Instead-- we loaded up grub-hoes, shears, chainsaw and trimmer, then drove over to one of the blueberry fields abutting the cow pasture. It was nice-- out in the sun, the hill protected us from the wind, cows ambled by and the stream went along next to us. I fired up the trimmer and hacked back (carefully) all the grass grown up around the base of the bushes. Newport and the foreman followed behind, weeding/uprooting stray trees/ripping off poison ivy vines tangling up the blueberries. We chugged along all morning-- I've got the trimming down to an art now, so by lunchtime I'd cleared the entire field.


After lunch we grouped up and rode back to the berries. We all got down and dirty yanking out the remaining poison ivy and there was tons of it-- every bush was tangled over. Careful as I was, I am sure to have a full body worth of rash/itching ahead. After several more hours we finished the entire area-- it looked pristine. We headed back to the store and set out to pack up all the big irrigation artery-pipes. The big job was dragging away the line of heavy galvanized steel pipes that lead up the hilltop-- we kicked 'em all apart and stacked them up nice. Next we took apart the artery running along the horse pond, up through the woods to the forest field.

The sun was sinking low and time was running out-- we gave the boss's brother a hand ripping up the plastic wrap in his garden (for the giant novelty pumpkins). Only 2 short rows, thankfully, so it all went fast.

Finally, we ended out the day in the store. It was dark outside-- so the foreman started packing holiday gift baskets with jam and Newport/I sliced up the last sad looking sauce tomatoes in the kitchen.


Done day.


Thinking about hunting down Gizzie tonight for a few celebratory beers-- another week spent successfully alive. Lots of yard work set up for tomorrow-- gonna fire up the chainsaw and clean up the yard mess. Work, work, always work.

Well, take it easy.