I Come to Bury the Potatoes, Not to Raise Them

 The day started cloudy, but opened up in the afternoon to actual sun. Temperature ended in the 70Fs.

Completed a lot of projects today.
The foreman and I installed all the insulation in the cooler, then replaced the steel wall covers. Then he scrubbed off the walls and concrete floors with bleach, while I rinsed and scrubbed all the floor palates and shelves-- gotta get ready, the health inspector comes Monday.

** Final getting around to finishing this one-- my brother came home from school this weekend, distractions distractions. -5/23/11 **

A couple woodchucks have moved in around the woods edge by the hill top fields. The boss has a very hands off approach to "vermin" as he calls them (everything from mice and rats to raccoons and deer). It usually pays off, as we have a pretty high predator population. A couple fat coyotes live in the woods up top, while big hawks, a falcon and turkey vulture cover the lower fields. I remember picking summer squash and zucchini last year, and stopping every so often to watch the hawks drop into the grass-- only to heft off again with a rat or rabbit. Whatever the wild guys don't catch Lucy usually does.

This year however, these woodchucks have become a bit cocky. As we worked in the cooler the Boss thought aloud about setting some 'humane' cage traps around their lair. He figured, jokingly, that once caught-- he, the foreman and I would take them out into the middle of a field and place bets, set the woodchucks loose and see how far they can run before Lucy has her way with them.
I'd give 'em 10 feet.

After lunch I hiked up to the potato fields to assess the situation. The Boss had dragged the dirt level over the rows with a chain fence we rigged up to the back of the tractor-- kinda seemed unnecessary. He was worried that the drag might have uncovered some potatoes, or that all the rain had washed the soil off the top. So I walked the line--  not too bad. I reburied 50 potatoes, and maybe 20 or so were fully above ground.

Back at the farm store I scrubbed the cooler palates and shelves once more over, and returned them to their place inside the walk-in.

Next, I put on the rawhide gloves and started sorting scrap metal. We'd piled it onto a wagon much earlier this spring-- and now we needed the wagon. Aluminum went one way, steel another, rusted iron someplace else, wire was coiled up and stowed away and wood with rusty nails was heaped in the dirt right where we all walk.

The foreman and I hitched the new tractor up to the wagon and we rolled over to the secondary greenhouse by the boss's house. We loaded the wagon full of tomato trays-- these guys are field ready. Varieties I can remember (all heirlooms)-- Cherokee, Rose, Burgundy Brandywine, Valencia, Nepal Red, Red Pear, Striped Roman, Japruse Truffle, Striped German, Purple Prudence, Moskvitch and others. We slowly rode the load back to the main greenhouse-- parallel parking the wagon in between the rusty nail wood and jagged rusty iron pile, it was a tense couple minutes.

Its becoming a bit too warm in the greenhouse, even with the doors open, for these developed tomatoes. So they will sit outside on the wagon until planting next week.

Off and onward to picture days.