On Thursday morning I woke at 4AM but I didn’t want to get up. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I read and dozed until 5:45AM. I got the sprinklers going even though they said 30% chance during the day of rain. I got a post up and went out to finish the kefir cheese. I moved the sprinklers and got them going again and I made it out to the garden by 7:30AM and started digging roots.
My #2 intern arrived around 8AM and I sent her to pull the invasive weeds out of the walkways and beds in the New Herb garden. We both finished our jobs at the same time. I shut off the sprinklers and she got the basket and we headed to the Small garden to get red and green peppers for bread & butter pickles. I also got any part ripe tomatoes to bring inside to ripen.
Then we went into the Big garden and found what we needed of small Walla onions and cukes. The humidity started to really bother me about then, so I turned on the kitchen and living room heat pumps to dry the air some so I could breathe better.
She washed the vegs and started chopping them while I set about getting set up to make the pickles. We got them into salt water in jars. She finished about 11AM and headed out. I got a shower and sat down to wait for my #4 helper to arrive around 1:30PM.
We finished getting set up and got the jars and lids heating and got the syrup heating. Then we rinsed the vegs twice and let them drain before adding them to the boiling syrup.
Once everything had heated properly, I started filling jars. But she wanted to do it because it was different from how her mom used to do it. So I let her learn this system.
Once the jars were processing we got the kitchen cleaned up and when they finished we went out to the Small garden to harvest basil to dehydrate.
We ended up bring in 4 bowls of basil tops. I was mostly just cutting off flowering parts and we ended up doing all the plants.
Part way through the supervisor came out and kept an eye on us until we finished.
We got 11 trays loaded. The plants were in far better condition this year than in years past. I think it’s the consistency of the foliar spraying.
We got the kitchen cleaned up again and she headed for home. I made some supper and watched videos until bedtime at 8PM. I shut off the heat pumps and opened the house up as it was to be a cool night.
Later in the evening, I got a call from the heat pump company. The circuit board had come in and they’d be here around 8AM on Friday. So I have to be ready for them.
I also have 3 posts to catch up on and don’t plan to do much other than that in the morning. My #3 helper will be here at 12:30PM and I have no idea what she will be doing. She has to leave a little early because I’m going to an event with the Senior Center later afternoon. So I’m trying to save energy for that.
