Friday, October 21, 2005

I Yam What I Yam

Dug the last of the sweet potatoes today, about 75 or 100 lbs. total. Largest single tuber weighed in at 7 lbs and that was after a mole ate maybe a pound of it. We named it Moby Yam and gave it as a door prize at Happy Hour last Monday. Overall the sweet potatoes were a roaring success. (They don’t actually roar, more of a low gurgling sound.)

Still got 3 of 8 rows of regular potatoes to dig and that will be it for this summers garden other than a few radishes. I left three or four radish plants to go to seed, they grew about 4 feet tall and seeded a large area. Those secondary radishes are tasting pretty good now. I failed at root cellar building this summer, but did finally get a good well house built and it has a pit where the potatoes, sweet and sour, can live until eaten. Cellar is job one for next summer.

Only major failure was squash, I guess the borers got them as all the plants died. I planted them same place as last year and that was likely a dumb move. I hope to get the garden disked this weekend which will put me way ahead of last year when winter is over, which will be surprisingly soon..

The garden area, previously noted as having been a hog lot for about 30 or 40 years, is astonishingly fertile and anything planted will grow. Now if I can get that harvesting and storing thing figured out, all will be well.

Attention now turns to cutting wood for the solar heater. I believe that I have perfected the low tech version of solar heat. The sun shines on trees, they grow, I cut them and burn them to harvest the stored heat. Solar panels, pipes, glass, fans, and all the other silly details are thus eliminated (and will be consigned to "Stuff that is Silly").

Upon review, this post is not what you would call very exciting stuff. I guess you can’t be excited (or exciting) all the time. For what it’s worth, there is a decent sized snake living in the above mentioned well pit. He occasionally excites some folks.