Whew what a week. We ALMOST got everything I wanted to done. Well, ok maybe not even close to almost, but we did accomplish a lot. Most importantly, we righted the cherry tomatoes that got blown down earlier in the week. It wasn’t even that windy, as far as up here on the hill goes, but the plants are massive and were a good foot higher than their 6′ stakes. April hulked up the plants while I screwed in some cross bracing stakes…and also my finger! I re-learned an important farm lesson, though I think it’s probably universally important: don’t be lazy or you’ll get screwed.
First off, all of this could have been avoided if I had just screwed in the cross supports to begin with, instead of just propping them up and planning to come back later to secure them. And yes, I did foresee this happening because one or two stakes had already snapped, but the tension of the whole row was doing a fine job holding them up.
Anyway, back to getting screwed…I was being lazy and not making the “long” walk back up to the barn to get the proper drill bits. The wooden stakes I was using as bracing are pretty old, and they were splitting when I drove the screws into them. Pre-drilling would have saved me a hole in my finger, but instead I tried to screw the split stake together. It worked as intended, but the screw was longer than the stake was wide and it went right into my finger! Fortunately it was the side of my finger and didn’t hit anything bad. It strangely didn’t even bleed or hurt, but it sure was a weird looking wound and I tried not to think too hard about what I was looking at. Fingers crossed no infection because a spiral puncture is NOT easy to clean. Savor those cherry tomatoes this week knowing a little piece of my finger might be in one of those pints (JK!).
There should be plenty of cherries and other summer stuff still this week, although it’s 33 degrees as I type this so availability may change if it drops much more. Looks like we’re all set for the immediate future if everything makes it through this morning. Fingers crossed!
Veggie Ordering and Pickup Procedures: Put your veggie orders in online before 8pm Sunday. The website is a little buggy so if you don’t see a wide variety of items or you see items out of stock, try refreshing your browser. Also confirm on checkout that you have the correct number of each item in your cart. The two pickup windows are working well, so we’ll keep it going. Choose your pickup window while checking out online: 1230-2pm and 4-5pm Monday on the farm at 64 Potter Hill Rd in Grafton. Pickups are in the long white garage on the left across from the beat up tan and red barn at the crest of the hill.