Hot, Hot, Hot - July 6, 2023 @goldenoakfarm

On Thursday morning my new helper was here and we got a 6AM start. It’s cool, sorta, that early before the sun hits the gardens.

We started at the other end, but I didn’t do anything to the tansy. It certainly doesn’t need encouragement in the way of amending, and there was no room to put down mulch, so we left it. The next bed was where I planned to move the ginger and turmeric’s hoophouse. But I had never gotten either started inside, so we just got some of the hated straw from the barn and put that down for the season after amending.

Next was the blue flax, an herb I had started, so we planted more to fill the bed and mulched them. Next was more Tulsi basil and then the soapwort and creeping veronica. Those had nearly filled their bed, so we only amended and mulched the edges.

Boneset had done well and was fed and mulched. Behind the fairy was to be the chicory bed and I had starts for it. Next to the fairy is borage and I left that there.

The front bed had had anise hyssop but it died after many years of doing well there. I hadn’t started any so we just put straw there. I got the first walkway raked and we started on Row 3.

The first bed had root beer/sunset hyssop and I had starts for it. Next was to be a new echinacea purpurea bed. I had to transplant the ones left in the old bed. They weren’t very happy in the heat. I hope they survive. By the time we got this done, we couldn’t be in the sun anymore, so we cleaned up and moved onto a shady project.

I took the truck back to the barn and came back with the Kubota. We’d be working in the shade along the original little trees, pulling up the sods Tom had cut on Monday. It went surprisingly fast and we were done by 9:30.

South Herb - bellflowers and white sage

She only had 25 minutes left so I asked her to run the vacuum around while I got a shower. It was pretty warm inside and the humidity was awful. I had about 1½ hours to rest before my helper friend arrived at 11:30.

Last Friday, somehow or another, he managed to forget the last bottle of cream warming in the oven. I never found it until Sunday afternoon. I put it in the fridge and figured we’d deal with it when he got here on Thursday.

So once he’d arrived I did some research and discovered we’d prepped for cultured butter. So we got it out of the jar and into the churn and sure enough it eventually (it had been too cold) turned to butter, 1.70 lbs of it. That’s it on the left.

We decided to salt it to stop the culturing and help preserve it better. The recommended amount was ¼ teaspoon to ¼ lb of butter. All told we got 7.35 lbs of butter last week.

He left at 2PM and I could finally flop on the couch in front of a fan and watch my latest “obsession”: The Good Doctor.

It was too hot to cook, so I was just eating cold things like frozen cherries and such like. The house starts to cool down around 9PM but it’s still too hot to sleep until 10 or later. I went out when the sun had gone behind the trees and got the sprinkler going on the New Herb garden. I hope it helps the echinacea survive.

On Friday my helper friend is here and he will be doing this week’s butter and then the milk spray for the outside plants. It’s to be another hot humid day but I hope to get some more things planted in the New Herb garden, Row 3. I don’t have any more mulch and haven’t been able to really search for some.