Friday, June 15, 2007

RV Working Too Hard?

The Lady of the Lake asked me for pictures of my FIL's garden, since that was the purpose of the hiatus in our travels. It just so happens that I have a couple available so here you have the efforts of the Farmer Vagabonds.


Denny used some old pcv pipe found in his dad's garage to tie into the garden hose. He added an upright section of pipe and a sprinkler head that shoots out in a half-round pattern for up to 25 feet which works for the extremely downsized garden. When I first met my father-in-law he grew dill, asparagus, rhubarb, cucumbers, potatoes, sweet corn, strawberries, green peppers, chili peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, horseradish, broccoli, cauliflower, lima beans, onions, beets and green beans in a garden that was at least a quarter-acre in size. The man was 70 years old at that time. But Dad no longer has the energy to handle a big garden and Denny's step-mother has no interest in canning anymore, so the garden now consists of lettuce, green peppers, pimentos, tomatoes and potatoes.


The water sprinkler in action. We purchased an automatic timer which waters the garden every other morning at 6AM for a half-hour. Isn't technology wonderful?


Denny's sister Connie actually planted the garden with Dad before we arrived, but the lettuce seeds they started weren't ready to transplant until we got into town. So we did get to grub in the dirt a little.



The same plants six days later. Notice the high tech rabbit repellant--an old piece of net held up by pieces of old iron pipe and held in place by clods of garden dirt. High tech stuff here.



One of the green pepper plants had a tiny nub of a green pepper on it the first day we stopped down at the house, but I forgot to take a picture of it. This was taken a week later and the pepper gained quite a bit of size.


Six days later and the pepper had doubled in size again.


There's a lot of yard to cut in Cinci, so the yard around the house is cut with a cute little John Deere lawn tractor with a mulching blade. But the "back 40" gets cut with the old, OLD manual shift Farmer John (my name for it) tractor. As you can see, we were having fun with it.


The city girl learns how to drive a tractor--yee haw!


FIL stays inside in the air conditioning while Denny's sister Connie fixes us all lunch. Our treat that day was a scrumptious spinach salad with a rhubarb dressing and a main course of fresh mett sausage. We are back in Cincinnati!

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...