A very wet spring

 3.10.2021

 

Everything is water logged. We have never known it quite so wet.  Josh had to drill holes in some plant pots to stop things drowning.  It is actually quite warm, so there has been lots of growth and today when it is sunny all the pumped-up vegetables are looking deflated!  The snow peas are shooting up and I try to help them cling on to the supports as mostly they are not very good at doing this themselves.  No flowers yet but it can’t be long. 

 

Also, I have planted out the first of the zucchini seedlings. They have been growing in pots, but today I made clearings in the mizuna patch and put them into the ground. It will be so good when we actually eat zucchinis again. They seem to have so many uses. I think the last broccoli crop will be ready first. The heads are now almost harvesting size. Meanwhile we use lettuce, silver beat, celery and various lettuces. We ate the last cauliflower but there is a second planning on the way. The asparagus have started to shoot too. Most noticeable are all the fruit trees that are in full flower and the oak trees that have now a full canopy of bright young leaves.

 

Our preserved vegetables in the freezer are depleting too. This is good because I need to get to a point where an almost empty freezer can be cleaned out and ready for the next years’ crops.  The beans and tomatoes are almost all gone but we still have fruit that we eat with our muesli for breakfast. This year I have frozen cauliflower which has worked a lot better than I thought it would. 

The animals are not really happy with the weather. The sheep have wet feet and resulting problems and the goats are staying in the shed for much of each day.   This week Bo has come up everyday and helped us do the farm work so that we could get an odd sort of at home holiday.  It is at least 2 years since we had any break at all, so this has been very welcome.  Edd and I are both feeling age related problems this year and even getting an appointment with a physio is almost impossible.

 

We have not seen any of our great grandkids for months and it is feeling a bit too long an interval. We are lucky that Josh and CB live on the farm or we would feel much too isolated. The good news is that cases in NSW seem to have peaked and there is hope the same thing will happen in Victoria as the numbers of vaccinations mounts.  There have been anti vax protests in Melbourne and we got a surge of cases after football grand final parties but most people are trying to do the right thing.  We are just keeping our fingers crossed.