July 2017

      The librarian told me, as she checked out my book, “Tomorrow, the due date will be August One.  Our summer is about over.”

     Yes, July 2017 is about in the history book.  Ordinarily, I would be trying to finish, or recover from, wheat harvest.  Some wheat in the area remains, but most has been cut.  The harvesters have had to work around numerous rain showers.  A half inch of moisture has been the biggest one, with most of the showers in the tenth-of-an-inch range.

     It has been wet enough that the millet is thriving.

     The neighbor’s corn would appreciate a bigger drink, I think, but it is tall enough to block the driver’s view of the intersection of county roads.  Approach the intersection with caution.

      The garden for 2017 is a bust.  Some predator ate all eight of the tomato plants I set out.  Out of a row of peas, only four plants survived.  I suspect pocket gophers got to the sprouted seed.

      I planted beans on the outside of the fence, opposite the peas.  The beans came up all right, but the rabbits took care of them.   I don’t think they can get inside of the fence, so I hold them guiltless in the tomato-pea fiasco.

     I have only a half-dozen potatoes to show for my pretty-limited garden efforts this year.  I may have a few zucchini and maybe a pumpkin or two, later this fall.

      The summer fallow has been a struggle, too.  It was too wet to work well last spring.  It was dry and hard as a rock in June.  In July, it was too wet again.  The Miller Weeder plugged up in the wet dirt. 

     The old-fashioned rod weeder worked.  I am just about finished doing the summer fallow for the third time.  There will be a fourth and maybe a fifth working before planting wheat.

     In other events, a piano-tuner stopped in this week.  Mike Thompson went to school in Ogallala, where the piano came from.  He allowed that he probably played this piano when he was a kid going to school.

     Mike asked me how long we had the piano.  I had no idea.  I remember Uncle Ricky bringing it to the farm.  The refinishing of the thing wasn’t quite done.  I remember applying the lacquer.  The Goodwife redid the “Apollo” on the front. 

     Mike found a stamp from Howard T Orr, the guy who tuned many pianos in this area.  It was dated 1975, so I guess the piano has been here since 1975 or before.

      It’s ready for a good jam session.

     Speaking of jam, the Goodwife laid in the supplies necessary for making her special low-sugar peach jam.  The peaches were $40 per box!  The going price, they say.  They don’t make boxes like they used to, either.

    We can have homegrown potatoes and peach jam with maybe a zucchini.  We may have to try some kind of millet dish, or millet flour, later this fall.  Thank God for the grocery store.