Goat crap soup

5/24/07 Thursday
It’s 1:24 now. Cherie has been working with her boss Joe. They went for her first interview with a farmer who’s way out in a little town called Tarzan. You have to wonder where that name came from. It’s an old town that my grandmother has talked about so I am sure it predates the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. Anyway it went well. Joe is a neat kind of guy as it is. I’ve only seen him three times now but that’s my initial…can’t think of the word so that’s how I perceive him.

I’ve been working in the corn patch this whole time. Have had a few partial seizures or maybe just one I notice several times. Sometimes I am not aware of these till I talk with someone, stand up and walk to do something, or, as in this case, type. Earlier it was pretty warm out and the mosquitoes were swarming. I swear they were coming in formation, and just like fighter planes peel off one by one and dive bomb me. I sprayed some of the stinky repellant on and wore the strange mosquito netting hat Cherie bought for me. This is the first time I wore it. Kind of unnerving to see several of these blood thirsty demons covering the netting right in front of your face. Poking their hypodermic blood drills feverishly through the netting in their frantic quest to bite you. They were biting me through the T shirt so I had Cherie spray that down with repellant also.

So I’ve been cultivating the soil and planting more corn seeds in the spaces where the previous seeds failed to come up. I just figured out that cultivating means working the dirt up, in this case with the three pronged hand held thing I bought, so that you break up the crust that forms on the top. This has been hard on the back and left knee. I’ve had a knee brace for a while but didn’t need to use if for a few months. I just took the sander to a stick I picked up off the ground at Glassman’s when I picked up the rocks. Got it in case of snakes. Now I will keep it near to help me get up off the ground. I pretty much have to sit on the ground and scoot my ass along as I cultivate. I didn’t at first but it didn’t take long for the pain to let me know I should take it easy. Took two pain pills so far today but they aren’t keeping up with the pain. Tough, I’ve got things to do.

I mixed up some goat crap soup and am letting it steep for a while. Threw in a couple of cups of fertilizer to add some pizzazz to it. Much of the goat manure I got from Kevin’s was hard bricks that had built up over time under the pen’s roof and resisted breaking despite my pounding it with the hoe. Soaking them helped them break up and even dissolve. I don’t know what I’m doing, kind of making things up as I go, but it seems like a good idea. I’ll use this carefully around the plants to see how it works.

A cold front blew in that dropped the temperatures mercifully quick. It brought a brisk east wind and the mosquitoes seem to have disappeared. Works for me. Gonna post this and get back outside because I’m tired and will fall asleep if I don’t. Don’t care what the doctors say. I’ve got stuff to do.
-------------------------
Well, I planted 110 more corn seeds of four different varieties. I plant more about every three weeks or so. This way I will be harvesting fresh ripe corn over a three month period. Of course that’s providing everything works well and it doesn’t get eaten up by worms or killed by the weather. I gotta give it a shot anyway. Love good sweet corn and the stuff you find in the stores out here tastes like feed corn compared to what we got in Michigan and Ohio.

There is some kind of blight or something on the green beans and squash plants. Don’t have a clue what it is but I generally don’t have a clue about much of anything when it comes to growing food. It might be some kind of bug or some kind of…something. I’ll go online and see if I can find something

When Cherie got back with Joe she was pretty pumped up. She did good and learned a lot. Mostly it was good for her to be able to see how to interview farmers in person instead of relying on what they teach in class. It really helps with her self confidence. The other thing this first day of work has done for Cherie is beat back the depression. Really makes a difference when you are working.

One of the people they interviewed have an Australian shepherd dog that just had puppies. The father was not an Australian shepherd but some other kind of shepherd dog. Anyway they want to give the puppies away. I used to have an Australian shepherd when I was married to the other woman. Good dog but the German shepherd I had was mine, the one that attached to me and vice versa. So I think we might get a puppy or two. Need a dog around here any way and shepherds instincts will be good if we get goats or even chickens.

I’ve been doing more physical work lately, unfortunately that comes with more pain. The right hip seems to be getting worse all the time. That kind of worries me. Cherie is tired so wants to get some sleep so I’ll post this and call it a night.