Corn and Logs

Like much of the country, this was an unusually dry year for us.  We had to water much of the garden, although the long row crows, like corn, didn't get watered because we lack the means to run a sprinkler.  Everything gets hand watered.  As a result, the corn suffered, although not as bad as we had predicted.  Because corn needs a certain amount of rain during the pollination process (i.e. tasseling), the lack of rain prevents the corn from getting nice full ears of corn.  Accordingly, we ended up with a fair number of ears that were underdeveloped, particularly on the first batch.  Nonetheless, we were able to pick enough to make about 120 quarts of sweet corn, plus quite a few meals in between.  On a good year, the yield would have doubled, at least.

Now that the drought is essentially over for us, we're having trouble keeping things dry enough to keep the cabin builders moving.  But, they continue to plug along and all the walls are up. Today they are supposed to start cutting in the timbers that make up the loft floor.  Next week should entail substantial progress on the roof.  We can't wait for that to take shape.

In the next few days, I plan to start work on a more permanent trellis for our blackberry patch, which has become entirely unruly.  We have both thorned and thornless.  The thornless are more like a grape vine, in that they tend to grow long and are generally nonsupporting.  The thorned, besides being more hardy for zone 4, are generally more upright like raspberries.  But, they grow tall (some are over 7 feet tall) and the cages we attempted to use simply are not going to work because it's difficult to get the canes to grow up through them, and they tend to droop over under the weight of berries and can break off.  So, I'm going to anchor posts on each end of each row and string multiple courses of wire on which to tie up the berries (both the thorned and thornless).  It's not going to be a very pleasant process with the thorned berries, but will be well worth it once it's done.

Here are some recent pictures of the gardens and the cabin.