At Lewis Waite Farm

We are having a farm tour next Sunday in conjunction with the Al Fresco dinner held each year in Salem to fundraise for the local Courthouse, a community center. We are planning our strategy for the event today and hope to have a short tour brochure ready for mailing with our net reminder. 3 Corner Field Farm is also part of the tour.

We were picking fools today! We finally finished picking the currants we started before the preparation for our delivery on July 24th. The beautiful clusters of red berries were juicy and perfect! I made 12 jars of jelly (hope it jells!) and 4 jars with cranberries and plums and now I’m making currant cordial which last year we called Red Jewel. Yummy! We also picked blueberries under the protective netting that keeps the birds and chipmunks at bay. We froze a bundle and ate the rest with Karen’s sheep’s milk yogurt and maple syrup drizzle. Yummy again! On the way home at the end of the day I stopped to pick hickory nuts along our road for the pigs. They eat them whole just like they do with acorns and they can even crunch black walnuts open with their strong jaws. These nuts will add some variety to their diets of corn, soy meal, trace mineral and kelp and the grassy forage that is growing well in this cooler weather with frequent showers.

The cooler weather and showers are changing this week, I hear to hot, humid and thundershowers. This will stifle Alan’s hay schedule a bit. We mowed 3 fields yesterday and tedded them which throws the hay into the air, spreads it out and fluffs it up to help it dry faster. He hopes to rake the fields today into windrows to fully dry and then bale all afternoon. By the time Alan, Colin and Herb have been driving the tractors all day, greasing them, changing the broken teeth and adding the new spools of baling twine, those boys get pretty dirty! Dust sticks to them all over! As they are driving around the fields the barn swallows have a wonderful time diving and swooping in random patterns catching the bugs that are flying in the air in the midst of all this activity. Whole swarms of swallows come out for the fun and snacks and they don’t seem to fly into each other either.

Hope your summer is going well and the Washington Co Fair is the third week of August. Lots of great animals and cute baby ducks. Should be a lot of fun!!

Nancy and Alan

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