Derecho Power Outage

It has been a very interesting week following the Derecho that blew through the mid atlantic region on Friday June 26th.  Our power, along with countless others, was off for 8 days. We were fortunate not to have any damage on our farm nor did we have any major trees blown down.  Others were less fortunate.  I blogged some months ago (The Quest for Power, January 10, 2012) about our generator setup. Briefly, it is a 7000W portable generator converted to run on our wellhead natural gas.  It is wired to our service panel and with judicious flipping of switches, will power everything in our house...just not all at once. We installed it in fall 2011 and because of our mild winter this past year, we did not need to use it until now.  We started the outage with 0.5 hours on the meter and ended it with 95 hours.  I figured that by using natural gas, we saved about 10 5-gallon cans of gasoline (which was largely unavailable) and a lot of refueling.  We are very fortunate here to have that set up.  The only thing we did without was internet because I was afraid to plug my computer and modems into generator power.  I managed - somehow. 


Natural gas regulator.



May Veggie Garden

Well I realize it is mid June but I wanted to share the progress of our May veggie garden.  Because our garden is next to the creek and has clay soil, we plant early spring vegetables in raised beds. These dry out early in the spring so we can plant early crops.  The main garden takes a while to dry out enough to plant if the weather has been wet in April but it holds moisture well during the summer.

 By early May most of our spring veggies planted in raised beds were well on their way.  We always have a variety of lettuce ready to eat by late April and Don usually has cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from our small greenhouse ready  too for some yummy spring salads. Broccoli, peas, onions and beets were up and growing well early in the month.

Lettuce - both heading and leaf ready to pick.

Young broccoli.

By late May the Broccoli was harvested and the peas were ready for picking.  We had also been enjoying frequent harvests of asparagus.

Broccoli ready for harvest.

Sugar snap peas.

By the end of the month, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers and corn were starting to take hold.  We generally grow too many of several varieties of tomatoes including both heirloom and hybrid.  All those young starts in the greenhouse have to go somewhere and it is usually in our garden.  As a result, we usually end up eating canned tomatoes from years past.  I think we've made it up to 2008 vintage tomatoes this year.  We also have bell, Italian and mildly hot peppers.  We usually dry and freeze peppers for winter and this is the year to replenish our supply.  The tomatoes and peppers were started in the green house and transplanted.  The sweet potatoes were a gift from a friend.  I planted our corn late in a wet patch of heavily mulched soil so it got off to a slow start.  Although I consider Don the main gardener, I always manage to have my experimental patch, mostly involving some labor saving theme.  This year is is no-hoe corn in a bed of goat-poop mulch.

Young tomatoes. 

Young pepper.

Corn planted in heavy mulch.

Overview of May garden.

Grow Hiedi Grow!

It has been a while since I have mentioned Heidi.  She is doing well and has stayed a very loving and loyal puppy.  I no longer have her in with the goats in their summer pasture because I have kids in with the adults and I don't feel she is trustworthy with them yet . She spends much of her time at night "at large" and hangs around the house protecting all in her domain, including her little piles of  "things" that she collects from around the yard.

She was spayed in May and has now healed from her surgery and for a week she was the most amazing house dog.  We kept her in the house for only a few days when we first got her at 6 weeks of age.  During her house stay at 6 months she quietly slept in her crate and never once had an indoor accident.  Because were so busy with baby goats during March and April I had neglected her leash training which I worked with intently during the first two months we had her.  I was amazed that when I put her on a leash again she walked calmly and never offered to pull.  The Pyrenees continue to amaze me...  especially how they GROW!   Here is Heidi in pictures over the last 6 months.

6 weeks.

About 4 1/2 months.

Almost 7 months and 70 pounds.