Gone Fishin'

This past week we made our annual visit to Hampshire County, WV to fish and kayak on the beautiful South Branch of the Potomac.  We visited with my best friend from grade school and her husband (love you too G) who now live in Maryland.    Her sister has a wonderful cozy cabin just a mile or so from the river so we have a great place to stay ( thank you K!!).  Some years we float the 6 mile "trough" but this year the water level was down a bit so to avoid dragging our kayaks through numerous riffles, we opted to launch at the Trough General Store and fish the section just below the trough.  We were fortunate to see bald eagles, herons, and ducks and I saw a mink scamper along the rocky shore.  As usual, the fishing was great for smallmouth bass and the weather was HOT but we tried to avoid the hottest part of the day on the river and hang out in the air-conditioning in the late afternoon...not something we have the option to do at home so it was a treat.  Pictures say it best though.

Getting ready to launch.

Gazing wistfully up-river towards the end of the "trough".

My smallie...it was bigger than it looks?

Don's smallie...it WAS big.

Action photo.

Here are a  few photos from a previous trip down the trough.  The trough, a 6-mile-long gorge with limited access is a famous section of the South Branch.  There is no vehicular access along this stretch so there it is a pristine float. The Potomac Eagle Railroad offers scenic trips along the gorge for those who can't or don't want to take a float trip.

June Veggie Garden

I had planned to do another veggie garden update for June a bit earlier but the week-long power outage put an end to those plans.  But I thought I'd go ahead and do it anyway even though it is now mid July.

 The green onions are starting to form bulbs and mature.

 The cucumbers are starting to climb. A second planting of Early Sunglow corn is coming up in the background.  It got mulched too.

 My "no-hoe" experimental corn patch that I mulched is growing nicely despite the lack of rain.  Mulch is great!  Don doesn't have to hoe now so he is just posing for the camera.

 A few tomatoes that we started in the greenhouse and set out with blooms already going are starting to ripen.  I think this is a Park's Whopper.  We have  some heirlooms too.

Peppers apparently love the hot weather we had and are setting fruit like crazy.  This is the earliest we have ever had peppers.  This is a Giant Marconi, a sweet Italian type.

By the end of June we had harvested all our early lettuce and have new lettuce growing under some shade.

 Pole beans (white half runner) are starting to climb.

 My sweet potatoes are sending out their long vining tentacles and will soon cover the garden.  I'm trying to keep the mulch ahead of them to control weeds.

 Some old gates work well for tomatoes and the rest of the tomatoes are starting to grow.

My bush beans got off to a slow start but are growing well now.



















Thing will really take off during July so stay tuned!

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.