Dog Days

Some lessons are only learned the hard way. In spite of my optimism during the spring months, my garden is now dormant at best. The dog days of summer, the Georgia heat and sporadic rain have decided to crash my party. Just when the garden was entering into the crucial flowering stage, the rains stopped. Day after blistering day the heat sucked any remaining moisture from the ground, resulting in a hard, dusty death trap.

On a positive note, weeding has become easier, as even they are not growing. We have had a little rain over the last couple of days, but I am afraid it is too little, too late. Sometimes I feel like more sweat has fallen on that ground than rain, but unfortunately that doesn't produce crops. I doubt we will harvest much of anything this year, and that saddens me because all of the work that I have put into it. If we had actually had to live off land, we would not survive like this.

So, what did I learn from this experience?
Assuming the rains had come, my rows would have been too close together to comfortably work the garden. I planted close to squeeze in more, but I should have left more space to move around. With my tractor and a larger area, I should be able to use the cultivators and make weeding a little easier. It would have been much easier to hill my potato rows with a pair of disks too.

Second, I think the biggest lesson is one dad pretty much already knew- the garden needs irrigation. The last few years Mother Nature has not smiled on that dusty patch of soil, and I am of the conclusion that irrigation in some form is an absolute necessity should one have to rely on the home garden for survival in the temperate Georgia climate.

Back home the tomatoes, cabbage, chard, carrots, onions and salads are thriving. My radishes and spinach didn't fair well, however. Just too hot I suppose. In retrospect, I should have planted them much earlier than I did.

Up on the farm, the tractor is working out great. She has developed an oil leak around the PTO shaft and I'll have to fix that, but I'm finally getting to know her quirks and kinks. I learned that when mowing on the mountain side I have to wedge my knee against the gear shift or it may slip into neutral, resulting in a 90 mile per hour joy ride down the mountain straight for the river. She doesn't like the ignition key on my heavy keyring, as demonstrated by switching to the off position at just the wrong moment when I was towing Linda's car up the steep driveway, once again resulting in a 90 mile per hour joy ride, this time straight towards her car. Only Linda's quick reaction saved me from an embarrassing call to the insurance office and no telling how many days in the dog house.

I bought a 16 foot trailer with the intention of being able to transport the tractor down to dads to work the garden, but I doubt I will attempt to work it next year. The farm offers so much more potential with it's ability to irrigate from the river. The problem is that we can't be there often enough to work a high maintenance garden. I may have to start off with very low maintenance crops that don't require daily monitoring and harvesting. I'm thinking potatoes, peanuts, corn etc.

My band has become quite successful, playing 12 to 14 shows a month from Maine to Florida, leaving few weekends to spend on the farm. I'm torn between doing what I have always wanted to do and doing what I know eventually needs to be done. I only hope the shit doesn't hit the fan anytime soon finding us unprepared to survive on our own. Then again, maybe it already has and we just haven't been splattered yet. It's hard to tell sometimes.