Tines Disappear

Thursday was a blacked out day, biodynamically. It was just as well: whether due to a sudden reaction to Spanish olives, or a sinus headache from mowing the day before, or a reaction to the bit of syrup he put on some apples (none of which seem terribly plausible, but that's our best guesses), Phil slept most of the day.

In the evening, though, we had a treat. The farm manager of the amazing estate Edgemont, founded 1796, invited us out for a Bible study on the mountaintop. We sat up there and watched the sun go down over the Blue Ridge mountains. Later, we drove around to see the estate in the dark. In the Jeffersonian style, the colonnaded main entry had, like Monticello, buried arms extending to the efficiencies on either side.

"It was pretty dilapidated in the 1960s and even later. It took a pretty penny to restore it." Now, though, the beautifully manicured fields are one of my first memories of Albemarle County.

Phil was better today, and he kept the boys working. Isaiah did the mowing after they moved the cows. Later, when it was time to park the tractor for the night, Phil sent Isaiah up to park it indoors. "That was handy," he said, as he kept chopping up the compost pile.

We're in a brief window of maintenance. Some of the finger is so overgrown with weeds, even the cows weren't much interested. Phil mowed, with a huge cloud following, whether from pollen or dry dirt, I'm not sure. He continues to uncover various tools and implements. Today it was the backhoe, buried under 8' weeds.

I was relieved to come to a section of greenhouse comfrey that had 2/3 of the plants survive, not a third (or less). It's ridiculous how excited I am for that little patch; I give progress reports to Phil constantly: how vigorous certain roots are, how other roots are bouncing back, how many plants have sprouted in each row, how the additional compost appears to be helping. I really like the stuff!

We took a family walk to the lower pasture. When Phil had been down there a few days ago, he came across a hole next to a tree. Looking closer, he saw that there was comb on the ground next to the hole.

Presumably a bear had clawed the hole to get the nectar. If I had to guess, I'd hazard they were wasps of some kind, as the broken hive inside looked like paper. In retrospect, I probably should have picked up the comb, to see if it was wax; at the time, I was just impressed to be seeing such destruction on such a small scale (I probably wouldn't have noticed it).

There are a few vigorous elderberries growing along the creek. They are beautiful, full of purple flowers and butterflies.

Much though I value the berries themselves for syrup for the flu (I've purchased some in the past and it seems to work well), I have heard good things about elderberry flower tinctures, too, so I snagged a cluster and broke it off.

Cowboy Joe started off having a great day. He was thrilled that the straw hat from Grandma didn't fit Phil: "Now I'm a farmer!" he said. With good black boots and good new work gloves, he was ready for the day.

Later, though, he was playing barefoot on a trailer when somehow he imbedded several enormous splinters in his foot. Poor fellow! I had to cut them out, as the wood was too crumbly to pull with tweezers. (Happily, with all the sutures we've had lately, the doctor passed us some supplies, like clamps, scissors, tweezers: I used several of those handy tools.)

He's up walking around now, and the wounds didn't bleed much, as they didn't get too far into the tough sole of the foot, but what a crummy, crumbly thing.

In other news, it is fall and the two beehives I'm feeding are ravenous. They each ate through fourteen cups of 2:1 sugar water in about fourteen hours yesterday. Bone dry feeder every time I checked. Isaiah helped me stir up today's sugar water this morning, and as he put the fork in the swirl, I overheard him narrate, "Tines disappear!" in a very dramatic voice. What a succinct, exciting statement! Too good to be passed over. I told him I'd commandeer it for the blog.