Feeling Hot Hot Hot

September...  September???? And we finally got pay back for that finest of July's: a bingo of three 100 degree days in a row the last week of August.   Been back from Holland for a week now.  How time flew, how nice it was to be back home in the lap of mother,who turned 75.  I was needing a break and some reflective time on my farming enterprise, a re-group as it were.   The weeks before I left I did have no joy in it, didn't want to be out there and, since I don't have to I wasn't.   I think it was just a burn out, having done this long enough I just had a few too many crop failures, self inflicted because they were crops I don't even like to grow.  So being fed up with my own farm I visited two farms, just the same size as mine.  Even worked a day at one (silly me)that too was depressing:  wow!  Organic all around, not a weed to be seen, beautiful crops, all the tools you could imagine, vivacious sales.  But it was very good in making it clear that that is not for me either: too rigid, no flowers, very little contact with customers.    The other farm was more like mine: a hodgepodge of a shop and a bear foot path.  It entails a walk over the property, on bear feet, through different textured surfaces and descriptions of crops and nice paths.   Going to copy some of that.  Oh I did see one other tiny difference: both farms had 5 full time employees.  Definitely a Eureka moment. 
Also: they have no idea about weeds in Holland, nothing like here: wet and 90 degrees.  On the flipside in Holland you cannot grow tomatoes or peppers or cucumbers outside: too cold. (They did of course have beautiful leaks, lettuce and peas, in August no less.  
It wasn't all gloom and doom though!  Learned a lot, built a lot of things, grew some fine beans, maters and cukes and sold all eggs laid.   Bruce had the bees, had some garden plots rented and will do that again next year, but in a better spot. 
So in the next months I am going to ponder the future some more: I'll get my beds ready for next year and I'll plant just the stuff in the high tunnel and keep the chickens going, and start looking for a couple of those dutch organic growers to manage the toko.  Vincent, as in Vince, dropped off a farm truck, vintage 1950, with a dump bed that we will use to haul piles and piles of manure in the next months.  We'll get that soil fertility cranking!

In the mean time: I finally got the John boat going and took it for its maiden run on the river.  Instead of a bottle of champagne for the christening I got a box of wine, not a good idea.  Those combustion engines are fun though!  
Still got nice peppers, stray tomatoes, kale and chard that you cannot kill, some onions and taters.