Things are really gaining steam on the farm as all the potential energy built during the last two months jolts into the kinetic. This weekend is a huge plant sale down in Waynesville; we are preparing for that. Our direct-seeded greenhouse is cranking out the greens (and completely unmanageable weeds). Most of the field crops are doing good, aside from the few that got decimated by flea beetles. Cukes in the greenhouse are huge, but the fruits are getting chomped on by some mysterious burrowing creature. It's hard keeping up with all the flats of seedlings sitting in the propagation greenhouse. We've had the local TV news out of Asheville out here to take moving pictures of the quaint farm life and ask why in the world some young folks would willingly spend their time learning to farm. The cameraman irked me.
Aside from all that, it looks like morel season is done here. We got several decent harvests though. The recent weather has been rainy again (so much for the beginnings of that supposed drought, huh?), but it was preceded by several days of really warm, dry weather, which was perfect for outdoors fun. We also had our first visitor from back home, so the past weekend was spent cruising the area. We got to see some spectacular things at Max Patch and Cataloochee and out exploring our own holler, and spent some quality time in Asheville.
Lately it's been hard for me to sit back and reflect enough to write a decent post or unload pictures from the camera. Got lots of good shots to share.
How's everyone out there?
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things are good up here. Marta and I just spent a few days at Mammoth Cave. We were planning on taking a canoe trip down the Green River (while screaming Creedence the whole way) but the recent rains had the current going way too fast, so we scrapped it. Did some back-country camping, but got pretty sick of the ticks. I started my summer class today. I'm taking ecomonic botany, which I'm really excited about. I asked my teacher today if it was the kernel or the ear of corn that was the actual fruit (remembering our arguement from scattegories) and he said that it was the ear. When I told him the scattegories story, he poo-pooed my use of "ear" of corn as an "E" fruit since it's the ear, not the actual fruit, whatever that even means. I have confirmed that I am going to my very first scientific conference in July, and I'll be presenting a poster no less. I'll be attending the botany and mycology meeting in wonderful snowbird, utah. I'm excited about going, but nervous as hell about doing the poster thing. Anyway, good to hear you guys are having such a great time up there. I'll keep in touch.
ReplyDeletebrian
by the way, I learned today that strawberries, blackberries and raspberries aren't technically berries, but oranges are. botanists are just nutty.
Yep, I just found out about strawberries being a false fruit after doing some research for an article. The berry is actually the sex organ or something, and the seeds are the actual fruit. Or something. I imagine corn parts can be described in similar fashion. You can give those points back for scattegories next time :).
ReplyDeleteAwesome about the conference. I'm sure you'll do great. Don't forget, when you're done with all your explorations, we'll have a spot waiting for you as our resident botanist.