Late blight, plague, smallpox

In that context, late blight doesn't sound so bad. But when we first identified late blight in our tomatoes, I wanted to throw up my hands and scream at the weather gods who conspired to create this wet, cold, fungus-brewing summer. I found the first signs of late blight (the cause of the Irish potato famine, to put its seriousness in perspective) the day after I finished trellising all our tomatoes. So I probably spread it to every one of our plants. We're infected beyond control at this point. We're still spraying copper, but it feels a bit like spitting at a house on fire to try to put it out. Every day there are more plants showing signs. So we keep pulling plants, and revising our tomato hopes - from quantities sufficient for supplying the CSA and canning a year's worth, down to just enough that Abrahm gets to eat some fresh. He's been talking about growing (and eating) tomatoes since last winter.

It's August already, and it's just starting to feel like summer. We had such a nice stretch of weather recently that we almost forgot the 17 inches of rain we've had this summer. Until yesterday, when we got another inch of rain in 20 minutes! At least we needed some rain - just not that much, that fast. It's raining again now, and again foiling our attempts to get the garden under some semblance of control. We resorted to mowing down big areas of the garden, to keep the weeds from dropping seed. It's not a good sign when it's satisfying to mow the garden rather than weed it!

The pigs seem to be thriving despite the wet summer. We haven't had to worry about making a wallow for them; most of their pen serves that purpose. Our turkey numbers have dwindled dramatically (14 down to 3), thanks in part to a hungry, and now probably obese, fox. We resorted to getting a late batch of meat chickens as a quicker-to-raise source of protein. They're growing well, and as soon as they have a few more feathers, we'll put them out in the garden in a portable pen so they can eat their way through the weeds.

The Turners have been here to hay our field, in our hay-for-firewood swap. Firewood? Yes, we're surrounded by a jillion cords of wood, but most of them are vertical still. And we're realizing that it's going to be a while until we have any hay-eating critters, so this is still our barter. We'd like to make our own hay, but that's also a ways off. We're missing the key elements of hay machinery and time.

In people news (I'm not sure what this indicates, that I report on vegetables and animals first)... Abrahm ran his first race last weekend, the one-mile kids' race at the Blueberry Festival. Ben ran with him, and reported that he (Abrahm) chattered about the machinery seen (real and imagined) over the whole course. He wanted to stop only once, when the course ran along the river, as he wanted to go explore in the water. The best Abrahm quote of the last week, while he was on his excavator, trying to dig a root out of his sand pile: "This excavator can't get the root out. It's doing its best. The thumb is a powerful tool, but it's just not up to the job." Where does he come up with this stuff? He is learning to use a camera with our old one. Not surprisingly, he wanted to take pictures of the hay bales.

Samuel continues to eat, grow, sleep, and charm us with his delightfully wordless communication. We're thankful for his mellow personality, willingness to sleep, and easy-going ways that balance out the intensity of his older brother. We see Samuel start to look adoringly at Abrahm and his antics, and it's not too hard to imagine the mischief they will get into together in not too many months!

Speaking of Samuel, he is now awake, so I'd better wrap this up.

Leslie