Phew, Hot Work and Tiring

The last couple of days have been half spent trying to get first of the year's crop of lucerne lifted from the field, it's an awful job lifting and stacking it, dirty, hot and sweaty. Yesterday afternoon we managed almost 3 hours and got a third of the way across our designated patch. Today we went at 8.30am and worked until noon before deciding it was simply too hot to be standing in the middle of an open field in full sun while the temperature climbed to over 30 degrees C.

Tomorrow we'll have to get it finished and transported back home before the predicted storms appear over the weekend, plus another 1000sqm's of lucerne that has been cut this morning will need turned first thing tomorrow and then moved into the barn at tea time. So all in all a busy time, but it needs to be done otherwise we'd have to pay extortionate prices later in the year to buy winter animal feed in. No rest for the wicked as they say, and once it's done there's only 4-8 weeks until the next cut so we'll have to go through it all again!

Meanwhile in the garden my polish clematis has flowered and looks stunning, the beans I planted a week or so ago are coming through nicely and the okra is starting to sprout too. The cabbage seedlings seem to be doubling in size every day but my lettuces are starting to bolt and go to seed - I'd like to save seeds from one of the lollo rosso's so will leave a couple and let nature take it's course. The radishes are almost done now, I've lost the onions amongst the weeds so really need to tidy up that area and all of the squash plants seem to be doing well. The sunflowers are flying through now and getting taller each day, I'm hoping some of the seeds I saved last year are the variety I grew last year that you can see in the photo below.

Well that's it for today, past my bedtime as I need to be up early and off to sort out more lucerne, so I'll be giving the weekly market a miss tomorrow and getting on with things.