Farm Friday

Seems like we can't catch our breath around here lately.  We started our summer/fall CSA season on Monday so we've more than doubled the number of customers.  We met some new people who are customers through word-of-mouth and they seemed happy with what we delivered.  Last Saturday was the second week of the farmers' market and we had a better turnout than the previous week.  Slowly but surely we're developing a very loyal customer base.

Despite the poor weather conditions (rain, cold, more rain), our gardens are producing and this one is the best we've ever had:

Our collard greens looked like they were on steroids and I made several delicious raw wraps with them.  All I had to do was remove a good portion of the thick stem and then shave down the rest.  Delicious!  We also opened the farm store again on Thursday.  Unfortunately, we had a severe storm come through that prevented one of our customers from picking up her order.  Instead, I met her in town today so she didn't miss out on the yummy vegetables.

We're hoping to get our hay in sometime this week.  Bill is out mowing the fields as I write this.  This is a several day process and all should go well as long as it doesn't rain.  Rain will ruin it because we make square bales that we put up in our barn loft.  We can't use the hay if it gets wet and we'll have to wait for the fall cutting to get hay for the winter.  

On a sad note, we lost several of the new chickens to a hawk.  These girls are so sweet and tame it's so hard to have them picked off one by one.  We haven't had a problem over the last few days so maybe said hawk has moved on.

It was just one of those weeks.  My clothes dryer broke, as well.  The worst part was it's a front-loading machine and it stopped working with wet clothes inside and the door was locked!  Thanks to Google I was able to find out how to remove one of the panels to pull the release for the door.  I also researched the cost of the parts that I knew we needed - the entire control panel and user interface - and calculated that by the time we had our repairman out, it wouldn't be worth fixing.  However, I decided it was worth looking into doing the repairs myself - what did I have to lose?  I found a YouTube video that showed how to make the repairs on a similar model.  Here's what I took off the machine:

Looks pretty complicated, right?  On closer inspection, though, it's really not:

Other than removing several screws and releasing the user interface from some brackets in the control panel, all that is required is to connect the plug at the end of the blue wires to another panel.  Not rocket science!  (Or electrical engineering!)  So I ordered the parts from a site that allows returns in case these parts are not the problem.  Keeping my fingers crossed!

We're enjoying these long days - the sky still had light in it as late as 9:30 last night.  Here's a peek last night's sunset:

 Have a great weekend!