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Commenced:
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01/01/2005 |
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Submitted:
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08/04/2011 |
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Last updated:
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16/02/2016 |
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Location:
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Cherokee, Victoria, AU |
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Climate zone:
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Cool Temperate |
(projects i'm involved in)
Project: Fernglade Farm
Posted by Chris McLeod almost 9 years ago
There is an old story, which is most likely an urban myth, about a frog in slowly heated water. And people, please don’t try this at home, frogs are alright by me! The story goes along the lines of the frog being placed in a pot of water which is slowly heated. The frog doesn’t appear to notice that water that it is living in is slowly heated, until eventually the water becomes too hot for the frog and it either bounces out of the pot (nice work!) or it may die.
I feel exactly like that frog because the summer is the hottest summer that I can recall and everyday my workload has been slowly increasing due to the need to maintain the food plants that are suffering because of those hot conditions. It was the editor who finally pointed out to me earlier this week just how much of each day that I’d been spending maintaining all of the various plant systems here.
Something had to give.
So long as the plants have adequate water, the heat is making them jump out of the ground and Tomato Cam™ shows just how much growth has occurred over the past week:
| Tomato Cam™ shows just how much growth has occurred here due to the extraordinary heat |
I still have a reasonable quantity of water stored due to the recent rains, so I’d been watering those tomatoes by hand every single day – as well as all of the other annual food plants (excluding the fruit trees in the orchard which are doing fine, so far) on the farm. There are however, other projects calling for my attention and I can’t do everything. So this week, after a short brain storming session, the editor and I purchased some sprinklers.
| A sprinkler now provides a couple of minutes water to the tomato and blackberry beds saving me a lot of time each day |
The problem with sprinklers is that when you turn them on, you have to remember to turn them off again. On one particularly hot day this week when the temperature in the shade was pushing 40’C (104’F), I ran a sprinkler in the chicken run to provide some temporary cooling for the chickens. I then forgot to turn that sprinkler off and almost completely drained the chicken’s water tank. Well done me!
The other interesting thing about accidentally dumping so much water (well over 1,500 litres / 400 gallons) into the chickens deep litter mulch is that the bacterial action in that deep organic material is making the litter feel quite warm to touch!
The project that has received the most attention this week is the conversion of the old chicken shed into a much sturdier firewood shed.
The rest of the blog entry can be found here: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/
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