Going to New York

Greetings! It has been a busy few days at the homestead. I rented a tiller and my wonderful son-in-law tilled the garden - all 1680 square feet of it. Poor fella had some nasty blisters on both hands once finished. He says that he loved doing the physical work though. One thing is certain, he wants to buy a larger tiller before next spring to make the job go even easier. The early plantings are doing very well. The onion patch is flowing with onion sets with tall green leaves reaching towards the sun. Potatoes are growing and will soon need more soil covering them. I add soil for the first month or two and cover the potato plants as they sprout up. This forms a longer root which gives us more potatoes at the end of the season. Zucchini plants are looking very good. I am going to plant more zucchini seed directly into the ground. This will help me to have a longer harvest time. Over the next few days we will be getting the rest of the garden planted. We have weed barrier cloth in place already to prevent any weed growth. With a garden of this size, I find the cloth to be worth the cost. It prevents weed growth while also helping to hold the moisture in the ground. We have used it before with great results. In that year, I never had to weed the garden even once! I have plans to home can as much of the harvest as possible. My oldest daughter, her husband, and their son live on the homestead now. This garden is going to be feeding all of us this winter. I am working at building up my cannign jar supply. A dear friend recently found some at a yard sale for me. I put in an order for a few cases of jars at a local store. We will have them next week. It seems that the first task will be to reorganize the pantry to prepare for the canned up harvest. We were planning to start building our house this year but that has been delayed. We got word that my father-in-law is not doing well. He has had stage 4 cancer throughout his body for a year now. He decided at that time that he would not do radiation or chemo treatments. He had been through it a couple of years earlier and just didn't want to do it again. Today, my beloved talked to his Dad and found out he is not doing well. He has been put on oxygen due to having an attack of some kind. We aren't sure what, but think it was an asthma attack. Beloved is going to talk to his dispatcher and see if he can come home a few days early. If possible, he will be home in a week to empty out his truck. The kids and I will then follow him to the terminal in Dallas so he can drop off the truck. From there, we will drive to NY and see his Dad. The kids and I have never met his Dad, so Joe wants to be sure we have that chance. Once we are back from NY, beloved will likely be assigned a new truck.