Off-Grid in West Virginia

Monday

Linda

When you mention the word “party” to most people, they envision a group of people interacting with another, eating finger foods from a poo poo platter and holding an alcoholic beverage in their hand. Here at PHF the word “party” can hold a whole different meaning and usually includes such props as gloves, shovels and hoes. I think they call them working parties.

Saturday was a potato planting party. While Duke took his morning nap, Sonny, Clarissa and I carted a half bushel basket of seed potatoes, the tiller, and an array of hoes out to the garden. We planted about seven and a half rows of potatoes and believe me it was a lot less difficult and much quicker than when I  planted five rows by myself last year. I think I like the idea of planting parties.

Our tractor driving daughter-in-law

After we finished planting our rows we loaded the tiller, the hoes, and a large bag of seed potatoes onto the back of our old red farm truck. Then the four of us stuffed ourselves into the front seat. I couldn’t help thinking that we must have resembled one of Norman Rockwell’s paintings, with our straw hats perched on our heads, work gloves on the dash and a dust cloud billowing out behind us as our old truck rumbled down the gravel road. Well a Norman Rockwell painting may be  stretching it a bit, maybe more like the Beverly Hillbillies before they moved to Beverly Hills. We thought we would be neighborly and help Bill and Paula Guinazzo of Creekside Cabin Farm to start their garden. Having recently moved here they are still settling in and haven’t had much time to do it. So we got their onions and potatoes put to bed and hopefully they will have a good crop.

We took another big step on Sunday and bought a hive of bees. Once again our farm truck was called into service. We bought a hive of bees from a family that may have to move out of the area in the near future. The man selling us the bees (Chris) was decked out in his bee suit. Sonny had on a pith helmet with netting all round and used duct tape to close off his pant legs and sleeves. It could be painful if a few angry bees were to fly up them. Bees are not too happy when you move their house.  Sonny and Chris strapped the bee box down in the bed of the truck and we transported them forty miles back to our house. Chris was nice enough to come back with us and help Sonny set the bee box in place under our ancient apple trees.

I never saw Sonny as a bee keeper, but then again who would have thought I could talk an old crusty Navy Warrant Officer into being a farmer?

Getting ready to move the bee hive.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2012 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.