Heriz-Smith

We saw Eliot Coleman speak yesterday at the Common Ground fair. He was showing his new method of quickly creating a 2 row hoop house. It looked like a nice easy way of doing this. The one question I have is that because he and Johnny’s couldn’t get a device on the market that bent metal conduit in time, he was using PVC conduit.

We’ve heard for some time the issues that seem to exist with PVC and with the release of the Body of Evidence report, I was a little surprised and disappointed to see PVC used here. Not wantingn to spend the money (and lacking the skill) to bend mental conduit, I wonder if I could cut some saplings for the same purpose. I think I’ll give this a try later this week. I’ll only need about 5 for the short beds I plan to use it with…

We’ve had two or three nights of light ground frost - most of the tomatoes are in. The beets are still nice and sweet. I might get one more batch of the Haricot Vert beans in - that would be nice. Laurie and Audrey picked all the Basil plants, they are now sitting in buckets in the porch. The potatoes are looking pretty good too - the Katahdin in particular has died back and are a nice size. Perhaps we’ll do those tomorrow if the weather is nice. I brought all the onions in over the past week and they are up in the barn curing.

We’re off to the Common Ground fair is a few minutes. It’s foggy now but that’s supposed to lift. Audrey’s going to be mad mad mad if it doesn’t - the majority of her class took the day off yesterday and went on a sunny hot day.