We were getting tired of hot, dry, windy weather. Well we certainly had a change this week. A very nice cool pacific storm rolled in Monday. We ended up with about a 1/2″ of rain here in the valley. After the storm moved out, we were a bit surprised to see the first snow of the season on the mountain tops. August 30th is a little early for our first snow!
Fall is on the way.
As anyone that lives in Northern Utah can attest, this has been an exceptionally active monsoon season. Most years the monsoon moisture occasionally makes it as far north as the Salt Lake Valley, and we’ll get a thunderstorm or two here in Cache Valley.
But holy smokes, we’ve had weeks of strong thunderstorms with lots of damaging micro-burst winds. Back in the third week of July we had an exceptionally nasty storm hit Richmond and downed dozens of trees throughout our burg. My brother lost a beautiful old Blue Spruce in that event. And we had half a dozen trees get a lot of damage up in the east pastures.
But the kicker came a week ago last Friday. About 5 pm the sky was looking quite ominous and at about 5:15 I ran to drop the curtain on the south side of our calf barn just as a very strong gust hit our place. As I was running to the calf barn I saw the trees in the lot to the south of us almost bend to the ground and in the blink of an eye, our favorite shade tree overhanging the “Richmond Riviera” came crashing down on our car that I had just parked there!
Now that's not good.
This was the first time I parked Jennifers car here in months.
In addition to landing on Jennifer’s car, the two trees took down the power lines to the farmstand and the hay barn. And blocked the driveway to boot. We had just 15 hours before the Harvest Market was to open the next day.
I was just getting ready to milk when the trees came down, so ...
I called my brother and asked for a favor. Then I called our insurance agent (whose daughters sell eggs at our market). We didn’t get any money from the tight wad, but he did come up and pitch in with the clean-up.
We may not be in good hands, but our insurance agent is better than yours!
Anyway, by the time I had finished milking, Sam and Brady had everything cleaned up and had run temporary power to the farmstand fridge and another line to that all-important egg fridge up in the lean-to of the hay barn.
Our Saturday market went off with out a hitch, albeit a bit darker than usual in the farmstand. Thanks guys for all your help.—PS
A zinnia pokes through a sea of weed barrier.
The brussell sprouts are thriving.
Is this spring or is this summer? June 2010 is playing our just like last year. Mother Nature teases us with scattered peeks at the sun in between clouds, sprinkles and even downpours.
So, in fits and starts, we’ve managed to get our Harvest Market garden nearly in. Just a few more rows of corn to go.
We planted nearly a whole row of last year’s favorite fruit — Charentais melons. We’re also hoping to harvest tons of Brandywine and Green Zebra tomatoes, Ping Tung eggplant, cukes, corn, chilies, basil … and the list goes on. Not to mention Flying Saucer squash. But this year, I cut back to two plants. That’s enough. — jh