A Busy Day - April 10, 2026@goldenoakfarm

On Friday morning I had to leave shades down on the east side so it wouldn’t get too hot inside. Still not heard if they have a worker to do windows. I started the process in early March…

I got my post up and cleaned up the kitchen because I had to feed the seedlings. My #3 helper was coming at 12:30PM and I had to sort out screens for her to wash. So I went down to the old cellar.

I had forgotten that people had carried a LOT of stuff down to the cellar for me and I’d not put it away. So I had to clean up the cellar before I could find screens.

Once I’d gotten out almost all the ones I needed (I forgot 2) I went back up to feed seedlings. But when I got out the jars of amendments, many were nearly empty. So I emptied them out doing seedlings as far as they went, scrubbed up the jars and lids and went down to refill them. Then I finished feeding the seedlings.

I sat down for half an hour before getting dressed to go out to the gardens.

My #3 helper arrived and I got her started on bringing the screens up from the cellar and washing them. She checked them for holes and found 3 but only 2 needed to be sent out for repair. I used to do it myself, but the hands don’t cooperate anymore. I added one of the very old ones to the repair stack as it had 3 patches.

Once they were mostly dry, she brought them into the laundry room.

I was working on the West Herb garden as I could, over the afternoon, with many interruptions. I managed to finish that garden and get half of the West garden done.

My #2 intern arrived around 1PM and I asked her to move the little wood to the tops of piles so the dry wood could be easily gotten to. She did a nice neat job of it.

She had found some trees growing in the Fence garden beds and wanted me to look to see if they should come out. She also decided she didn’t like the job she’d done on the end of the 3rd Fence garden, so she went back and really cleaned it out.

We had found the peony and she dug out the trees growing near it. Then she moved onto the 4th Fence garden and really cleaned that out. They look so much better and it will be easier to do the digging necessary to restore these gardens. She wants to help with that.

I had to stop work on the gardens at 3:30PM, I was just too tired. My #3 helper finished at 3:45PM and when I went inside, I found the adapters for the plant fans had arrived.

So we set about figuring out how to hang them and to get them on the timers and then get them to run. We’d gotten most of them up by the time she had to go. I finished putting up the last 4.

I didn’t have enough for the office or for the dining room. I will have to get the 16 more I need for those next year.

My brother got home and as he had gotten the fingers on the box blade the night before, he started repairing the driveway. He says the tractor runs great and he was able to get the proper angle on the driveway so it drains away.

The night before when he was working on installing the fingers on the box blade, he saw turkeys on the back 40. He sent the photos to me, with a joke: “there’s 3 turkeys in the photo not 2”, meaning his shadow was there too.

On Saturday, I have to water the house plants before I head out to finish that garden. It’s to be warm by 10AM so I hope to get an early start. Once that’s done, and the BulbTone and FlowerTone spread, notes made and photos taken, I hope to move over to the other side of the house and start the New East garden. That’s the last big garden to do.

There are 8 more small gardens still after that. That ought to finish me off in good style.