For a holiday it was a busy day on the farm. @stryeyz took the boys with her to town and I stayed at home and picked in the gardens.
The squash hit a big lull and only gave me a touch over 10 pounds. It worked well though as I was able to top a 20 pound box with them and I delivered them to the co-op this morning.
The record breaking pull was the 72 cucumbers for the day after having picked 70 two days before. They barely were able to fit atop the mound in the tub.
I drove up to the melon garden and found a slew of ripe Minnesota midgets. A few have cracked skin but most are just right ripe. I did grab a couple that are still a touch green but that way they won't get over ripe if I can't get back up for a few days.
Most of the midgets are still growing beneath the canopy of leaves. There are a couple that are at least 6 inches across that are still green.
One of the sunflowers is doing amazing and has a ton of flowers on it.
The acorn squash had a couple plants that the gophers had eaten the roots of so I had to pull the squash. I ended up with 37 pounds of various shaped acorn squash.
I figured out my melons. The orange striped ones are the Tigger melon and the white ones are honeydew, not Bozeman watermelon. I finally looked at my planting plan... The melons gave me 75.25 pounds total for the day.
After noon I had moved my old office chair to my glass studio and was browsing one of my books. On the right page is something I find rather interesting. Glass is categorized by the COE which is coefficient of expansion. I had never seen it explained this way and it makes complete sense now.
For a length of glass 6 miles long, with 1 deg C change the glass will expand X amount. That X is the COE number, so borosilicate is 33 COE and a 6 mile length would expand 33 mm warming by 1 deg C.
The book is from 1949 and has oodles of cool lab glass designs.
The tomatoes are still plugging away nicely and they gave me 5.75 pounds with the bulk of the weight in larger ones.
The turkeys needed their pen expanded so I gave them the entire corner now. The other birds are all a bit bent not having the walk around of the pen but the little ones are much happier.
In my tool shed I had left my dried out bottle of bead release. I was quite curious if I could manage to get it liquefied again usable. I took it to the kitchen and after letting the kettle heat water to near boiling I poured a bunch in and shook it up. I had to keep adding water to it as the chunks broke up and absorbed the water.
After about 10 minutes I had it to a workable dilution and thickness.
I coated my set of mandrels and set them in the rack to dry and they were dry rather fast.
I had to go pick beans to fulfill my orders for this morning so I rolled down not even half the row and got 6 pounds which was more than I needed. The extra went in the house and we had it with dinner.
Fire going in the pit I kicked the torch on and made a bead on one of the mandrels. I have a bunch of clear coated twisted cane still and I used one of the pieces for the color.
The shape leaves a bit to be desired but for my first bead in a decade I'm stoked to see the muscle memory is still there.
Turkey breasts grilled in the fire pit was our dinner along with a heap of various veggies from the garden.
I cut open one of the honeydew and sliced up half of it for us. It is not super sweet but mild though still super delicious.
The boys were both a bit excited as today is R's first day of kindergarten but they managed to get to bed at a decent time.
I have been to the co-op and delivered the orders already, the boys are at school and I have my first day of quiet. I have to pick as per the daily routine, I need to get more hay bales, my concentrators arrive today and the rest of my glass tomorrow, I think our friend is stopping by for produce this afternoon, and I have an irrigation leak on the line to the pole garden from driving over it and I need to bury the line there.
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