Busy busy. Setting up the boxes of plants at the ends of rows and unpacked 2000 tonight. Don’t want too many more to thaw just yet. Hoping the rain holds off for a bit, although it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Unless we get a torrential downpour, work will proceed as planned! The berm maker needed some modifications so it was taken back to the shop this morning, and with some adjustments, it will make a berm that should work. Rows are all marked (albeit a little wobbly in places hehe). Peter did that this afternoon while Alec and I unloaded the plants and unwrapped 2000 of them, and organized the row ends. Then we set up…wait for it…..
Has-KAMP in the trailer, since the Thistle Orchard is a half a mile from the house and we didn’t want to be running back all the time for stuff.
The LIST
Chairs
Extra hats
Sunglasses
Extra boots
Raingear for everyone
Extra clean socks
Extra clean jeans (Peter tends to spray himself when he’s filling the tank; it’s actually rather comical to watch…but he does get wet!)
Drinks–soda pop, juices, lots of water, extra 10 gallon of water jug, green tea, etc.
Snacks–cookies, apples, tangerines, bananas, granola bars, regular chocolate bars
ICE
Cooler for drinks and fruit/chocolate bars
Row markers, marker
notepad and pen in holder
TP
Paper Towel
First Aid Kit
Cell phones and Camera
Emergency supplies — tow rope, jacks
Towels, facecloths, wash basin, extra jug of water for washing up
Waterless hand cleaner
Lots of gloves
Latex gloves a box
Garbage bags–large and kitchen size
Cardboard boxes to hold Plants cut to fit the trays
BUG SPRAY–the mosquitoes are OUT FOR BLOOD
Sun Screen
Hand lotion
Chap Stick
Eye drops
Extra gas for tractor
Still more to add to the list tonight.
Back to work!!
10 p.m. It was a 16 hour work day getting ready for tomorrow. Plants picked up, tractor set up, berm maker tried and not going to be used after all until it’s modified some more. So back to Plan A. Regular planting with the Mechanical Planter. Unpacked 5000 total plants and set at top of rows for easy access, and also for them to thaw. Filled 500 gallon water tank with ‘fire hose’ sized hose in about 3 minutes from the slough. That was placed in the middle of the orchard with an eye to using it to refill the Mechanical Planter tank every 2 rows. Total of 55 rows marked (probably a bit more than we need). Planted one test row of 171 plants. Row is about 450 feet long. That went very well; Alec mastered the Mechanical Planter in about 10 minutes. With extra people running plants and doing stuff tomorrow, ideally the tractor will keep ‘moving’ and we’ll have an assembly line thing going on. We’re tired, but it was a productive day.