Watermelons are setting fruit as temperatures finally climb into the lower nineties. This year I planted a new hybrid seedless variety from Johnny’s Select Seeds out of Maine, the seedless Moon & Stars. I hope…
Posts published by “Spec MacQuayde”
Country inhabitants of the Ohio river valley have endured the most arduous winter in memory, at least for people 77 years and younger. While the blizzard of '77 lingers on in family photo albums, with…
Friday I emerged from bed a couple hours after noon, made a pot of tea and went out back to toss a loaf of cheap ass white bread to the five hens and one cock…
With the exception of a few heat waves in mid July that never lasted more than a couple days in the mid nineties, the unusually cool summer continues in the Ohio valley. Sterile clouds sail…
Temperatures are finally climbing into the mid-90s after one of the coldest, most overcast, lingering springs on recollection. Summer crops are thirsting for sunshine. Thanks to wire hoops and plastic rowcovers I succeeded in bringing…
From October 6, 1866, until February of 1869, the nation's newspapers carried headlines covering the saga of the world's first train robbers and the apparent lawlessness of Jackson County, Indiana. The Reno gang's fame was…
They're coming back. Armed with cactus-like spines, battle axes, sending their weapons long-range to drift in the autumn winds, the weeds are reclaiming fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton, reclaiming fields they've been exterminated from…
Dry, scorching days have sent watermelon vines running, sweet corn stalks shooting. I've been irrigating broccoli, sugar snap peas, and carrots overnight, the first harvests coming in for our new vegetable CSA, produce we will…
I was barefoot, shirtless, soaking in the sun while my eyes tried to focus on the spindly carrot sprouts protruding from warm sand, deliberating to discern the carrots from crabgrass that should not really have…