Our Little Helper

After several years of skating by with relatively mild winters, we were back in the cold last week. We measured five degrees here one morning and 11 the next.

We lost some broccoli in the high tunnel greenhouse that was just about a week away from being ready to cut. Collards and kale outside had leaves burned pretty bad, but it looks like they’ll recover. Cabbage and kohlrabi suffered the least damage, and the beets and chard fared fairly well.

The strawberries don’t appear to have suffered any, and the chickens picked the coldest day of the year to tie their high production of the year – 78 eggs from 80 hens.

We had an OK day at the Peachtree City Farmers Market on Saturday. It rained about two inches while we were there, but some loyal supporters showed up anyway. They seemed to appreciate us being there as much as we appreciated them coming out in the cold and rain.

This week we started tying up some blackberries that got away from us last year. The vines are in good shape, but they were all over the ground and in the weeds. We got them on the trellis without too much trouble, and pulled enough rooted stems to plant two more rows.

The best part was that Abigail, not even four years old, hung in there with us until it started raining. She tied up runners with little pieces of tape, carried rooted stems to the basket we were keeping them in and followed instructions cheerfully.