So Smokey

This seems to be the norm for summers now.  About August we get forest fires going and then get smoked out.  Seems the whole West is on fire again this year.  I really feel for everyone being burned out.  I am so glad we did the major thinning around here that we did.  I feel a bit safer now.   

Despite the heat and dryness, the garden is doing well.  Zucchini is producing quite a lot, after waiting so long for the first one to grow, they are coming on strong now!  We will be getting a second crop of peas this fall.  Did you know that if you don't pull up the pea plants after the first harvest, they will produce more again in about a month or so after the first crop?  Most of the plant dies off, but there is a little new growth that comes on and produces a new crop of peas.  Not the prettiest plants in the garden, but they have food on them!

The yellow jackets are still around in droves.  We found a nest when we tore down the hay shed that was quite large.  Got rid of that, but it didn't seem to make much of a dent.  Then I put out water with ammonia in it, that kills some. I put that up off the ground so the toads don't get into it.   I have 6 of those yellow traps set out, those are catching a lot, but there still are thousands.  I don't know where the nests are, but man, they keep coming!  The hornets have thinned way down.  There was a large nest way up in an Aspen tree down by the hipcamp site that we got rid of.  That seemed to help a lot.  There are still a few, but not nearly as many. 

The major project for this year is tearing down the hay shed that is rotting away.  Every post is rotted, so the whole thing won't survive another winter.  We tore down the majority of it, up to the combing room.  We re-enforced that and kept it up, but everything else came down.  Now I am going to add a smaller addition to house the straw and the one big bale of hay I get at a time these days.   It's amazing how much stuff accumulates around here under roofs.  John made a dump run yesterday with all the stuff that wasn't needed, and was pretty much just junk that was stored in the shed.  Lots of wasted space.  I built it back when I was getting small bales of hay, 780 a year.  Now that I'm getting the big bales, I don't need all that room.  Plus the dehairing room was in there when I had the machine, too.  Now, I'm just adding a 10 foot by 18 foot addition onto the combing room to keep the straw dry, and to hold the bale of hay.  It should work good.  Then we will have a lot more parking room in the driveway, too.  Room for more snow.  Things get a bit tight around here when we have winters with a lot of snow.  I'll post pictures soon of all the changes.