Timberrrr!

I came outside Saturday after a very windy Friday night and looked around, expecting to see some tree limbs down. There was only one, relatively small one in our yard, but our neighbor lost a 2-3 inch in diameter sapling; it was sheared off about a foot above the base. Yikes! We didn't get off without damaged, though—look at this:



Yikes! My hoop house bit the dust. It wasn't as bad as it looked, though. The only thing I lost were some small pepper plants; I am restarting those from seed, but it will put the harvest behind a bit :( When we built the hoop house, the instructions said that if you are subject to high winds, you should glue the joints. A trip to the hardware store, a bit of dismantling, and 4 hours later, better than new:



Another, maybe better, view:



While I was playing around, I expanded the asparagus bed and added a few plants:



I also planted 4 blueberry bushes and 25 strawberry plants. You can see the strawberries in the foreground of the second picture.

What else can you see? The white row cover is over the potatoes, which have started putting out leaves. It froze last night, so the row cover was nice to have, plus it keeps the straw on in high winds, which we have had quite a few of lately. The plants you see in the collapsed green house are bush beans; they are doing well for only being 2 weeks old! The hoop house makes a big difference. On Saturday, it was only 50 F, but inside the hoop house (once I rebuilt it!), it was about 80 F. Nice and cozy :)

On other fronts, the brick cheese seems to have turned out. It is 2 weeks old and finally, on Friday, developed the red bacteria linens that they talked about. It also started smelling like brick cheese. Tonight I will wax it and let it age in the refrigerator for a bit. I think I will take a break from cheese making for the summer; I have more than enough to keep me busy without it!

Cheese making tip of the week: When they say that the starter only keeps a month in the freezer once you have started it, they mean it...