DROUGHT!

We are in a severe drought on Northeast PA, worse than anything I have ever seen. The year started off great with plenty of rain, but then around the end of June the faucet was turned off. We were lucky at first and benefited from a few random thunder storms, but in the past two weeks there has been almost no rain and none forecast for the next week.

There isn’t any gardening to do since even the weeds aren’t growing and the lawn doesn’t need mowed either. Before it got so bad we went and picked 26 quarts of blueberries and I had already made a gallon of black raspberry jam as well as froze some juice. I was so afraid of getting hit with late blight again - - no longer very likely - - that I went ahead and made a batch of green tomato relish which we loved last year. The pepper and eggplant plants are tall and lush, but have little fruit. The tomatoes are loaded and will keep ripening regardless of any rain. The onions are done and I need to get them in.

Wild turkeys are haunting the place scavenging wild black berries and the few thornless blackberries and scrounging the scratch grains we put out for our hens. One of the foods they would normally depend upon for the fall – acorns – aren’t going to be there for them. Tiny, immature acorns are raining down as the trees try to save themselves.

Our crab apple tree looks the worst so far.

The pasture has mostly dried up. On the positive side the fleeces look great!