To say I’ve been busy is an understatement. And that’s on top of having the Covid. I went to the trouble of masking in public. I hunted down and fought for the newest Covid variant vaccine. And it was a fight because I’m not 65 and the confusion Mr Brainworm has caused surrounding vaccines. (You’ll notice the rich politicians all are getting their vaccines, including the tangerine tyrant despite purposely making it harder for the average Joe to get it and encouraging misinformation…). However, a coworker who I’m not thrilled with purposely came to work infected, despite knowing that the people we care for are frail and can’t afford to get sick. This same coworker apparently was a super spreader because every single person she had contact with got the infection from her. And then I got it from those I care for in close quarters. We went into quarantine while she went home and enjoyed 2 weeks off. Meanwhile I was the only one healthy enough to tend to the residents. Since 24/7 care is required that meant I wasn’t able to go home for a couple weeks. And I did get sick halfway through those two weeks and had to just buck it up and keep working.
So as you can imagine I am a bit angry with this coworker who is pretty unreliable in the best of times. If caregivers weren’t so hard to find out here in such a rural area, she’d been fired by now.
Luckily my client’s daughter came for a week and I was able to go home for a week and try to recover.
And it took a few days before I could even function enough to get into the garden and to winterize my home.
And of course I came home to a million tomatoes ripe all at once to take care of.
Actually it’s not just tomatoes. Everything needed harvesting. And it’s best to do it before the big rains and chill.
And citrus and olive trees and several other questionably hardy potted plants needed to be moved into the greenhouse as well.
To make things even more difficult one of the pullets is broody. And I wasn’t here to break her of it fast enough so now she’s got the bare belly and single-minded determination to hatch rocks. Which means she’s not laying after only a couple weeks of starting to lay.
My worm bin, which I wasn’t home to feed or move into the greenhouse seems to be missing a lot of worms. I’m thinking they may have escaped looking for food. I still have some in there and they got fed. Fingers crossed they recover.
In any case, I just put the last batch of tomatoes in the dehydrator for myself. I think I have enough dehydrator tomatoes to last me until the next harvest. If not, I’ll have to adjust the amount next year.
Today it’s raining like mad- so I’m not working in the garden. But I’ve got my garlic ordered and just delivered and when the weather clears I will get a planting bed ready for them.
We have not had a frost yet, but have gotten chilly into the upper 30’s a few nights.
Anyway, that’s the update.
Climate Wary Homesteader 