58F, calm. damp after an afternoon thunderstorm dumped another half inch of rain on the Farm yesterday.
Before the rain, got a little outdoor work done-- couple more concreted corners at Wolf Creek cemetery and a little sorting of the pipe fence out at the Cemetery west of us on Evergreen Av, and some of the orchard mowed getting ready for apple season.
The apple orchards around are opening -- Holmes Lake announced Honeycrisp and McIntosh apples for sale. Ours has Wolf River (baking apples) and probably others too, some trees loaded with apples this year.
Scott was busy during the rain boiling down a few bushels of tomatoes into tomato paste for winter cooking. He has some Amish Paste tomatoes for that. Although the tomato plants look terrible as the windstorms broke off or bent over the 5-foot tall plants, they are still bearing fine.
When it dries out this week, maybe will dig some of the potatoes -- looks like a good crop too. Potatoes are best when dug late and "hardened" a little by cold weather. Adds a little sugar and makes them store better. So other than some for sale and some to eat, will leave most until October.
Eating the last watermelon -- very poor yield this year. Only planted 4 vines and two died on the way due to injudicious hoeing by the farmer.
Monday is Genealogy drop in day followed by the Sterling Town Board meeting in the evening. I go to the board meeting to bring back 20 old record books already copied and pick up 20 more for the month ahead. When Sterling is done, have Luck, and Laketown to do next. Goes pretty smoothly as I have a old computer connected to the foot pedal copy camera ready to go when I have some time. Takes about 10 minutes per book. I suppose I should just take the setup to the source and do it there, but I rather enjoy doing it gradually.
Lots of irons in the fire make each day a choice of many interesting jobs. I expect that all will get done, but in sort of a shotgun approach with sort of the Jack of all trades, master of none approach.
Lately the swans and geese have been flying around in their vees. It must be the youngsters have gained flight.
The tools to make a concrete marker -- pre-mix concrete, post hole digger, shovels and a tub for mixing it and some water.
The surveyor left a lathe marking the south boundary of the church yard with a metal spike driven in the ground. Here, as it was in the ditch, I moved 1 foot to the west, dug a foot deep hole (hit a major tree root at that level) and poured concrete and two metal spikes to make a more permanent ground level marker. I still have the west two corners to put a pipe in concrete 1 foot east of the corners. I did all of the markers I put in 1 foot east of the surveyor's pin except this one.
The south boundary of the church yard is about where the big oak tree stands. The old south driveway is just off of the property. Back in the woods, behind the church is the old school yard netting fence, almost all disappeared, but in a few places grown in to trees. The surveyor marked the written boundary about 10 feet east of the old fence. Now, if one wanted to, the old fence could be considered the actually boundary as line fences in for over 20 years are sacrosanct in law -- meant so farmers didn't have to continually move their fences as surveyors changed their measuring techniques and found fences were not quite on lines. Now that would have been important in the cemetery as some graves would have been off the newly surveyed line, but as we bought an extension to the west, we are OK, just our new cemetery boundary is about 10 feet shorter than originally thought. Modern surveyors used gps and satellites and claim to be more accurate than the originals who went with chains and compasses through the area in 1848.
The surveyor marked the south boundary of the cemetery property -- a 100 foot buffer zone south of the old cemetery fence. I dug a post hole 1 foot east of the marker and poured it full of concrete with two giant spikes embedded in it -- all below mowing level. This marks the south boundary -- the east is the road and back in the woods is the west. It will likely grass over, but be locatable with a metal detector. .When you pay a surveyor $2000 to mark boundaries, you want to make them permanent.
