March 28 will be a bit of a catch-up journal. Last Thursday, I was finally able to get a propane delivery. The driver had me take him up to the house first to check out the road, and he thought it would be no problem. It wasn’t, and an hour later I had two full tanks, 100 gallons in the smaller tank and 400 gallons in the larger one. I felt rich beyond measure, at least in propane, and I even left the heat up slightly. Valley Propane was not able to connect both tanks at this point but they will come out later to accomplish that.
Looking at my flowering chart shows this to be a very later spring, but I can see the leaves of purple deal nettle and henbit, and they may be flowering today in the pasture. I did see some cut-leaved toothwort flowering yesterday.
Last weekend, I had Mike help me change the solar fence to cover just the orchard. Mike did the heavy digging for the new poles and in a couple of hours we had it set up correctly. We replaced the solar battery and I when I turned it on on Wednesday, it worked fine. A few weeks before I had fertilized all the fruit trees and I am hoping for some decent fruit this year. I closed the shutoff on the 250 gallon water tank and after Friday’s rain, I have about 50 gallons in it. That should be full shortly and that should be enough for 8 fruit trees.
The last few days I have been charging my solar batteries again, since they were down to 1150 (perfect would be 1270) even though the new gauge shows that they are 100%. I have gotten them to 1235, but I am going to call Bryan this week to see if we can reset the gauge.
My didymo article is almost done; all that’s left is a quote from the DEC spokesman and I will send the article off to Kaatskill Life next week. It is a pretty dull piece (didymo is an invasive algae that can significantly deteriorate trout streams) but informative and the DEC people are glad I am doing it.