20211202 the mud is drying

 

We have had a lot of sunshine today which has been such a relief.  It means that the mud has started to dry out.

Even if there are quite a lot of squishy bits still to be navigated.

This is the first day for some time that I have been able to walk around without getting my feet wet.  

It feels rather good.

20211201 Spinach loves the rain

 

Most of our vegetables have been struggling in all the recent heavy rain and flooding.  The heavy rain leaches out the soil nutrients especially when the beds get flooded as they are in the Souryan Garden. Flooding also means that the roots don't get enough oxygen which, if it goes on long enough, will lead to the plants dying

 

But this is not true for spinach.  We were able to harvest some tanda kirai (a variety of amaranth) from a bed this morning.

The bassella spinach which was in the flooded Souryan Garden was also continuing to grow.  Obviously spinach loves the water!

We are relieved that at last it seems to be drying up and we hope we don't get more rain tonight.  As soon as the rain stops we want to start planting lettuce and tomatoes which at present are growing in the nursery.

20211130 Sun glorious sun

 

The sun came out this morning and looked WONDERFUL!

It is still extremely wet underfoot; very muddy and flooded in places.

First thing I did when I went out this morning was fall down in the mud.  My feet skidded away from under me.  Fortunately mud is very soft to land on.

We love the sun which is making everything sparkle.                                                          

20211129 Flood and then sun

 During the last week the farm has been flooded.  First it rained for two or three days and there was water everywhere.  This has been followed (thank goodness!) by a few days of dry/sun and then we had three days of rain and it flooded again and.... so the cycle has continued.  You can see moving pictures of what it has been like on our video channel here  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGTNVAwTrOU

This morning we had yet more rain and yet more flooding during work time.  This is what it was like going out of Buddha Garden this morning just after the rain stopped at about 10.00am

Later when I returned at about midday the path looked like this:

It was still quite muddy but at least I could see where the stones were.

Its a challenging time when just going in and out of the farm is difficult.  And we are unable to get on with working on the vegetable beds because they are either flooded or too wet to work on.

We look forward to some sun!

Wednesday November 10th

 

This was what our temporary access looks like in the rain this morning  - completely flooded.

I feared that we would have to spend all day going through ankle deep mud every time we left or came into the farm.

So I was very gratified to see that even a short time after the rain stopped a lot of the water had cleared.

Which shows that Rajan's drains must be working .  I was worried that they were too small to make any difference but obviously they are not.

The rest of the farm that was flooded yesterday is even more flooded today after yet more rain last night.

Tuesday November 9th Heavy with wet

 

When I went out first thing this morning everything felt heavy with wet. Plants, soil, puddles everywhere.  I found it difficult to take pictures that conveyed this.  Even the atmosphere felt heavy with it.

A few days before the rain we had planted several beds of rocket/arugala/roccolla seedlings.  As you can see from the picture, the rain gave them quite a battering.  But given the tough plants they are, most of them are managing to survive.

We were so pleased to see the sun!

The sky has been grey with cloud all day but from time to time it has got brighter.  And sometimes we even got a glimpse of the sun.

November 8th More rain

 

Today it has rained all day and this is what our entrance path looked like around midday.  Its been very dark all day and I think it unlikely that we have enough electricity in our solar system to get us through the night.  Even if we turn the fridge off.  We can use the supplementary system consisting of some extra batteries, but we will have to be very careful how much we use.

As soon as we saw the entrance path flooding we created another path around the solar panels.  That worked for quite some time but because the rain just kept coming that eventually flooded as well.  Although the flood is not as deep as on the entrance path.