Satisfying

The next update of life on the land, where life is never boring.

It's so satisfying to see some green coming up from the depths of the ground. All they needed was a little water and they have responded in turn.

The problem is with some areas of the land where the grass is too high. As I love old-school things, I decided to buy a scythe to cut the grass around the vines. After cycling all around the nearest town of Pezinok during which time I got a puncture, I was unsuccessful.
The next day, Saturday, I found one but the hardest part was mounting the scythe, at least I thought so anyway. After a lot of head scratching and some pointless hammering, we succeeded in fitting the blade onto the rest of the body.

The problem then became how to sharpen the blade. With a stone I spent ages going back and forth but it didn't seem to make a difference. A neighbour suggested hammering the blade to thin it out. we tried this but no joy. Now it seems that we will have to forget about being old-school and just buy a petrol garden trimmer. It's a shame but a lot of effort has yielded very little result and the grass is still high and growing. Next mission, find a garden trimmer.

Farm Update - Dealing With Pests

Digging in the soil can reveal some strange beings that you can't imagine living there. One such thing is a beetle grub. Not only does this pest eat at the roots of vegetables but it is also a pretty rancid looking thing in its larvae stage and not something I would like to see a lot of. It is known as the Cockchafer or May Bug (Melolontha melolontha) and has a four-year life cycle. It has only one month as an adult beetle. 

At the weekend, we found two of them, a couple apparently, one which was in the process of egesting whatever it had eaten. As you can see they are quite big and fat, juicy targets for birds and they explode when pressure is put on them by the sole of someone's shoe. This is exactly what happened to one of the ones we found but the other one got away. 

This was just part of the fun I had this weekend, the other involved weeding large areas of land to save the poor strawberries that were being strangled by these unwelcome invaders. If all goes well, our efforts will be rewarded soon and we can enjoy the tastier fruits of nature.