Week of 9/1/24

Its been another busy week besides my regular garden work I was out in the woods a lot trying to get rid of all the trashy vegetation like the honey suckle bush and the rose bushes. Then when you wipe them out the poke weed will take over. That weed will grow ten feet tall in a single year and have a thousand purple berries. I try to get all that stuff wiped out so the maple and walnut trees can get started, a checkerboard woods, white wood with the maple and dark wood from the black walnut.

I was also working on getting some ground out in the woods ready to plant ginseng seed this fall. I will need to wait for some rain for that as the ground is getting really dry, and if the ginseng seeds dry out they will die. The leaves on the ginseng plant are now turning to a golden color, and with the red berries on top, a very pretty sight. Perhaps the only thing that would be more pleasing to the eyes would be a lovely woman.

There is another really nasty weed coming into our pastures and hay fields, the Carolina horse nettle, a type of nightshade. They spread by both the seeds and deep horizontal roots. We have not yet figured out how to get rid of it yet. Repeated cutting doesn’t seem to do the trick. Nor do the regular sprays like 2.4.D. It will probably take a special spray.

I finally got the books this week that we ordered 5 weeks earlier and we got 9 sold right away. Which is why I don’t understand how the publishing company can’t seem to get any sold when it is so easy for me to do myself. We have sold over 200 books at a small farmers market and a town of 800 people. Meanwhile the 6-month royalty check that we got this week was $28.80 for books sold online. I don’t believe that they have any books out in the bookstores.

-Helmuth Krause