"Getting rid of everything that doesn’t matter allows you to remember who you are. Simplicity doesn’t change who you are, it brings you back to who you are."

Friday, July 5, 2013

The Stinky Shed

We've had a very rainy season so far and this weeks weather forecast shows a repeating cycle of rain, fog, sun, heat, rain, fog, sun, heat...Well, you get the picture. 

One of the funny things about living here is the cloudy, foggy mornings.  (San Francisco's got nothing on us.) 

I'm up early enough that most mornings I can see the dawn breaking with pretty colors and blue skies.  But by the time some sleepy heads around here get up (ahem)...The clouds have taken over and the ground fog creeps in.  (No wonder I can't style my hair in the Summer.  Frizzy, frizzy, frizzy...)

SM usually says the same thing every day as he stands out on the back porch, coffee in hand.  "I wonder how long it'll stay overcast?"

To which I reply, "Oh it'll burn off around lunchtime."  And it does.  And then the sun heats everything up enough that the pop up thunderstorms start to roll in around 5pm.

Rinse, repeat.  Hey, at least I haven't needed to water the garden much this year.

So I'm eyeballing the situation in the garden the other morning.  My hair is doing the watoosie and I'm scratching 2 new bug bites on my butt that I didn't have when I walked out there. 

I tell ya them bugs are something else!

I march in the house and say "You got a minute?  I'd like to pull the sweet onions and four hands are easier than two to get the job done."

SM perks up.  "Where are you going to put them?"  He asks reasonably.

"Well, I'd like to hang them on the fence line to dry like I did last year but it's way too humid and wet for that."  I paused, scratching my newly acquired bites.  "How about we stick them in the shed?"

"On what?"  SM asks.

"There's that plastic shelving unit that I use and I suppose we could always stick some in the garage."  I watch as SM heads out to investigate the situation in the shed.

I doodle a bit in the kitchen and then head out to the garden and start pulling the red sweet onions (Red Torpedo Tropea). 

The storage onions (Copra) are no where near to harvesting yet.

Then I see that SM is heading back across the yard and he says to me "I laid that old screen door we have on a couple of horses.  That'll give us plenty of room to let these dry.  Give them some good air circulation."

I swear I stood there with my mouth hanging open. 

"You are the smartest man alive!"  I cried with a big old grin.  "I never would have thought of that!  It's perfect!"

In minutes SM and I had them pulled up and hoiked them to the shed where he stood on one side and I stood on the other and we laid them all out.




"It sure is pungent in here."  SM pointed out.




"Yep.  Better here than in the garage."




So now we've got a drying shed full of onions. 




Hopefully they'll dry up OK. 

5 comments:

  1. That's a LOT of onions! But a great idea using the screen door :)

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  2. This humid weather is just crazy! I harvested all my garlic and have decided to hang it in the attic to cure since I am concerned about it curing correctly on the covered porch. The 370 onions that I planted will start being ready to pull soon. Maybe the hunidity will leave and I won't have to hang them up there too!

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  3. Jealous of all those onions! And I have to admit, when he said he was going to lay that screen across two horses, the first thing that went through my mind was...you know, HORSES.

    I obviously need another cup of coffee.

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  4. That's a lot of onions, and the screen door across the horses is an excellent idea. I need to figure how I'm going to dry mine. I want to hang them in one of my storage buildings, but need to figure out how.

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