Eighteen days of fog at the farm. Fog accompanied by sub-zero nights and quite cool days. Fog that precipitates onto the vine uprights and then freezes, building up thin layer upon thin layer. Fog that seems cool and damp until one rides around the farm in the Gator and the dampness slicks the face and chaps the lips and sucks all moisture out of any exposed skin. Yuk!

We are repairing bird damage in our to be planted areas. When the bogs are flooded at harvest time ducks and geese and sometimes swans dally in the water and feed on any weeds growing from the fields. These birds dip and grasp the plant firmly and shake their heads until the plant, root and all, comes free from the soil. You might think this is a good way to rid a field of weeds, root and all. Not so, the shaking of the plant disturbs the soil sufficient that that soil is displaced in the water. The net effect is that we have holes in the fields that range from a half foot across to five or six feet in diameter and that are up to ten inches deep. This week alone I have moved about forty yards of dirt into the fields by wagon and shoveled same into the damaged areas. And there is at least the as much to be done over the coming week. On the up side, the head cold that I have is getting the tough love treatment in the great outdoors, the musculature of my arms and shoulders is in fine tone and I am sleeping really well.

EfM this week has seen us delving into the murky world of existentialism. Lordy, lordy, but the practitioners of this arcane element of the philosophical arts do spend a lot of their effort inspecting their navels and engaging in apparently self indulgent moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth. Thank God I'm not intelligent enough to devote my mental efforts to such pursuits.

Well, enough of this for now...