Given the long stretch of rainless days in the 80s and 90s, my 4-year-old son Noah and I watered the gardens last night. I like to involve the kids in any age-appropriate way I can, so that they grow up with a sense of ownership in the farm and the skills to run it. That, and Noah works for lollipops.
I loaded four 55-gallon barrels and one 33-gallon barrel onto the back of the truck and filled them with water while I made some improvements to the hen house yesterday. (Note to self: that works about to over 2100 pounds of water, just about the limit of what our old F-250’s suspension will handle.) Once we got to the gardens, we set buckets on the ground next to the truck. I got up in the bed and pumped the water out by hand while Noah held the pump hose in the buckets and moved it to an empty bucket once one bucket was full.
On the way home, Noah got his first good look at fireworks as we watched the illegal skybursts over North Linden. A stop for gas and lollopops, and our workday was done a little after ten o’clock.
