Summer in full swing

I'm happy to report that after last year's disastrous May this year the weather has turned if anything to the opposite.  We have had no significant rain for, ooh I don't know..., at least 6 weeks.  So watering is a daily task (above Susan watering the corn) and we're taking advantage of the long dry spell to spend as much time as possible out on the land repairing the landslide damage from last winter, leaving very little time for blogging or reading blogs.  I'm evidently not the only one though who is too busy elsewhere to blog.

To give you just a small sample of things we are harvesting at the monent, here is some chicory:

We finally found a pea variety that is doing well for us although the name escapes me just now.  We also have some sugar snaps doing well sent to me from a dear Floridanean blogger friend.

We are gourging ourselves on letrtuce such as oakleaf lettuce:

...and Mike's Red Lettuce:

But the main news at the moment is that after a recent appeal to friends and family for some support after last winter's catastrophic damage, we have been very lucky to receive many generous gifts, including some tools, seeds and... a caravan.  Now those of you who have seen our land will be wondering, where on earth are they going to place a caravan on those steep and narrow terraces?

We pondered that same question for a long while, but were to busy with rebuiding beds, so we'd have at least some sort of crop this year.  We had a vague idea that the top terrace near the road would only need a little widening and then all we'd need was for someone to tow the caravan to the top and then someone with a crane who could lift it down a bit from the road.  Then we'd have to dig some steps into the terrace below the caravan so you wouldn't fall 8 feet down as you stepped out of the thing...

So with the continued help of my cousin Bart, we started digging to widen the terrace, and then all of a sudden the answer came to us!  We'll level the a huge bump separating the top terrace from the road, so we could simply push the caravan in and not having to invest into the hire of a crane.  All it needed was shifting some... 30 cubic metres... or so... of earth and... put it... somewhere else...

We soon realised this was causing all sorts of problems.  First we had to support the terrace from below as it all of a sudden it was half metre higher and a ton heavier.  Some earth went above to be put back later, so water wouldn't run down our terraces but along the road in heavy rains.  Then we built a little mini terrace on the side.  Some more earth went on another bit along the road, making sure future floodwaters were diverted from our land.

And finally everything else was just chucked in the corner, where it can do what it likes:

We've been working extremely hard on this for the last few days in searing heat.  We're not quite there yet, but I'll let you see the final result.  There's only about a foot to go.  I bet you can't wait for the result.  A caravan is going to enable us to spend large parts of the summer on the land.  Any future helpXers can stay there.  It would just improve our lives so much.  Another week or so...