Jonas

Jonas in The Adventures of Jonas

I just heard from a neighboring farmer last night that many of the farms on Sauvie Island are facing labor shortages right now. I echoed that sentiment, as I had a labor shortage of my own this past week. Jonas took a little more than a week off to spend time with his mom and sister, who were visiting his grandparents in Portland, and to attend the Oregon Country Fair. But, wait, farm labor? Jonas? Who is Jonas?

Some of the lettuce the deer did not eat

Many of you already know that Jonas is our our nephew. He came for a few weeks two years ago, and I guess we did alright, because he came back again in April and is staying with us for an extended period of time. (+/- 6 months; through the harvest season, something like that.) He has been helping with the garden and working on his art. He is an artist, with a major focus on comics. He is helping with the Thursday deliveries, so you may meet him there, if you haven’t already. You can see his art online in two places: his webcomic, The Adventures of Jonas, and on his art blog, 25mph on deviantART, which has his comics and other art pieces. (There are some comics from his time with us two years ago, in The Adventures of Jonas, the Wander chapter, here, here, here and here.) You may also see his art scattered around other places, like our house, some of your June’s Corner Garden name tags, and the picture above, which is from The Adventures of Jonas.

The deer enjoyed this head of Optima lettuce

In other news, June’s Corner Garden is definitely on the deer trail now. I mentioned in the last few weekly e-mails that the deer ate some of the planting of lettuce that I am harvesting from right now. A week and a half ago, Jonas and I weeded the lettuce and it was beautiful. A few days later, I went out to harvest some, and found that the deer had taken bites out of about 1/6 of the planting. Bummer. I started covering the lettuce that night with row cover, but they are finding other things to eat. Lately, they have gotten into the beans. At first it looked like they were just getting a few leaves, but they may have gotten some of the newly formed beans, too. Sigh. They are even coming in mid-afternoon. I always thought we had too much traffic on our road for them to be around much, but I was wrong. My mother-in-law saved some hair from a hair cut last week, since she heard that it could repel deer. (Hang it in a bag in the field.) I think I may be trying that electronic post I mentioned a few weeks back to shock them and scare them away. That and a lot more row cover.