Spring 2013

It's SPRING!

Seems like we waited an awful long time through winter to get to warmer weather this year.  Our springtime was very late in coming.. it remained chilly and cold clear through the end of April, with late freezes and even some snow the first week of May!  This was just the opposite of last year, when it got unseasonably warm in March and never looked back... moving right into an unbearably hot summer.

I don't know if that means this summer will be more mild and cool, but I hope it at least includes much more rain that last year.

Because of the late spring, we are just getting around to putting the garden in, during mid-May.  Steven decided this year to cut back on what type of items we grow, just because many were not being used/eaten by us very often.  So plant what actually successfully grows here and that we will use, is the idea.

So we have, so far, peas, onions (lots of onions, we use a lot!), sunflowers, many tomatoes, peanuts, corn, bell peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin;  as well as our perennials like asparagus, rhubarb, etc. The tomatoes, bell peppers and most of the cucurbits were all started indoors and set in the garden as plants -- good thing, too, with this late start.  The above pic was taken before we put in the melons and pumpkin, so most everything else is planted at the far north end of the garden.  I think Steven told me this year, just for trial, he made a garden plan that puts everything out by height -- with the lowest growing stuff on the south, up to the tall stuff on the north.  Will be interesting to see how that works out.

He has quite a few fruit trees started in pots as well.  Out in the big orchard, we did lose a couple of young fruit trees to the drought next year, so there are already plans to replace those.

We have been blessed with spring rains, and that has made the grass grow quickly.  

Since my push mower was not working correctly and my tractor was taken apart awaiting replacement parts, everything got to be waist high around the place.  Just this week I finally was able to start tackling that issue -- the tractor is fixed and I got the bush hog going for much of it. But it takes quite a bit of time.

We lost our bee colony over the winter and hope to get a replacement hive soon.

But we have lots of new babies right now -- 10 new baby goats; a dozen baby chicks (and two more hens setting on nests yet to hatch).  We have two hen geese also setting -- we are hopeful but not to expectant on the success of that.

I will try to do a better job of keeping with posts this summer to tell you of many big projects we hope to complete this year around the farm.