Farmer Friday

I skipped market last Saturday because of the weather. I really didn’t want to drive over the mountains in this mess.  

It’s been a fun and exciting week with the twins. 

Poor Giotto wants to go in with the babies so bad. He lies by the pen a lot, but I’ll afraid Posie might hurt him so we are taking things very slowly. 

Egg production is better than ever. 

It’s hard to focus on work with this much cuteness around. 

I discovered some Romanesco broccoli was ready in the garden so we had broccoli cheddar soup for dinner. 

What a face. This baby girl needs a name. 

Goat kids aren’t the only babies around tho. 

I do think they are the cutest things on the planet. 

Today has been a super busy day. Salad mix. 

Abundance 

Arugula 

Flowers 

More broccoli 

I also picked some spinach and baby kale. I started working on the milk stand 

I delivered eggs and veg to Globe then stopped by AutoZone. The check engine light was on and they have a gadget you can use to read the codes. They’ll even give you a print out, all for free. Love these guys, they are always really nice and helpful. The codes seem to have to do with some minor stuff. I’ll run it by my mechanical guy and see what he thinks. 

Got home just in time to water some seedlings, collect eggs, milk Posie, (the kids have been mostly nursing one side so the other side is too full), take out trash, wash dishes....

Give the twins their first vaccines, cook dinner, medicate the sick cat (I think he’s has a gut blockage), feed the dog, bag the broccoli....

What the second fridge looks like on Friday night. 

#appreciation

Today I’m appreciating the abundance in my life. 

Solstice Saturday 12/21/19

Today is the shortest day of the year. Beginning tomorrow each day will be about a minute or so longer until the longest day, the summer Solstice around June 21. 

I spent the early morning turning compost. I’m pleased to find some worms coming into the oldest pile. 

I also turned and fluffed the bedding in some of the chicken houses.  It’s due to rain again soon and I need all that bedding to be as dry as possible so it can soak up moisture again. 

Then I filled 48 2 gallon pots with compost. 

I planted 150 daffodils in them and a few tulips. I have a few more tulip bulbs to plant. They should have already gone in the ground but I couldn’t get to it. And where I was going to plant them in the ground, well Giotto decided it was a great spot to dig a big hole to lay in. I don’t have time right now to fix that so this was the best solution. 

I made a run for feed but most of those bags are loose hay I raked up from the hay barn at the feed store. 

The chickens totally love scratching through it and eating it. A lot of it is alfalfa leaf which is a high protein feed for them. 

#100daysofappreciation

Today I’m appreciating the warm sunshine and the relaxing rhythm of work around the place. 

Daffy & Tulip Update

Spring is here!

Last fall I did a little yard clean up and planted some daffodils, tulips and pansies, which you can see in this post

Now the bulbs are blooming brightly and the pansies of course have bloomed most of the winter. As the weather gets too warm they will fade out. I will probably replace them with small marigolds along the edge of the bed. In this photo to the far left you can see the artichoke plants I put in last fall have survived the winter quite well. Hopefully they will make some artys for me pretty soon.

In the fore ground, this clump of bearded iris is a lavender and purple tall bloomer. I got starts from a house down the road, I have no idea the variety but it is probably one that is at least 50 years old as my mother remembers them being there when she was younger. They will bloom later in spring.

Tulips

baby plum; it's really only the size of a pea

In another area of the yard it looks like the plum trees escaped any damage from the snow as there are little plums on them. This picture is magnified a good bit, the plums are really only the size of a little green pea.

Arugula blossoms

And all over the garden the arugula is bolting with the warm weather. Some I just cut down a few times to feed to the chickens and rabbits and others I let go for volunteer seed and to provide blooms for bees and butterflies.

Around the Garden

Yellow daffys and purple pansies

I thought I would just show a bit of the garden as it looks at the moment. Sometimes all I have time for is my Harvest Monday posts, so now you can see there is more!

In a front yard bed there is a dwarf Bonanza peach which I under planted with bulbs last fall along with some purple pansies. The yellow daffodils are blooming and look great with the purple pansies. Here is the post where I planted them, Daffodils, tulips & Pansies

My $2 Rose bush

Do you remember my How to Plant a Rosebush post? Here is that little $2 rose bush now. It's leafing out well and should bloom at least a little bit in a month or two.

terraced garden

I've been working on cleaning up and enlarging the terraces at the edge of the front yard. This slope basically faces northeast, so gets some early morning through mid-afternoon sun. I've planted some wildflowers,poppies, cilantro, snapdragons, sweet alyssum and clover in here along with bearded iris and three plum trees. That brush/manure pile in the front is over the sprouting stump of a honey locust tree which I'm trying to kill. It's the kind with vicious thorns on it.

west side

Here is the west side of the house, going along to the patio at the back. Not much happening here at the moment, but compare this to what it looked like in September, 2009!

cold frame and stone walls on the creek side

With the warmer weather last week I did a little cement work on the retaining walls on the creekside and built a new coldframe which uses two old shower doors I was given for the top. Needs a little refining, but should work for the time being.

This area is also going to become a new chicken/duck pen, with probably a little garden space. I will use the chickens to help make compost at the far end, then next year plant a small orchard of fruit trees and move the chickens to a new area to make more compost. When the retaining walls are finished I should have a space roughly 20x30 feet to work with here.

Daffodils, Tulips & Pansies

Planting daffodil bulbs by the peach tree

I picked up a bag of 14 mixed daffodil bulbs and 14 mixed tulips. I planted the daffys on one side of the dwarf peach tree and the tulips on the other.

after planting the purple pansies

After I planted the bulbs I put in a drift of purple pansies along the edge. I'm planning this bed to be mostly flowers of different sorts to bloom through the year. In late winter I'll sprinkle some annual seeds over it like poppies and wild flowers to bloom in the late spring, then replace the pansies with marigolds for the summer.

Are you laughing at my bottle edging? A lot of my friends call this "The Drunkard's Path". :-)