Photos From the Farm

We’ve been busy on the farm for the past couple weeks.  Pair that with returning to the 40 hour work week, and taking care of kiddos ( I know, welcome to the real world, boo-hoo, poor me) and I just haven’t had much mental energy left over for blogging.  But I have had the camera by my side so I’ll share some of what we’ve been up to.  I hope you’ll forgive my lack of photography skills.

I’ve been trying to think of a good Bible verse or Dr. Seuss quote for over my garden gate, but my husband came up with this, and I think it’s perfect.   

We are good at a few things around here, but building isn’t exactly one of them.  Nevertheless, we have some very cozy bunnies, and the placement of the hutch in the garden will make it simple to spread all that wonderful rabbit poop out where it can do some good.  I’ll have to do a little research, but I’m thinking that I’ll rake the poop out into the garden each fall when we’re putting the garden to bed for the year. It’s nice to have these guys out of small cages on the shed floor. 

Wall-O-Water season extenders are pre-warming the soil in the tomato bed, where lettuce will grow in the shade of tomato plants.  I’m hoping this will slow the bolting of the lettuce when the weather gets hot.  The Wall-O-Waters went in last weekend and I aim to transplant my best looking tomatos this weekend.  Also sugar snap peas are sprouting under soda bottle greenhouses.  Peas don’t really need the protection but I was trying to get them extra warm so they’d sprout sooner.  I think it worked since many of them are starting to poke little green heads out of the soil, while their neighbors planted on the same day, but without the soda bottles aren’t up yet.

Shelling peas are waiting to sprout below the sticks against the fence.  I used to just let them climb the fence, but this year we have planted blueberries on the other side of the fence.  Also, the chickens, who mostly free-range now, would help themselves if the peas were to poke out of the fence.  I don’t have a solid plan for keeping chickens out of the blueberries when the time comes.  Pardon the ugly color of the house.  It’s one of those things we just haven’t gotten around to changing from the prior owners taste.

Nate finished the new strawberry bed and a mixture of June-bearing and Everbearing strawberries are happily growing in it.  We’ve used a scrap length of fence to keep our dig-happy puppy out of the beds until the strawberries are established and hide the oh-too tempting soil.  Last year’s strawberries spent the winter in the greenhouse and have already begun to blossom.  I can nearly taste them now. 

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