We are slowly getting caught up on spring things. We have butchered several dozen chickens over the past few weeks. We are still a long ways from done. I am pretty sure there are still around 30 to be butchered. A days work if we have a few extra hands. I will be glad to have this round of chickens butchered. I think it has seemed a daunting task because we had 2 dozen roosters from last spring to butcher along with the meat birds. I don’t think we will even entertain the thought of taking on any straight run chicks again. We ended up with some nice hens. However, there were way more roosters than we wanted to deal with!
Our yard and garden have also been a source of frustration this spring. The rain. Oh, the rain! It just seemed to come and come and come. We would dry out enough to start thinking about gardening and the rain would come again! So the grass kept growing and growing and growing. And we would mow some of it and it would rain some more. And, then, tragedy struck. Our mower quit working. And it rained some more. And the grass grew and it grew and it grew. It grew until you could not tell that we had a yard that is separate from our pasture. And, so after many tries to fix it ourselves, we sent it off to the shop. It will cost around $200 to fix our mower. That is not much when you consider how much it would cost to replace. Our mower is still at the shop. The shop owner is a super good guy and our neighbor. He has given us a nice Dixon mower to use while we are waiting on our own mower to be fixed. Finally, the rains stopped and the yard got mowed. We borrowed another neighbor’s lawn sweep to pick up the grass. Our yard looked like a hayfield that had just been cut. The grass will be used in the garden to keep the weeds down. See how much was picked up.
The girls were also able to plant their flower boxes. Every year I let them pick out 2 flats of assorted flowers. They fill their boxes and whatever is left we stick in here or there. It really brightens things up!
And lastly there is the garden. It had dried out mostly enough to till. Jasmine’s Aaron did that for us while we were butchering some chickens. It was a really cold, damp, windy day but he did it anyway. That boy has a good work ethic.
Finally a week later we were able to get some things planted! Tomatoes, green peppers, radishes, beets, onions and some green beans were put in. Finally some progress!
Yesterday I planted 2 long rows of potatoes. They should have been in the ground 6 weeks ago. I guess better late than never.
We have been enjoying fresh strawberries! This is the first year in quite a few that we have had enough strawberries to make shortcake with. They are just delicious. Store berries just do not compare!
We will also get to enjoy red raspberries and blackberries. There are plenty of blooms on both this year. I also discovered some wild raspberries way back by the creek. I hope to be able to make a batch of jam. The most exciting thing this year is that we planted 3 apple and a pie cherry tree!
I hope that we will have some apples next year and even some cherries. This means we will not have to beg for apples from people who have trees. And Tom loves cherry pie (and apparently so does Aaron). So hopefully we will have enough for a pie or 2 next year.
Our yard and garden are finally coming around. Although it is not ready to have pictures taken for a brochure printing about beautiful yards! We still have plenty to do. There are 2 shade trees and 10 lilac bushes to be planted yet. And some perennials to be moved and some new ones put in. And some digging around some trees and…and…and. Its really never ending.
