Happenings on the farm...

Callie, she loves the small greenhouse and sneaks in every chance she gets. I don't mind as long as she doesn't lay in our plants. You can see a planter we started a month back of salad greens, we have on with kale and mustard mixed together too. Now wishing for tomatoes and peppers, but they are a ways off*wink*

The lambs, they are growing and down to two bottles a day, soon to be one bottle each, then in another week or so they go home. I can say we will miss them and then again we won't*wink* With gardening coming into full swing it will be nice not to have to deal with moving their grazing pen, checking their water or mixing their bottles. Cortney will miss them but she also is growing tired of having to deal with them and they are now getting old enough, they are more independent and don't want to follow her so well.

Addy and Button grazing and enjoying the warm sunshine. If you click on the photo you can see just how HUGE Addy( she's farthest down the pasture) is right now!  As of this morning she has some discharge, which is often a sign that the time is close, YEAH!!!  Her being off her due dates( the people we took her to, to be red didn't watch very close*sigh*) is because we now recalculated and feel the bull must have missed her first heat cycle and instead got her second heat, while together. Her new recalculated due date is this Thursday. She is bagging up and somewhat cranky :o)

The chicks are growing like weeds and have already figured out if they see us, they might be getting a treat!

Our seedlings in the hoop house. At first they were a bit stressed but now are doing very well. We worked on getting one of the raised beds finished( down one side) and have one large on down the center and another small one down the other side to finish. We're running low on cardboard, so Mike is taking pity on us and saving sheets off their pallets of feed for us.  Once we get the seedlings planted I know they'll just take off. The flowers on the 2x4's are my Mom's, she bought them and then we got all that snow and rain, so they've been safe and secure inside here. I think she's planning on planting them today.

Some of the seedlings tomatoes are small, they are our second starts, with hopes of having ripe tomatoes well into end of Oct. Now to get everything planted! 

Cortney cleaned house, helped me in some of the garden beds and flower bed areas, watered our new strawberry and raspberry transplants, planted some sunflowers along the chicken fencing and carried water to Mike and I all weekend. Mike got our pump up and running so we can begin watering trees and our new strawberry and raspberry beds and the lawn/ garden of course, split and stacked firewood and moved  two of our trailers to different locations( more out of the way). I tilled the remainder of the main garden, setting our rows, cleaned out the main raspberry bed, which was overgrown with grass( not letting this happen again*sigh), and got composted manure spread over the area.

If you click the picture you'll see the onions better. I wanted to show our new raised beds we're experimenting with. Why are we doing this, because bindweed is such a nightmare for us. What we're doing is digging down 2 ft, laying in cardboard, overlapping the seam lines, adding fresh bedding and manure and returning the soil dug from the pits mounding it 7-8" thick over the fresh manure. Now the cardboard is to help block the weeds and the fresh manure composts down, releasing heat which warms the soil, as well as burning the weeds. So far so good, just look no weeds, especially no bindweed in the raised beds, yet it's growing in and around the beds. So far we've made four, three in the garden and on in the hoop house. Keep you fingers crossed, we are!

I'll get some photos of the larger raised bed being built in the hoop house and share later this week.

This afternoon we have our friends funeral to attend. I know we need to go, but it certainly isn't going to be easy. :o( 

Blessings to each of you this new week.