After two unsuccessful years with my garden at the bottom of the hill I am FINALLY seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Last year, for my birthday, my Mom built me a handful of raised beds next to the house on our south-facing lawn that previously went unused.  It is a lovely little spot of land in front of our picture window and overlooking the river and a farm across the road.  After a second year of disappointment in our garden, Kyle and I had decided to move it to its current home to make it easier to water.  At its previous location we would have to string along five or six hoses around the house and down the hill (the previous owner of our house, an elderly woman, would carry watering cans back and forth...amazing).

My dearest Mom is a very handy woman and she quickly built the raised beds along with a small, hinged platform to hide the access for our septic tank.  This spring, Kyle filled the beds starting with some empty grain bags to try to keep weeds at bay, followed by some goat and chicken manure and straw from the barn, and finally soil.  I began planting with just one bed for lettuce and broccoli and a bed for spinach.  The lettuce and broccoli were looking pretty sad the day I put them in the ground.  Even the kid across the street, a sweet boy who spends a lot of time over at our farm, commented that he thought they were going to die.

Luckily they pulled through and even flourished!  I've been up to my ears in romaine and have resorted to feeding it to the goats.  Note to self: no two people need thirty heads of romaine.  Although, I never pull them out of the ground, I just keep cutting them any time I want some salad so they keep growing back.

Unfortunately my spinach didn't do as well.  I think the problem was that I was using seed left over from last year and the packet might have gotten a bit wet before sitting through the winter in our workshop.  So I bought some new seed and replanted, so far that is the least successful plant in the garden which really is frustrating because I love spinach and we eat a lot of it.  I'm still working on it.

Finally a few months ago I got the rest of the garden in.  Acorn squash, summer squash, peas, beans, carrots, mustard greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and celery all went into the ground and have been flourishing ever since.  I had a small problem with some cucumber beetles (not sure why my chickens weren't more on top of that) which ate a few of my acorn squash plants.  But luckily I had planted too many in the raised bed anyway so they really did me a favor, as much as I hate to admit it.

I think one of the main reasons the garden is doing so well this year is that I can look out the windows and see  whats going on.  I can walk around the gardens after or before work and see that things need to be weeded- so I take ten minutes and weed.  Water is easily available; it doesn't even take one hose to reach every bed.  I just can't get over the positive results.  Of course, I still have some maintenance to do: the peas and tomatoes desperately need better supports before much longer, but I think this year really will be the year of successful gardening which just snowballs from here.

Here are some pictures!

This is a photo of our raised beds back in the end of April before any planting began.  The photo was actually to show how high the river was during the big flood we had on the 27th, but the raised beds had a cameo appearance.

Again, another month has flown by in what seems like just one long, deep breath.  I am guilty of wishing away the remains of winter and dreaming daily of the promise of green.  We are lucky in that we have enough exposure that the sun has melted away a good portion of the snow around our house and we've been seeing the beginnings of my *shhhhhh* spring flowers.

Although living in northern Vermont means you have to have quite a bit of patience and a BIG sense of humor.  Sure, the calendar says its spring but we're due to get another Nor'easter this weekend.  Whoever coined the phrase about March with it's lions and lambs surely didn't live in Vermont.  Not that this is much of a surprise, last year there was quite a storm up here on Mothers Day.  You just never know.

Things here on the homestead have been idling since the addition of our daughter.  But plans are always in the backs of our minds and soon enough we'll be jumping into action again.  We are beginning to recognize that although we have the best intentions, sometimes we jump a little too hard with our ideas.  So this year we plan on focusing on the motto: small but successful.  This translates into smaller gardens that we can rely on to AT LEAST provide us with the staples to make Isabel's baby food when she begins solids later this summer/fall.  We're still planning on raising chickens and pigs to feed our family but this year we're planning on three pigs instead of four and a few smaller batches of meat birds instead of one big lot of them that would all need to be processed at about the same time.

We're toying with the idea of stepping back from the dairy goats for now as well.  We'll see how milking goes this spring/summer, but at the present they are relatively expensive pets.

We have some plans for better broiler production.  Last year, we kept them with our laying hens and about half of them jumped the fence into the pigs' pasture, becoming supplemental protein.  This was a major disappointment so this year we're planning on making some inexpensive chicken tractors similar to Joel Salatin's (approximately 10'x12'x2') so we can keep them on the lower pasture where they will get plenty of grass yet still be safe from predators (both domestic and feral).

Speaking of which, we had a major loss last month.  Some unfamiliar dogs paid us a visit and much to our dismay they killed off half of our laying hens.  Then, thanks to the pile of dead chickens that we probably should have just processed and turned into dog food, we attracted a fox and some weasels.  We lost another two or three chickens and are now down to just over a dozen.  To top it all off we have at least one weasel living IN our barn.  We see it every time we go out to feed the goats and the chickens.  Needless to say, we have pulled out the .22 and are going to borrow a livetrap from my brother and sister-in-law.

So, that is where we're at.  I'm going to be pulling out the leftover seeds from last year so we can take stock and see what needs to be purchased for this year.  I'm hoping to get some of our seeds started this weekend. But, in an up coming post I am hoping to detail our plans for food production in a little bit more detail.  Thanks for sticking with me folks!

We recently inherited another ten chickens from our friend who moved a couple weeks ago.  Along with the Buckeye and Barred Rock laying hens were four Buckeye roosters.  As I helped Stu unload them from the back of his truck I was a little nervous; we're on pretty good terms with our neighbors and we'd really prefer to keep it that way.  I stood there at the fence after he left, watching the dynamics of the flock to be sure there wasn't going to be any huge fights, especially with the roosters.  They are still young enough that they haven't developed their spurs so they can't do as much damage.  Things settled down fairly quickly after some dueling here and there with some of the larger Australorp hens and the roosters.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to keep one or two of the roosters so we can replenish our flock, but we'll have to wait and see how noisey they are once they settle in.  It seems like they're doing their job, though, because for the past few days one of the Australorps has been happy to stay in one of the nesting boxes.

The goats are doing well.  Juniper's leg healed fantastically and she's gotten to where she doesn't have a limp and can run and jump just as well as the other two girls.  I feel a small sense of accomplishment with that.  Our attempts at milking Chutney were a bust.  Between her unwillingness to stand still and the small size of her teats due to being a first freshener made it infuriatingly difficult to get much milk.  We've been considering investing in a larger goat that would be easier for us both (especially Kyle since he has larger hands) to milk.  But we'll see how that goes.

The second swarm that stopped by one of our trees left last weekend.  Kyle had just finished building the top bar hive and we placed it under the swarm.  It was getting late in the day and we were both exhausted, so we thought we'd give them the night and the next morning to think about checking out the hive on their own before trying to drop them into the box.  The next morning we awoke and found that they had left.  Our own hive is doing well, though, we're ready to take a few frames out to harvest a bit of honey.  Kyle is hoping it will help with his allergies- the poor guy has been congested for weeks.

Finally, our garden.  I was so excited about the garden this year; I was so determined to make it a success.  Well, my friends, you know the saying about good intentions, right?  Unfortunately we've met some difficulty here as well.  We went down to the garden last week to find something had chewed the stalks of our tomato plants that had been doing so well.  They were lost.  Not only that, the black beans are being systematically attacked by something as well.  They were looking great a few weeks ago, but I checked them one day to find a patch of the bed had been demolished, then a few days later, more plants were gone.  I'm not sure what we'll be left with, but I'm not holding out much hope.

The few plants that appear to be doing amazingly well are our summer squash, carrots, beets, and potatoes.  Of course, its hard to say what is going on underneath the potato plants, but I can only hope they are doing well.  Hopefully we'll have enough to save for seed potatos for next year.  Seeing our difficulty with this garden for the second year in a row, we've decided to re-evaluate our garden plans.  Being such non-green-thumbs, why did we decide to take on such a large plot?  Well, because it is there and we were determined to make it work.  Under other circumstances, perhaps if we didn't have the goats, chickens, house renovations, full time jobs, and a multitude of other things, we could have pushed through and made our garden a success.  But, we're too new at this and it was just unrealistic for us.

So, next year we're going to do a smaller garden.  Smaller, but happier.  We're considering moving it up to be right next to the house, on our small, south-facing lawn.  There, not only would it be potentially safer from critters (because the dogs are up there more often), but it is closer to the spigot so we don't have to drag five hoses all the way down the hill and back to water it when necessary.  But my favorite reason for moving it is that we'd be able to see it easily from our picture window.  When things are ripe we'll know sooner so we can grab them and we'd be more apt to weed more often if we see it every day.  So we'll start small and once we get the hang of that, we'll add another bed or two, and so on until we get to where we want to be.

So thats the plan my friends.  Just because things aren't going well doesn't mean we throw in the towel, we take a step back and see what we're doing wrong and what we can do to improve.  We'll get there.  Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  It takes time.  We'll get there.

What the heck happened to the first half of July!?  We're in the final two weeks of this month and we're getting perilously close to August, the month of school supplies and talk of fall.  Thinking back to what we've done so far this summer, I'm a little sad to say that we've only been out in the kayaks a handful of times, hiked even less, and have yet to pull my bikes out of the work shop.  It always amazes me how quickly time flies, and yes, I'll agree that it gets faster with each year.

But, fall is a great time of year in Vermont.  At least until stick season when everything just looks too bare for comfort.  So there is still plenty of time to get out in those boats, and on the trails, and maybe even wear down some tires as well.  Winter seems to take its time getting here, it hangs on for sure, but real snow fall doesn't show its face usually until January.  Sure it'll be freezing and bitter, and I'll long for Spring to come, but this year we'll have our woodstove.  There's nothing quite like the dry heat that radiates from the belly of a cast iron and hearthstone beast, and I'll smile at its flickering glow each night.

But lets not get to ahead of ourselves, right?  After all, summer is barely a month old now and I'm certainly not showing it the door.  Over the weekend we harvested some lovely little beets and planted a new crop of peas, carrots, and salad greens.  The garden hadn't been touched in (dare I say it?) at least a month and a half and lets just say it didn't look like much of a garden.  My Mom came down to help give me a boost and we tackled it all amazingly enough, and not too soon either because the next day it rained.  The garden is looking lovely again.

The bees have been enoying their 'front porch', as Kyle calls it, lately with all this heat.  Most days when I come home from work there are a fair few out on the front of the hive, cooling off.  I need to get in there and check on the honey stores and the brood to be sure all is well.  Its just so hard to 'suit up' with the sweltering heat, hopefully now with the temperatures regulating again I'll be able to bring myself to get out there.

Things around the farm have been going well.  The absence of the pigs has been felt mostly during feeding time, when the familiar sounds of oinks, grunts, and squeels are decidedly absent.  Juniper's leg has been healing over the past few weeks in her splint.  I'm going to take it off this weekend and see how she does walking without it.  We may set up Ollie's old dog crate for her to stay in to keep the other girls from jostling her around too much during the first couple days.  And of course, the chickens are doing well, they come and go as they please and lately have been spending the early morning hanging out in front of our porch hoping for an early breakfast.  One was at the front door this morning, clucking at me through an open window.

Last night I took some down time in our hammock, with Juniper and Poppy on my lap, while Kyle brought the bigger girls down the rock face to the taller brush in our lower field.  There was something so calming about swaying under the canopies of three giant maple trees with two tiny ruminants chewing their cud, their eyes barely staying open.  Sometimes it dawns on me what my life has come to mean and I am humbled by it.

Last week we were fully into June and our garden had yet to be planted besides a few cold weather plants here and there.  The major road block was that we hadn't touched our garden beds in weeks and the weeds took up residence with a vengance.  All our lovely rye grass and crimson clover that I planted last fall as a cover crop really burst into life and the beds looked more wild than ever.  As it was a little late in the game to try to cut all this into the soil we decided to just weed it all out and feed it to the pigs.  Oh yes, they loved that rye grass.  They squeeked and grunted as they picked through the piles of grass, finding the best pieces- pigs never save the best for last.

My family took pity on us and our lack of enthusiasm to get the garden in and they came over to help weed and plant.  We managed to get all the weeding finished and our potatos planted before the black flies forced us to retreat back to our porch for a bbq dinner.  Sometimes you just need a little help, ya know?

This past weekend the weather decided to take a break from the rain so Kyle and I decided it was time we finished this project up.  I planted the rest of our seeds while Kyle transplated the rest of the tomatos and peppers that were ready to go.  We still have a good deal of tomato and sweet pepper plants that have been started but just are still too small to move outside I think, they can wait.  I planted the dry black beans, sweet corn, summer squash, spinach, broccoli, bush beans, and our started celery plants.  I'm going to plant another round of carrots soon, once the rain lets up again.

So our garden is officially in.  Of course I still need to get our sunflowers and pumpkins planted, but those are just for fun.  Now its just a matter of getting weeding into my daily routine so we don't let it get out of hand again.

On another note, May is due to kid this weekend, give or take a few days.  Her udder is still small, but she has time.  I think she's just got a single kid in there as she is just so narrow still.  I'm hoping for a buck.  Chutney's doelings are growing strong and Poppy runs up to me each time I go out to the barn.  We ordered our disbudding iron last week so I'm hoping we'll see it soon, their horns are growing and with all the neighbors and small children that we have stopping by to check out our farm we don't want to risk it.

Sorry I've been a little sporatic in my blog posts lately, things have just been super hectic at home the past few weeks and my laptop has officially kicked the bucket.  Kyle and I had to finish up our guest room (YES, it really is finished!!) before my father and step-mom came up for the holiday weekend.  We also had to clean up the house (which ended up taking way more time than I really thought it would) and semi-finish the upstairs bathroom.  On top of all this we, of course, have been working on barn stuff.  Kyle made me a milking stand a week ago which I took out for a test run with Chutney a couple days. 

I was planning on starting the bottle-feeding this past weekend, my hope had been that I'd milk a little bit every day up until then just for us to get the hang of it before we really got serious.  But unfortunately, I haven't been feeling well and trudging out to the barn twice a day to fight with a goat and her teats wasn't high on my priority list.  So I'm hoping to give it another go soon because the kids are getting pretty skittish.

Our pigs are growing fast.  Bricktop is definitely still the biggest out of the four boys but the other three really aren't that far behind.  Kyle and I are pretty sure we'll be able to have them all processed before fall, which would be great.  They haven't eaten any other chickens, as far as I have been able to tell, and I hope that our barracade that we created around the dividing gate will continue to be successful.

Speaking of chickens, our second experience of the Cornish crosses is nearing its end.  Our fifty (or so) meat birds are amazing.  Last year when we raised these birds it was too late to put them outside because the weather had turned too cold.  This year they've had free range of the pasture and all the tall grasses.  We started only feeding them for a short time in the morning, forcing them to forage for the rest of the day.  I am always amazed about how healthy they seem compared to our first batch.  These birds are active.  The most common thing you hear about this kind of bird is that they have heart and leg problems, they really can only walk from the feed dish to the water dish, and the rest of the time they have to sit down because of their massive weight.  We experienced exactly this last year and it caused us to think we'd never raise these birds again.  But what a difference a diet can make.  I'll be posting some pictures when I get a chance.

I really do have a bunch to catch you up on- I really would love to show you some before and afters of our guest room and bathroom.  Oh, and we started our garden a few weeks ago, still have a lot to plant, but we've got a beginning at least.  May is due in a few weeks, she started making her udder a week ago.  So much has been going on I can barely remember it all!  Please bear with me, friends, life has really been getting in the way of my blogging but I hope to make a full comeback soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Melissa

Alrighty folks.  I'm sick of waiting, so I'm getting to it.  We're getting the garden ready.

Before I can start planting we need to be sure our beds are ready.  Last year we did the narrow rows as is so often seen in vegetable gardens, but they didn't do well at all.  Now, as I said before, I'm no green thumb gardener so I can't blame it entirely on the width of the rows but I'm sure it didn't help.  So this year we're trying out the methods in Ed Smith's Vegetable Gardener's Bible with the wide rows and raised/deep beds.  Personally, when I think of raised beds I always envision lovely little wooden boxes filled with a garden.  Well, we're too cheap to buy wood for our raised beds so we're going to just pile up the soil and call it good.

Kyle and I roped off the sections that we designated as the beds and began shoveling the soil out of the areas left as walkways.  The soil displaced from the walkways should help raise the soil level in the beds a bit.  Each bed is three feet wide by fifteen feet long.  The walkways are only about a foot wide.  In the end we were able to create 14 beds, and we're planning on doing one more, long bed along the length of our plot where we're going to grow peas, dry beans, and corn in hopes (fingers crossed) that they'll help to act as a bit of a windbreak for the rest of the garden.

After all the beds are created I'll go through each one with a garden fork to aerate the soil a bit.  This is the non-tilling option that is supposed to be much more soil-friendly.  I'm excited, once these beds are created we could just leave them for the long haul, each year adding more organic matter and compost to enrich the soil.  As for the walkways, I'm planning on laying down a few layers of newspaper and then covering them in a bit of straw to block out weeds.

Now if only I had a broadfork...

Hey all!

I have been getting increasingly 'itchy' about the garden.  I'm ready to plant something in the ground.  I've been holding back on creating the raised beds until the ground dries up a bit more, but I think this week I'll tackle it.  In a couple weeks I'm going to sow our pea seeds.  Our tomato plants that we started inside a while back are doing so great and they smell soooooo good.  They've got nice, thick stems and great big leaves, and lots of them.  They spent their first day outside on Saturday, not much of a change from their window seat as it was easily in the upper 80's, but the little breeze was something new.


After everyone was situated in their new pots and watered and sitting in some warm sunshine on our front porch, I started the next batch of seeds; celery and two more varieties of tomato (Amish Paste and Brandywine).  We've only got two small trays and one larger tray for seed starting so there isn't much, but a little bit of everything.  Hopefully this way we will stagger all the harvest dates so we'll be in veggies all summer! 

I get a little impatient, though, when it comes to seed starting; mostly because I want to start everything (and I DID last year, which didn't work out at all) but there's no point in starting most seeds because they do fine in slightly cooler soil to germinate.  I just want to see our garden in full swing...and now.  But spring is a waiting game, and anyone in my family can tell you that I get a little competitive.

So, I'll sit, and wait, and stare at our little seedlings and the cells where seeds have yet to sprout.  I'll monitor the garden, get the beds ready, and wish I wasn't too cheap to buy black plastic covers to heat the soil faster.  Tonight, though, I will plan the garden.  I'm getting my seed packets and notes on good companions/bad companions together and I'm going to draw up the plan for the year.  I haven't been this excited to garden in....well I'm not sure I've ever been this excited to garden.  Its the start of a new chapter in our homesteading life, a little hard work and we could save ourselves some serious cash at the grocery store each month that we don't have to buy vegetables.  Not to mention the fact that we'll know for sure our dinner doesn't contain any 'frankenfoods' or scary chemicals.  Oh yes, I am excited.

Hey folks!

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was off on a business trip to Texas/Mexico for the week.  But, happily, I am back home and seriously happy that I missed out on the snow that stopped by our house while I was away.  We are getting a head-start on the 'April showers' here and I'm just hoping that our spring flowers, that really got going over the past month, are going to tolerate the weather alright.  Here's a quick update on the farm happenings:

I got an email from our hatchery last week that our order of chicks will be shipping out on the 31st, this Wednesday.  So we'll have eighty chicks peeping away come the end of the week.  I'm definitely looking forward to their arrival but its always a little difficult when we work full-time jobs as well.  I work from 7-3:30 so we get the call from the post office right as I'm getting to work- so Kyle will, most likely, have to deal with them himself.  This isn't usually too bad, but when there are so many and you have to dip all their beaks in water to teach them to drink, it takes some time.

Our bees will be ready for pick up in two weeks- April 12th.  I'm excited to get that new aspect of the farm going.  I'm hoping that they'll thrive and not have any health problems like we've been seeing all over.  Nothing to do but wait and see I suppose.

I swear the pigs have doubled in size since we bought them.  Brick Top is still the biggest and the BOSS over the other boys, Freddy has become quite friendly and I think Kyle and I are going to have an extra-difficult time sending him off to the butcher when his time comes.  We're really excited about the landscaping they've been doing in their pasture and we're looking forward to sectioning it off so we can plant some quick-growing vegetables for them for later this spring/summer.  Their tilling speed and power have really got us planning away at future gardening endeavors on the rest of our land.  Eventually we're going to start fencing off the rest of the land so we can do rotational grazing/gardening a little easier in the future.

Finally, the goats are still working away at growing their babies.  May is finally starting to look a little rounder in the mid-section, so I'm feeling fairly confident that her 'date' was successful.  Chutney is so big I can't even pick her up anymore without fear of throwing out my back.  And she's actually started making her udder.  It is measly right now, but I suppose that is to be expected as she doesn't need it for another month and a half.  I'm sure in the weeks to come she'll really kick it into high gear.  Her mother is still milking after giving birth to Chutney, so I'm confident about her dairy genes.

Exciting stuff.

I am so excited about our seedlings this year.  Last year's tomato plants were tall and spindly and didn't even last a day after I transplanted them outside into the garden.  Using techniques I've learned through The Vegetable Gardener's Bible our tomato seedlings are thriving.  They look so happy in their little containers, I can barely contain my excitement (please pardon the pun)!  Soon we'll be needing to move them into yet another container so they can have more room to spread out.

Transplanting left and right normally isn't my thing.  I know its important to have plants in big enough containers, but we rarely have enough pots to go around.  This year we're reducing the amount of juice and milk containers we send to the recycling center by using those as our planters.  We just cut the tapered tops off, leaving a decent-size vessel that we can fit either three seedlings initially, or one for the second transplanting.

The tomatos we're growing currently are "paste tomatoes"- so they boil down into sauces and pastes much quicker than other tomatoes that have a lot more liquid in them.  We're planning on growing regular tomatoes as well, so we will have our own canned, diced tomatoes and whatnot for soups, chilis, etc later in the year.  But I thought these would be a good start.

I just transplated our hot peppers on Wednesday as well.  They are still fairly small, but they take longer to germinate compared to the tomatoes (which seemed to sprout after only a couple days) so I'm not too concerned.  Last year the hot peppers that we started failed miserably...but I'm sick of buying chili powder so I'm determined to get a good pepper crop so I can dry and grind up my own.

Once all of the tomatoes, peppers, and various herbs had been successfully transplanted to their new 'pots' I started the next round of peppers and tomatoes (and rosemary).  Although it doesn't seem like alot right now, so we're going to order another couple seed packets of tomatoes to be sure we have enough (hopefully) to keep us covered until next year's crop comes in.

After realizing that we have 1000 square feet of garden the other night I've been kind of cutting loose with my ordering plans.  I added black beans and kidney beans into my shopping cart so hopefully we won't have to buy those this winter either.  I also ordered 12.5 pounds of seed potatos from Fedco today, who came highly recommended from a friend of ours.  I got a combination of storage potatos- and knowing how many potatos we eat I sincerely hope this will provide enough for us.

We'll order the rest of our seeds from High Mowing Seeds, I've got my shopping cart all filled, all I need to do is check with Kyle to be sure he doesn't want some strange something-or-other that I hadn't thought of.

It was yet another GORGEOUS weekend!  Sunny and relatively warm in the low 40's.  On Saturday, Kyle and I spent the entire day outside trying to get some chores done.  We had a big pile of lath that had been buried under snow after our guest bedroom renovation last fall and, since the snow had receded, we were sick of looking at an ugly pile of wood in our front yard. 

After we cleared all the wood, I started raking up old leaves around the house that the girls had decided they didn't like.  After a little bit of raking and ripping up old, dead grass, I found a small city of spring flowers popping up in the gardens surrounding the house.  Spring has officially arrived at the Senesac Family Homestead!!  VICTORY!!!  I did my little happy dance and threw all the leaves and dried grass over the mud pit going out to the barn in hopes that it would prevent me from slipping and falling on my rear end in weeks to come.

Lawn work hadn't really been on our agenda for the day.  Really we were just planning on cleaning up the lath and running the electric fence for the pigs' pasture.  But once I saw how nice the house looked without the dead stuff cozying-up to it I decided to keep going.  Kyle and I raked leaves and broke down dead shoots from last year's flowers, throwing all the goodies either over the mud pit I mentioned earlier or right into the pigs' pasture.  We did bring a couple armloads of dried leaves over to the girls, who had retreated to their window seat for a nap after spending the morning on their outdoor platform.

It was glorious working outside without jackets and hats to keep us warm.  The sun was shining down on us as we toiled away in our flower gardens for the first time.  Last year we were too preoccupied with home renovations in compliance with the requirments of our home loan to have any fun come spring.  We had hastily planted a garden and promptly went on to other projects: primarily getting ready for our wedding.  That was the extent of our gardening. 

Of course, now, having seen all the bulbs that are sprouting I can say with confidence that we have WAY too many flowers in our flower beds.  The poor crocuses, tulips, and lilies have been multiplying for years and have become a little cramped.  I think its too late to 'divide and conquer' this year, but now I know the situation and will put it on my gardening 'To Do' list for this fall.

At this point we've only got a little more snow left in our yard, which I am seriously considering spreading out so it melts a little faster....

Ok, I just can't stand it anymore.  I mean, I love winter, the snow is gorgeous, it helps keep the house warmer, and it's fun.  But seriously, I can't stand the cold anymore.  Kyle's truck has died and we've spent too much time freezing in the sub-zero wind gusts trying to figure out why (more than likely something related to the cold).  We've lost too many eggs to the frigid temperatures and I'm sick of having to supplement feed with so much grain.  Our kids need grass.  I am ready for Spring!!!!!! 

I know today is Groundhog Day...and Phil has officially proclaimed six more weeks of winter...but I've got a news flash: I DON'T CARE!!  Mwah ha haaa (maniacal laugh inserted here)!   Spring never comes early up here so even if he had forecast an early spring, it wouldn't apply to us folks up here in Northern VT anyways.  Best case scenario: we won't really see Spring until May, we need get through mud-season first.  Regardless, I'm determined to hurry this season along.  It was a welcomed guest, but its time to show it the door.

This past weekend, Kyle and I made a run to Gardener's Supply Company, an awesome, employee-owned, local gardening supply store.  We thought we'd grab some house plants (they're having a sale: buy two, get one free) and while we were there we picked up a handful of seed packets to start inside the house.  I was planning on just doing one big order on High Mowing Seeds website, but I just couldn't wait any longer.  I'll order the rest of our seeds online, probably later this month, but I wanted something in-hand to start right off.  We came home with paste tomatoes, Ring-of-Fire hot peppers, basil, parsley, rosemary, and lavender.  We also grabbed some Provider bush beans, Chamomile and Echinacea that we'll start later next month.

I'm planning the garden alot more than I did last year.  I'm reading more about companion planting and non-tilling, non-weeding options.  The garden was the biggest disappointment of last year.  I make no claims that I am a good gardener- I'm actually pretty terrible at it.  I'm more interested in animal husbandry and I think it shows: my livestock is thriving.  But it also shows in the garden: it's always overrun by weeds and I don't harvest what little there is to harvest in time so some things end up going to seed (which I don't realize until things start sprouting after we've turned everything under for the year).

We've also spent quite a bit of time working on our pig shelter.  Its relatively large, too big really for the size the pigs will be when we buy them.  So unless we really pack it with mulch hay these little piggies will probably spend the first month or two in the barn where it will be a little warmer.  We're planning on picking up the new additions to the farm this Saturday.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I know they're going to be meat for our table, but until then they can till our garden and enjoy the dappled sunshine in the little grove behind our house.  They will be happy, which makes me happy.

This is going to be a big, busy year.  It will be the first time keeping bees and raising turkeys and pigs.  It will be the first time our goats will kid, so it will be the first time bottle-feeding babies and milking goats.  I've worked at a dairy before, so I've done the twice-a-day milking, but never in conjunction with raising so many other animals, gardening, and beekeeping.  And of course, on top of that we're still renovating our house and working full time jobs.

Do I feel overwelmed?  Nope.  Well, not yet, give it some time.  Spring is rejuvenating after waking up from a long winter slumber.  I'm ready to wake up.  How about you?

Yeah I know.  We're solidly within the Winter months here in Northern Vermont.  We're looking at subzero temps again this weekend- at night at least.  I haven't been getting out to enjoy the snow enough so I've been wishing it away.  I just keep thinking about Spring plans and I'm ready to get started.

I can't even start our seeds until March (even that is a little optimistic).  Not that I've bought them yet (you know if I did they would be planted by now).  I've got my shopping cart at High Mowing Seeds saved so when I'm ready to order I can just click the checkout button and we're gold.  I've got a nice selection of everything from peas and beans, to onions, potatos, sweet and hot peppers, carrots and celery, spinach and salad greens to name a few.  The more I think about them the more I want to just click that 'checkout' button.

The other thing I'm itching to get going on is our poultry order.  We decided that we're going to get another lot of cornish x rock broilers this Spring so they'll be ready for slaughter early in Summer, then we'll probably get another bunch later in the Summer for slaughter in the Fall.

We're going to get another dozen egg layers, Silver Laced Wynadottes, I think.  I know, its just two of us and you're probably wondering what we're doing with almost a dozen eggs a day as it is.  Well, for your information, we've been selling around four dozen eggs a week, and I'm pretty sure we could sell more if we had enough to get rid of.  Not to mention that I've been looking forward to freezing some quiche's but haven't been able to because we're selling the main ingredient.  And I don't have enough eggs to eat for breakfast every day- only enough for the weekends.  This isn't much of a problem as I don't normally have time to eat before I leave for work (I typically take some fruit and cottage cheese for a later lunch at work) but I wouldn't mind having the option.

Also on the poultry order will be the turkeys.  We haven't decided yet how many we'll get, and we haven't settled on a breed, but they're in our radar.  I really want to go with the Royal Palm turkey but Kyle would rather have the standard Large White turkey...you know, the kind that won't even fit in your roasting pan with the cover on...yeah that one. 

My thing with the Royal Palm turkeys is that they're a heritage breed, not a commercial one, so they're better foragers and wouldn't require as much commercial feed.  Although, I guess they are a little smaller than most other heritage breed turkeys...so maybe we could compromise a little.  I just love those black and white markings.  Anywho. 

So the plan is to place our poultry order in March (or February and request a later ship date) so by the time these little guys and gals are feathered in a bit we'll be able to stick them outside as much as possible.  The sooner we can get them living outside and fending for themselves the better.  I do love a good grass-fed egg/chicken/turkey.

The last thing that is on the radar is our start into pork production.  We decided it was time we really start getting serious about this whole "self sufficient" thing.  So, we'll be buying a handful of piglets as soon as we can construct housing for them, and erect some sturdy fencing.  The plan is to keep them in a little grove near the house where they can dig up the ground all they want.  Once the little piggies are gone we're going to convert the space into a future buck pen so we can have our goat breeding done on site.  Unless we decide to get a breeding pair of pigs so we don't have to keep buying piglets year after year...which really would make more sense.  Either way- I'm going to insist on heritage breeds for the pigs, for sure.

So that is our plan for this spring.  Until then I'll just have to keep watching it snow...rushing out to the barn to collect eggs before they freeze, planning sledding parties, and drinking obscene quantities of hot chocolate, trying to make the best of it.  Because, lets be honest, as soon as the summer heat hits we'll be thinking back to these frigid days and long for the crisp, cool air once more.

Fall is the very best time to buy trees.  Not only is the weather alot easier on the newly-planted, but most nurseries have amazing deals to try to clear out as much as possible to make room for next year's inventory.  So Sunday we took a drive to Elmore Roots Nursery who was advertising $20 trees and $10 shrubs.  These guys have been around for 30 years and trust me, if it can grow in Elmore its got to be hearty.

We packed the fifteen trees and three grape vines into the back of the pickup, covered them with a tarp, and headed to Stowe for an early birthday party for my friend, Ali.  Kyle and I planned a vacation day for Monday so we carved pumpkins, ate and laughed the night away with good friends.

We woke up on Monday to a clear sky.  After bringing the dogs and Elvis to their appointment with the vet we grabbed some breakfast sandwiches at DJ's and headed home.  By now the sun was high up in the sky and we set to work.

First we had to decide where exactly we wanted to plant our trees.  They would take up a considerable amount of space, needing about 25' between them, but we didn't want to take up potential grazing or garden space.  It was a debate between a nice little hillside behind the house where there are currently three birch trees and a beach tree in residence that faces west, or the flat section near the road that faces south.  It was a long debate but in the end we decided not to choose either spots. 

Instead we looked to the front yard where there is plenty of grass but unsuitable for grazing or gardening.  Not only would this be a beautiful spot for an orchard, it would also provide some great privacy from the neighbor across the road and people driving by.  And I love the idea of sitting on our front porch someday, enjoying the beauty of apple and pear trees in bloom.  While we debated on the layout of the apple orchard we planted the lone cherry tree (self-pollinating according to the orchard) in the front-right yard which gets some great southern sun exposure.

We set out the eleven apple and three pear trees and began placing them along our yard, twenty-five feet apart.  Kyle dug the holes and filled them with a bit of mineral mix, then I'd give them a big drink of water laced with some seaweed juice (highly recommended by the orchard) after we planted each tree.  It took some time, my hands were solidly brown from the soil which is always a good thing, and when we were finished we stepped back to enjoy our new landscape.

I painted all the trees with some special tree paint to protect them from sun and wind damage and we even clipped on some garlic-oil deer repellent to each tree.  I liked the end result- each tree was more visible with the white paint- at least Kyle will see them and not hit them with the lawn tractor.  Someday these trees will become a beatiful orchard and we'll cover their branches with white lights for Christmas and in the summer we'll have birds nesting in their branches.  But those days are far away, when our future-children are grown.  I like that; good things take time.

Due to the serious lack of attention to our garden this past spring/summer we have been really packing it full of green manure which is great for the soil...but not so great for our pantry. We're determined to focus more on the garden next year.  With the "major" things with the house being done and our wedding over I think it should be pretty feasible.  So, while I daydream about garden plans for NEXT year I've been working on my sad excuse for a garden this year.

Probably about a month ago we roto-tilled the garden to get rid of the grass that had started growing and to plow under the beans and peas that had gone by (as well as some that had apparently gone to seed...found that out a couple weeks ago).  I'm not really a fan of roto-tilling...but I didn't want to lose our plot in a sea of grass so I let Kyle take a pass with his father's tractor.  But of course, as with many of the men I know, once just isn't enough- so next thing I know he is going back and forth, side to side, back and forth again, until all the soil had been deep-tilled to his heart's content. 

So I'm staring at this bare patch of soil and thinking "this just isn't good".  I know deep-tilling is bad for soil so I started thinking about what to do at this point.  I remembered I had a couple bags of fertilizer my Mom had given us earlier this year, perhaps I could turn that into the soild and cover it with old straw bedding from the barn.  Maybe I ought to nix the fertilizer but cover it with straw.  Should I just leave it and let it do it's own thing?  Loaded down with a too-many-options position, I decided to wait and give it some thought.  A few days later we received our new edition of Mother Earth News and they completely read my mind and came to our rescue!  They had an article in there about cover crops we decided to give it a go. 

I had never (intentionally) planted a cover crop before but had heard plenty of information about how super-wonderful it is for your garden, so I got in winter-cover-crop-mode.  As most of the local stores in our area only carry seeds for flowers or veggies I went online where I could get larger quantities of seeds for our moderately sized garden.  Johnny's Selected Seeds had a specific area for seeds in this category and happily ordered winter rye, crimson clover, and hairey vetch.  When it arrived in the mail a few days later I happily skipped down to the garden and started scattering.  I went a little heavy with the winter rye on one end, thinking that the bag of seeds would be never-ending, so they're mostly consolidated on one end with the hairey vetch and crimson clover taking up the rest.

With all the rain and lack of sun we've been going through lately I wasn't sure how they'd be faring, but much to my delight I went down to check them out last week and the winter rye is dutifully plugging along.  Thats the only one I'm really sure about...mostly due to how heavily I seeded that one end.  I'm not really sure which is what for the clover and the vetch, but who cares right!?  I'm not going to weed it!!  I'm just going to let it do its thing all winter until next spring when we turn it all under.  How low-maintenance can you get!?  I'm definitely looking forward to seeing something growing down there again (next year I fully intend on growing winter veggies...but one thing at a time).