A Farm Update

Howdy, all! It's been a while, so we figured it was time for another farm update. Over the past few months, we've made progress here on our little family farm. One of the biggest accomplishments was assembling the greenhouse. 

We bought our greenhouse kit from Costco over the winter. Paul then assembled the walls in the Corral, which you may recall is the bonus family room in our house. It's a room in the house that we can close off and use for special things like that. Anyway, we needed to clean out that room for a guest who will be coming in a few weeks, which motivated us to finally assemble the greenhouse outside. It meant leveling the ground, which was a project in and of itself.

The project is finally done, though, and of course, I've already filled the inside with plants and seeds in pots.

We still need to cover the floor with gravel and install a few wooden benches, but placing the pots on the ground works for now. I'm so proud of Paul's accomplishment. It was a lot of work to get this put together, and it looks great. It's something we've needed here for a long time.

The garden is starting to look a little better. It got overgrown last year, so I'm still trying to clean it up. 

While some areas of the garden look nice, other areas have a lot of weeds. Rather than get overwhelmed, I just pace myself and try not to worry about it. The garden gives us an abundance to eat, which is the main focus. Plus, we enjoy spending time out there. I especially love seeing the wide variety of birds, along with the snakes (eek!), butterflies, bees, and other creatures that call the garden their home. I've been keeping the frog habitat moist, and put in a few small dishes of water for them, but so far, there are no frogs. The bees have been enjoying the water, though. And the gardener snakes have returned. I have to admit, I really like the snakes. I shriek every time I see them, but then I admire them from a distance. They eat voles and other pests, so they are good to have in the garden.

Onions, garlic, leeks, and chives grow exceptionally well here. I always have an abundance of those. The same is true with Swiss chard, spinach, kale, and parsley. I don't think I'll ever need to reseed those plants; they just keep returning year after year. So, when May comes around, my garden is already quite full of all these plants that reseed themselves. Then there are the perennials that are in the garden, like rhubarb, sage, thyme, asparagus, horseradish, strawberries, currants, and so forth - they also begin producing each spring again. 

Below are the artichokes (the big plants with the spiky leaves). Artichokes grow for two years and then tend to die off. These are from last year, so they should be huge this year and give an abundance.

The rhubarb is flowering, see below. I managed to can several jars of rhubarb pie filling and jam before the flowers appeared. I also have some rhubarb in the freezer.

There's still a lot of work to do in the garden. I managed to get a gigantic rock stuck between the blades of the rototiller, so I wasn't able to finish tilling up the end of the garden, which has gotten completely overgrown.

Paul is always having to fix something that I've managed to break around here. Poor guy.

Up near the house, the irises are in full bloom. They are blooming a few weeks early this year because it's been so warm.

In other news, we've been enjoying doing crafts with Eliza and Mac. First, we painted rocked. There were no rules...just grab a big, flat rock and paint it. Look at how creative and lovely they all turned out.

Paul and I put our rocks by the front door.

For the second craft, Eliza, Mac, and I painted bird houses. 

I hung my birdhouse in our apple tree.

In other news, Eliza is doing great with school; she's attending college, and her focus is multimedia communications. We're so proud of her, and we've really enjoyed seeing some of the projects she's worked on. 

The kitties were also too cute to pass by without taking a photo. Below is Baby Kitty and Loki.

Here is Gizmo the Great.

And last but not least is Gray Guy. 

Gray Guy is about 14 years old and has developed hyperthyroidism. He takes medication every day and can no longer eat dry food (he now gets canned cat food), but he's doing pretty well. 

Hope things are going well with you, and that you are enjoying this spring.