The Fall Harvest

This was one of last week's projects over at the farm....

bathing and storing 5009 squash.

Well, OK, maybe that'a a slight exaggeration, but there are certainly enough to last the year.

We've been having frost regularly and everyone is putting the gardens to bed for the winter.  (I can't believe we're already using the "W" word. shudder.) We folded away the plastic mulch...

and installed a brand new pair of rototillers....

They went to work immediately.

They'll have the entire garden worked over in no time.

Nothing like happy, enthusiastic employees.

An Invasive Weed

The darned weeds sure are getting out of hand this year.  There's one in particulare that's growing like crazy and taking over everyrthing...

The Best Weed-Eater

Did you know that donkeys make excellent weed-eaters and gardeners?  Just make sure that the plants you want to keep are of a not-so-tasty-variety and let your donkey do the rest.  Might I suggest Periwinkle and Iris to start with.  We have had good luck with them so far. 

All you need is one of these lovely appendages.  It has proven quite adept at selective weeding... 

My weed-eater never needs any pulling, yanking, coaxing or swearing to get started...

There is no need to stress over whether you have gotten the fuel mixed at the proper ratio...

This weed-eater is quiet, cuddly and never runs out of gas.  

Always ready, willing and eager to get to work, this is the very best weed-eater an overworked gardener could ask for:)

War Of The Weeds

I took some time off last week because I was so convinced that Emma was going to have a baby.  Foolish me.  While no babies made an appearance, I did get some projects done that I have been wanting to do for a while.  It's amazing how much work I can do when I don't have to go to work. 

One of my main projects was fixing the are around my raised garden beds so that I have some slim hope of staying ahead of the weeds, which is a constant battle.  I had the local sawmill bring me a whole dump truck load of pine-bark mulch.  They are a relatively small outfit about ten miles down the road.  I buy most of the lumber I use around here from them.  One of their by-products is this nice mulch that they sell relatively cheap.  I have high hopes it will be a great weapon in my War-of-the-Weeds.  See that weedy mess in the background...the invasion has already begun.... 

This time around, I put black plastic down under the mulch to keep the weeds from coming up through it.  And of course, it all had to be thoroughly inspected....

By several inspectors....

I also used the old, dead round-bale to extend the garden area where I'll put the squash and cukes...the things that like to sprawl out.  That darned round-bale has been sitting there for about 2 years, waiting for the moment when I actually had time to deal with it. 

No babies showed up last week, but I do feel like I made progress in my little farm battle.  Of course, I probably just created the world's greatest mole habitat, but I can only fight on so many fronts at one time.  The moles will have to wait their turn.

I really like this mulch stuff.  It is very satisfying to work with.  It instantly turns a big, weedy mess into a nice, neat garden.  Maybe I should just take up growing mulch.  Sooo much easier than actually growing a garden:) 

Waiting

Still no baby.  Poor Emma, her belly is hanging so low it has changed the way she walks.  It's throwing her off balance and making her stumble.  We'll all be glad when this baby finally shows up. 

We did have some unexpected visitors in the barn today.  The hummingbirds are suddenly attracted to the orange colored light that I hung in the barn as a night light so I can see Emma. This little guy somehow got tangled in a spider web and wound up on the floor in the corner of the barn.  I heard a rattling and was quite surprised to find him.  It never occurred to me that a hummingbird could get stuck in a spider web.  I guess I need to get a feeder hung up....

I don't have any sugar on hand, does anybody know if there is any reason hummingbirds can't eat honey syrup instead of sugar syrup?  It is honey from my own hive so I know there are no chemicals in it and it seems like it would actually be better for them.  I think this guy could use a boost after his ordeal...

I've been spending a lot of time on gardening while I wait for Baby to arrive.  I decided this year that all my garden beds were going to have weed fabric on them.  I tried this on one bed last year and it worked great.  It never needed weeding or watering and was the most productive bed.  It was the only bed that didn't get out of control.

I like gardening and I always have big plans and good intentions, but I can never keep up.  Something always comes up and I get behind.  I end up frustrated and depressed when things inevitably slip out of control.  The garden ceases to be fun or productive and turns instead, into a Weapon-of-Self-Destruction, a constant reminder of failure.   This year, I am trying to make sure everything is manageable with the limited time I am able to devote to it. 

Tanner, however, is not impressed with gardening no matter what I do with them...

To cheer him up and stretch my legs we took a walk around the fields just as the sun was setting, my favorite time of day.  Tanner got to to chase a rabbit and I got some nice shots of this little tree as the sun went down...

Time to tuck Emma in for the night and give her another pep-talk...

Sunny Days

I'm still working on the maternity ward.  I got everything moved out and the girls gave it a very thorough investigation.  I need to get a few more rubber mats to cover the evil stones, but they seem to approve.  It has been so warm that they have actually been hanging out in here now that I have it opened up.  I still don't have the windows put in because I am having trouble finding Plexiglas, turns out that no one wants to sell the stuff around here.  I think I may need to rethink my plan....again.  At the moment, it is OK because it is so unseasonably warm.  The barn is kind of hot because I haven't opened any of the windows yet. I can't quite make myself believe that the bad weather really is over so I have been putting that off, especially now that they can hang out in here where it is shady and breezy. 

Me: "What do you girls think of the new digs?"

Emma: "It's interesting, but you've got a long ways to go before you'll find me living in there.  We're headed out for a nap, you'd better get back to work." 

I've also been working on my garden area.  When I built these beds, I put down weed control fabric with stone on top to make, what I thought would be, maintenance free walkways.  I should have used black plastic because the weeds just took root on top of the fabric and the stone kept me from pulling them up.  I've been taking advantage of the weather to pull the fabric and stone out of there.  I am putting the stone in the muddy areas in front of the barn where it may do some good and I am going to put down black plastic with mulch on top around the garden beds.  It is a real back-buster pulling this stuff up and hauling the stone out on my little sled, but it is getting done.  Wouldn't it be nice if I could use the #@&*! tractor for this job?

They don't really look like instruments of the devil do they, sitting there all polite and seemingly ready to work?....

Don't let those bright, cheery colors fool you though.  They are pure, rotten trouble!  Bad to the bone, or frame or chassis or whatever the bleep it's called!

The Spring Rush

Spring has come on like a freight train this year.  We've never had so much warm weather so early before.  The maple syrup season is already over with, almost before it began.  I am already trying to get the garden ready.  I moved the girls onto the back pasture (where almost nothing useful ever grows) in order to give the main pasture a chance to come in.  I rely on the two front pastures to feed everybody throughout the summer, so they need a good start in the spring.  The mosquitoes and deer ticks are everywhere. 

I have been battling old, decrepit farm machinery all week, trying to get things running.  My equipment is a motley assortment of hand-me-downs and cast-offs.  Everything runs, but not without a great deal of persuasion.  I used up my entire month's worth of swear words this week.  I am seriously thinking about trying to trade-in every piece of junk I have for one implement that will just start when I tell it to without reducing me to fruitless violence and frustration.  Animals make so much more sense to me than machinery.  They are logical, they have feelings, they communicate and tell me what they need and want.  The !#$% !!tractor just sits there, leaking toxic bodily fluids all over the place.      

I forgot to take pictures of anything this week.  Or maybe I just didn't want any evidence to exist of me kicking and swearing at inanimate objects. 

This morning I went out and sat with the girls in the sun for a while and listened to them munch on breakfast.  The two of them together are so peaceful and happy, it is so nice to just hang out with them.  I finally remembered to take some pictures of The Belly.  I think the baby has moved into a lower position.  Emma looks less wide suddenly, but her belly is hanging down much lower.  This usually indicates that the baby is going to show up soon, but I have known some mares to go on this way for weeks, even months.  I sure wish I had a better idea of when this baby is due.  Now would be a good time actually.  The weather is beautiful, Gabe is not around to pester her and I want a baby donkey to play with.  The way these things work however, she'll probably wait till the day Gabe comes home and Mother Nature remembers that Spring usually doesn't show up until May.  Oh well, I'll still be wanting a baby donkey to play with at least.    

The thing about gardening...

Is that there is always next year to look forward to. I always have big garden plans, sometimes too big.  When I bought this land and decided to build a house a couple of years ago I planned for a garden space.  I wanted something that would be easy to maintain and work around so I built raised beds.

The raised beds turned out to be significantly more work then I had thought (isn't everything!).  The biggest problem with raised beds is finding enough soil to fill them.  The soil here is very poor.  It is 80% rock held together by wet, acidic clay. I suppose I could have purchased a truck load of top soil but my budget just couldn't handle buying dirt.  For the past two years, I have been filling in these beds with layers of mulch, horse manure and what soil I could manage to transport from other parts of the property.  I made some feeble attempts to plant a few things in my beds with very poor results.  Not only were my soil building attempts still too raw but, building a house and a barn on my own was so overwhelming that nearly everything else got pushed aside.  The garden most of all.

This past Spring, the soil in my beds actually started to look like soil and I had high hopes.  I planted something in every bed and I did actually get a harvest.  However, I still wasn't able to devote the time it really needs and as a result, my garden got completely out of control this summer. The whole thing turned into a giant morass of  impenetrable weeds.  I finally gave up on it and just let the weeds go until freezing temperatures beat them into submission.  This past week, while we have been enjoying unseasonably nice weather, I finally tackled the garden.  I ruthlessly pulled everything out of each bed, turned the soil and added a cart load of aged manure (which I finally have, thanks to the horses) to each one. 

Gardening is tough, I think that everybody who gardens experiences years where nearly everything goes wrong.  A few years ago the whole area was stricken with blight; we had a year of terrible drought and another of so much rain everything rotted. The thing about gardening though, is that every year you can start over, forgive yourself the mistakes you made last season, think about what you want to do different and start making plans.