A Springtime Tour of the Homestead

It’s Memorial Day, the time of year we tend to declare as the start of summer.  But me?  I’m still trying to enjoy the spring for what it is.  It’s been chaotic and stressful, but beautiful too.  I could bemoan our situation and all that has been happening around here, but I can’t help but to remember the men and women who died serving our country so that I can live this crazy, chaotic, stressful, beautiful life.  We’d like to take a moment to thank all of those brave men and women who have served or are serving our country, to remember those who have fallen in the line of duty, and to thank the families of those who have served throughout history.  We wouldn’t be where we are without your sacrifices.

This spring isn’t what I thought it would be.  I thought we’d have the yard cleaned up and projects completed.  I thought it would be different.  But despite all of the things that have “gone wrong” so far this spring, the changes that are happening are all pushing us in the right direction.  Initially, I had hoped to have more pictures of our garden for you, but I haven’t been able to do as much work in there so far as I would have liked.  And I would have loved to have had pictures of baby or young chicks to share with you, but that’s just currently not in the cards.  Oh well.  Soon enough, I guess!

We spent the first portion of our weekend scraping dirt and moving gravel around the yard.   Have you ever had a project that you needed to work on, but before you could actually work on the project, you needed to fix, clean, or take other steps seemingly unrelated to your project first?  That’s what the gravel/skid steer project was like.  Lots to do before we can work on some of the other stuff with the whole fire situation and the “problems” that presents us with.  We added new gravel to the area of the yard in front of the granary, scraped down the path leading up to the garden shed and added gravel (we were having a lot of problems with run-off and being able to open the door properly at certain times of the year).  The large garden gate was difficult if not impossible to open at times, so we scraped a path leading up to the gate and filled that with gravel as well.  All of the work with the skid steer ended up tearing up the yard and making some ruts, but in the long-run, this will help us have less issues with doors and help make working and driving in our yard much easier.  It also helps define what areas people are allowed to drive on in our yard since many people never seem sure.

Scooping up loads of gravel.

Scott, dumping bucket loads of gravel onto the driveway that leads between the house and barn.

The freshly covered driveway. Our barn is unusually far from the house. Not that we use it anyway since it’s unsafe, but we still drive vehicles through this path quite often.

Scraping out the dirt leading up to the garden shed. Run-off was making it difficult to open the door at times, so we scraped the path clean (revealing the original gravel path).

After adding in new gravel. Now we won’t slip and slid walking into this building when it rains out!

We didn’t exactly add gravel into any new location on the property, only cleaned up and recovered what was originally gravel to begin with.

A new path leading up to the garden should making entering it much easier.

My intention for this weekend was to finish planting the garden and move the chickens again, but once again, it just didn’t go according to my plans.  I’ve started broadforking one of the new beds I’m working to prepare, but I was unable to finish.  Thankfully, we still have some time left before all of this needs to get completed, and we’ll get it done in time.  I’m so grateful we didn’t lose all of our chickens during the fire!  Just a couple more weeks until we get the new chicks.  There’s lots to prepare, so I hope we can stay on top of things!

I haven’t been spending much time with my chickens as of late. My knees have been keeping me from doing much work outdoors, but the kids and Scott have been helping out, and they are always happy to see me 🙂

This area has been covered by a tarp since early March. Most of the grass is dead, and I’ve begun broadforking, and plan to move the chickens over just as soon as possible so they can begin the work on clearing out the rest of this new garden bed.

The peas are growing well, and soon I will be able to start trellising them up our garden fence!  The tomatoes are starting to thrive after their transplanting.  It took a little longer than I would have liked, but with the unseasonably hot weather, they struggled a bit in the heat in those first couple of days after moving.  The lettuce is growing, and before I know it, I’ll be harvesting enough for a salad… so long as it doesn’t stay this hot!  (It will bolt before it’s big enough to harvest if the heat doesn’t back off.)  The red cabbage is doing well, and the radishes are about ready to be thinned.  I’m waiting to transplant my green cabbage. (As I said, things aren’t going according to plan here!)

Ceasar lettuce.

Red Head radish

Lincoln peas

Amish Paste tomatoes

Red storage cabbage

Green storage cabbage

In the basement I have all of my melons, cukes, and some of my pumpkins started.  I’m waiting on a cleared off tray from the cabbage to start another block tray of pumpkin seeds.  (Praying all goes well this week, we should be able to move forward.)  My potato seeds are patiently waiting for me to get planting!  The lavender is doing well, but still growing slowly.  And my pepper plants are in a similar situation.  I’m sure soon enough we’ll be seeing plenty of growth though.  No matter what happens, even if all of our gardening efforts fail for the year, this is by far the most “ahead of the game” I’ve been when it came to planning out a garden.  If nothing else, I will have learned so much for starting our gardens in the future.  But I hope we will actually have a harvest 🙂

Sprouting pumpkin seeds.

Hidicote lavender

Spike lavender

Cucumbers and melon starts

A variety of peppers

Seed potatoes ready for planting.

My biggest “complaint” with not being able to work on any of the gardening stuff is that everything is growing like crazy.  I really can’t complain, except for the fact that I’m struggling keeping the grass at bay.  Long-term, we hope to have more and more perrenial food plants growing around the yard and less lawn, but while we work on making those transitions, the grass is getting out of control!  I guess we should get a goat.  (Don’t tell Scott I said that!)

Can you see all of the green growth on this pear tree? Over 6 inches has been put on in just a couple of weeks!

Can you find the onions? They’re there, but difficult to see. I haven’t been able to stay on top of things, and I’m just hoping the onions have enough of a head start!

The chickens continue to work in the main garden bed until I am ready to move them out.

The flower beds went crazy in just a matter of a month.  I wish I would have taken pictures at the beginning of the month because they went from nearly empty to just itching to bloom.  The blossoms on the fruit trees don’t last long enough, but if they didn’t eventually loose there beautiful petals, we wouldn’t be blessed with the abundance of tasty, juicy fruit that follows.

A beautiful peach iris.

The flower beds are filling out and will soon be filled with color.

The peonies will be open before we know it!

Beautiful apple and plum blossoms. And a little monkey, too!

An apple blossom early last week.

Same apple blossom, just a week later. The petals fade dramatically in that time before wilting and falling to the ground.

Soon enough fruit begins to form.

I was shocked to see how big the cherries got in just a day. The day before this, I did not notice any cherries yet growing!

The “Secret Garden” is beginning to fill out with plants and grasses.  The stream is actually dry again, so it would be a great opportunity to try and dig it out, but it will have to wait.  I’m so glad we have large trees in the yard… plenty of shade and several great trees perfect for having swings in them.

The dried out creek bed. I want to dig it out deeper to help with flooding, but I’m not sure when that will happen.

Behold the magic of the secret garden 🙂

The skid steer left a lot of marks in the yard, some in less than ideal places… like through my strawberry patch…

There’s another little garden area near our house.  The beauty of the front portion of our property lies largely in the abundance of perennial plants, both flowers and food, that came with the house.  With very little work, there is already food growing.  Without having to spend money, we have lush beauty everywhere!  (If only these darn biting flies would go away!)  I love that I can have a garden without needing to do any gardening!

This garden area is probably more “secret” than the secret garden, but it’s considered part of the “forest” by the kids. There are plenty of perennial edibles back here!

A mulberry tree and black raspberry canes grow behind the granary.

The growth is crazy here. One day I can’t see the asparagus, the next it’s already bolted. I feel like I can’t win with this stuff.

The rhubarb has gotten massive, and some has already bolted. We’ll be cutting it down and letting it regrow. And we’ll harvest from the stuff that has yet to bolt.

Another project Scott started to undertake with the skid steer was to create a large pile of debris we have from the barn disassembly project, and he was able to pull down a little entryway at the base of the barn, creating another “doorway” into the bottom of the barn.  He also spent time moving wood chips from our pile of free wood chips, dropping them near the base of our fruit trees.  We’ll start to spread them out soon, but being able to use the bucket of the skid steer saved us a LOT of time.

It’s difficult to tell, but there’s an entrance to the barn that is missing right now, and the wood pile in the foreground has shrunk considerably.

Scott was dumping loads of wood chips in by the different apple trees.

Here’s a load of wood chips that will need to be spread out soon, but it’s a relief to have the chips next to the trees, especially knowing I don’t have to load it all up by hand and haul it to each tree!

As I was doing some easy yard work this week, I discovered at least 3 small mulberry trees throughout the yard that I hope to transplant to the berry patch/pie slice before the year is out.  I am pleased to see that one of our fig trees is actually growing a fig (already a pretty decent size), and that the root stock we purchased this year seems to be alive.  We were concerned it may have dried out, but it looks like it just might be okay!

A sprouted root stock shows us that it is time to cut the stem back, but also that our root stock did not all die (if any actually did die).

Can you spot the fig? I’m still trying to learn more about growing figs, so if you have good information, please, let me know!

A young mulberry tree that I am hoping to transplant into the pie field.

The kids have been enjoying the spring weather.  This weekend has been unseasonably hot.  So much so that we actually turned the air conditioner on.  The kids spent as much time as we would allow sitting on the stairs watching Dad use the skid steer.  And little E sneaks outside every chance he gets.  He never forgets his rain boots though!

Peanut and Doodles couldn’t resist the temptation of coming outside to watch Scott operate the skid steer all evening!

E loves being outside so much, he doesn’t care what he’s wearing.

Our lilacs opened up over the weekend, and I’m hoping that maybe later today I’ll get a chance to make some lilac jelly and lilac syrup.  I have been waiting anxiously all week for the lilacs to open, and now the yard smells absolutely amazing!

I’m always interested in seeing what spring looks like in other parts of the country.  Our trip to New Orleans in fall was really intriguing because it was incredibly different from what we see up here during that time of year.  If you want to check out what the gardens are looking like in another part of the country, you can check out my friend Kathi’s post where she gives you a tour of her spring gardens down in the state of Oklahoma.  In zone 7b, she’s always starting her gardens earlier than I am and harvesting much sooner.  While it is technically still spring, I’m pretty sure she’s already working on her summer garden.  For those of you who may not know what I mean, technically speaking, a gardener may have 3 “gardens” throughout the growing season.  Crops that like cooler weather can be grown in both early spring and late summer for a “fall” garden.  The bulk of the food grown is often considered a summer garden.

I’d love to know what you’ve got growing this year.  Let me know what your favorite thing to grow is each year!  It can be a flower, vegetable, or fruit… it could be livestock too.  I know I’m pretty anxious to start over with chickens!

Love~Danielle