Two Years, and healthy greens.

First things first, today is the second anniversary of our wedding. It's been a tough couple years, but our partnership is only stronger than it began, and I'm glad for it. Something that may not come across all the time is just how much the Lady of the House does for the homestead, and in terms of thinking and planning. Her beautiful work on her herb garden has done a lot for the beauty of our house, and in terms of what we will have available for cooking.

Really though, I feel fortunate to be with her as whether homesteading or otherwise, she enriches every aspect of my life.

On to the rest of the homestead, and day to day things. The weather has been so crazy this year I actually couldn't keep up with using the sickle and feeding the rabbits. This year I mowed the lawn. I'm not against a mowed lawn, it's just that with rabbits I like supplementing their food with grass and edible weeds as much as possible, it helps our feed bill and their gut health both. That said, the Lady of the House and I found that having a mowed lawn really is more appealing, and with the Critter roving around more we're probably going to be keeping the grass cut short regularly, and just cutting for the rabbits from further out. Shorter grass is a bit safer when having small people around, especially in relation to the fact that there are ticks, and we want to avoid having the Critter get Lyme disease if at all possible.

Other things that happened this weekend other than having a relaxing bonfire day with folks was getting squash in the ground. The Lady of the House purchased starts from Crabapple Farm, and this weekend I cleared out a couple of beds, planted the squash, and moved the squash trellises over to where the squash have been planted. We've mostly stopped doing squash starts and instead buy them. Squash don't really like being transplanted very much, and can be very sensitive to environment changes from being grown indoors under lights and then moved outside, even with hardening. Crabapple Farm starts their squash in greenhouses which gives them a lot less of a shock when moving outside, and their starts have never been problematic for us, and ease of growing is nice.

Obviously starting seeds inside is great for things that we have space for and really want to do a lot of like peppers, tomatoes, and the like. Things like squash that are a little more sensitive buying from a professional is a great option. Cost wise we got 6 starts for $15. Given the prices of squash if we get 15 squash we're doing fine, and since we're likely to get many more than that I think we're going to more than get our moneys worth on it. Even with the work of maintaining the squash. The one thing we didn't do that I wish I'd remembered to do before planting the squash was do a trap crop to burn and kill off the squash beetles. Maybe we can train the Critter to pick the squash beetles off. That's probably a next year thing.