Some success in the garden.

Apologies for the photo quality, not only was it raining today which makes the lighting a little iffy to begin with, I don't have a machine that I can edit photos on right now. Even without edited photos I'm glad to be able to share that our remaining squash plant seems to be doing well. As you can see from the plethora of blossoms it is adding fruit constantly. Not having a trellis isn't seeming to hurt it at all. I'm looking forward to being able to cut summer squash and steam it.

Our tomatoes have also set fruit, and seem to be doing fairly well. Some of the fruit appears a bit crowded as you can see here, though it seems to be growing fine. From how close the fruit is set these are probably sungold tomatoes since I think that's the only kind of cherry tomato I planted this year. The tomato plants are very stunted this year compared to the past, and we didn't even plant them late. They just haven't been doing well. Some of that is probably us having not used the bunny fertilizer we've used so liberally in the past, some of it is probably the very strange weather we've been getting with cold nights, and scorching dry periods.

Given the attention we've been able to give the garden at all this year I think it actually speaks very well to the benefits of mulch. If we'd given as little attention and watering to our plants in the past they'd probably be dead by now. With mulch they seem to be able to retain moisture well, and stay hydrated which has prevented the tomato plants from having strange split tomatoes, or just turning yellow and drooping after a week of no rain and hot sun. When we garden in the future I intend to make sure we mulch our garden beds, because the cost seems to be well worth it!

Events, rain, and chickens.

The rain finally came as it always done, and I swear the plants have perked up overnight. That's probably hyperbole, but it definitely feels like it even if it is a psychological thing.

Before I get back to that and focus on the homestead for the rest of the post, I'm going to touch on a couple things. First things first. The Lady of the House is having an art show near us, so if you're in our area and come we'd love to see you.

The other thing is, we're getting so close to the line where we can put the down payment on the furnace, and we're getting close to the end of the donation matching period on our GoFundMe. If you have been thinking of donating, now would be a great time.

Sending on the coop.

One of the hard things about getting the house ready is how much we'd done to make it ours. Some of that is the chicken coops. Unfortunately when the chickens are gone I'm going to have to just disassemble the big coop in the back. Fortunately, the Lady of the House's father wants to get into chickens so I was able to offload the smaller red coop we used for so long back to him. He actually found that coop for us for free, and hauled it up in the first place. He came up on Saturday, and the two of us moved the coop onto the trailer he brought, took down the chicken run, and packed it up into his trailer. Once that was done we loaded up a lot of the Critters toys, and the electric fencing for the chickens and sent it off to his house. Once that's set up we're going to bring the chickens to his place to watch over until we have a place we can have chickens again.

On the subject of the GoFundMe, we are doing well, and with the donation matching we're getting close to the $5,500 point where we need to be to get the heat and hot water installation begun. Any help you can give before the 1st while the donation matching is still going on would be greatly appreciated. All of the help and sharing we've gotten has been amazing to us. Thank you all.

On the farm side of things, we still desperately need rain.

Welcome rain, warm nights.

Despite the challenges right now we're moving along with life as we address them. Lately our predator concern has come from the hawks that are out a lot lately. The electronet doesn't help with that, but the chickens have been sticking to the tall grass and weeds to hide from the aerial threats. I'm always glad to see animals doing the smart thing to stay alive when I can't be there to preserve them 24/7/365 since I'm at work during the day.

On the funding side of things, the furnace situation is rough, but the go fund me has been incredibly helpful, and people have been generous, kind, and helpful with money, advice, and love. Our strength and wealth is in our community and friends, and this has really highlighted that.

Fast moving water all over.

"Tis nothing but a sprout, but well budded out . . ."
Always a line that stuck with me from Alfred Noyes poem a May Day Carol. Of course, it's not May yet, or close to it. The pear tree doesn't seem to know that though. We will see if that works out to good or ill. It also reminds me it's time to learn how to prune fruit trees since we had one survive the winter. Though it's always worth remembering, winter isn't over.

Life keeps moving on.

The weather has continued being a bit strange, vacillating between bone chilling cold, and strangely warm. Over the weekend it went to warm, and rained Hard. I'm fairly glad it wasn't snow because snow over the ice pack we had would have been very rough. Instead we had a very high river with big chunks of ice floating down it. As you can see, we also had a lot of fog from the ice sublimating directly into the atmosphere leading to a very humid, foggy day. It felt more like we were just living in a cloud bank. We used the opportunity to put the black turkey out for the day in the coop with his brown buddy.

Confusion in the dark.

This morning was interesting. I'm feeling more than a bit under the weather physically. It doesn't help that it's the Solstice so it was the longest night of the year, and it's raining, and cold. Anyhow, it comes down to I wasn't entirely with it this morning when I went out to do farm chores. As I'm taking care of the rabbits in the hutches in the woods I'm hearing turkey contact calls, and I'm confused. No matter how much I look around I can't see the turkey. After a moment of not putting two and two together, I look up. It's a little easier to see than in the photo, but dead center of the frame there's a turkey. Well, I guess the turkeys have changed their roosting spot.

Deciding when to plant garlic.

As we approach the darkest day of the year, it's very dark in the mornings. Especially when it's a nice constant drizzle. I'm keeping my eye on the horizon for what the weather is going to be as we go forward. I'd like to wait 'till not long before things get really cold to plant the garlic so it doesn't fully sprout before the hard freeze. Assuming we get one at all. If we'd planted when we should have, the garlic would be fully up now and we'd be risking having it die over winter.

Much needed rain from a misplaced Spring.

The serious rain we've needed has finally come, and now it won't stop! The chickens however are undeterred, though in the times of heavy rain if the chicks and mom don't go inside, she does protect them, and given how independent they've become it's fairly adorable. The chicks have been growing fast, and are feathering out. They're also starting to stray a bit from mom, though still very much within line of sight. I'm excited to see what they turn out looking like. I also need to check because one of the Cinnamon Queens may have gone broody, but I was too tired to bother her this morning.

More rainy day thoughts: Why we started, how we will continue.

Another day of rain, this time it's a significant down pour. As we call it in this area a Noreaster, in Texas we'd call it a gullywasher. It's not the best sort of weather for a 45 - 50 degree day, but it'll help the water level for the area which is low for a number of the reservoirs. The chickens aren't getting time out wandering and free ranging because I don't want the high winds that have come with it blowing them around the yard and getting them injured or lost, unable to find their way back to get dry and warm. They objected strongly as I left this morning for work, I could even hear their objections in the car.

Since without photos there isn't much to talk about homestead side other than that the Lady of the House still hasn't given birth to the Critter, and we're going to be doing another work day Saturday, I'm going to have another day of thoughts on Homesteading.

Long nights, deep fog, and rain in the chicken coop.

The longest night of winter has just recently passed, and we're looking forward to seeing just a bit less of this sort of scene as beautiful as it can be. We definitely prefer getting home when we can get by without the lights being on for a while, and that just isn't the case at the moment. It would be the case even without working far too much which is the norm right now unfortunately. We've had some very strange weather out here lately as well for this time of year. First there was the snow and more snow, and that was fairly normal. The Thursday post of the conquest of snow was fun because it is nice to feel like we have the snow under control for the first time. Note to mother nature, that isn't a challenge!

The rain keeps coming, and pests thrive.

Since last post has been remarkably light on sun, so we have been less productive than we'd like to have been. I don't have trellises done for squash, really, nothing much has been done other than picking the 5ish cups of strawberries from our yard on Saturday. Mind you, it is at least a sweet, rewarding sort of thing to have gotten done. It certainly isn't the burst of Saturday activity we usually manage.

Tomato troubles! Magnesium, blight, or both?

It's yet another rainy day around the homestead, and we're learning more rain isn't always better for your garden even before you get to flooding and the like. Now, it's not all bad. Our raspberry bushes Above are doing great and putting on a huge number of buds which means a lot of raspberries. The garlic is doing great, and so are the kale and lettuces.

So many kits on the ground, but not as many as we'd like.

As seems to be the refrain at the moment, a lot is going on right now. Less than last week due to the downpour over the weekend that kept me from working on the multiple outdoor projects.

Late post, and lots going on.

 Sorry for the delayed post, computer problems can be a time consuming difficulty. On the homestead though, things are going well. Not a whole lot of new work got done due to the rain all weekend long preventing work on the hutch or digging beds, but the garden is looking good for it.

Ice Clad World

The up side, ice clad grass is gorgeous. The down side, if there's ice clad grass while it's still raining constantly that means there is ice EVERY where else. Getting up the driveway last night in a light car was a real adventure!

The Rain Keeps Coming

Which has been of great inconvenience to me. Dawn's babies are rapidly approaching the age when they will be getting weaned from their mother. While I do have a spare hutch to put them in, I don't have a full sized growing out hutch made which is what I want them to be in. It isn't built simply because it won't stop raining long enough for me to mow the lawn, much less construct a new hutch. Below you can see our hutches right next to our house. Unfortunately due to the constant rain mixed with when I'm working I haven't even gotten to paint them yet. Of course this weekend when I will be working the whole time it will be gorgeous. That said, the babies are doing quite well.