Spring farm update.

For the last two weeks every morning I say "tonight I'm going to blog", then tonight shows up and I'm too pooped to pop, let alone blog. The last two days I've had a major chest cold. That didn't help matters.

It's been so long I don't know where to begin.

The gardens are all put in and for the most part they are doing well. It's been the driest spring for a long time. We've been in this house now for 18 years and I've never had to water my garden. This year I had to invest in 200 ft of garden hose to water the garden. That's not good. Mind you, two days after I got the hose it rained so hard we thought we had to go dig out the ark! Murphy's Law I guess. If you want rain spend a fortune on garden hoses.

Last year I couldn't grow a carrot to save my life, this year it's greenhouse cucumbers. I planted two that I grew from seed myself and something ate them. So I bought 2 from the garden centre and again something is eating them. I can't see what it is. One of them just died, so I'm giving up. I'm not planting another one. We'll have to do with that lonely plant. The cukes in the garden seem to be doing well, I prefer seeded cukes anyhow.

My pumpkin patch. Well...that's another story. Dave cleaned and tilled the old pig pen so I could plant giant pumpkins in it. I grew the plants from seeds. I nurtured the things till they were old and strong enough to go outside. Well guess what!?? The ducks ate the plants!!!!!!!!! I just can't win. So off to the garden centre I went again (well really it's where I work, we have a garden centre there also) I bought 4 plants, planted them and Dave put a fence around the darn thing! So far so good.

If the ducks don't watch themselves, they won't have to worry about the minks getting them. I'll do the deed for them. Heh, heh....

Last week I lost a dozen eggs. I was not impressed. I forgot that one of the hens would lay her eggs in the feeder. I usually check in there everyday. But for some strange reason I wasn't checking, yet I couldn't figure out why the egg production was down. Then one day I remembered and checked the feeder. In there was 12 eggs. I had to throw them away since I had no idea how long they had been there.

Since then, I think there's more than just her laying in there. I found 2 eggs in there today and I had checked yesterday.

For the most part, when a hen slows in the egg laying department, off she goes to the butcher. But we do have some that will never go to the butcher. Why? I have no idea. One of these is Ginger. I don't even remember where I got her from. I do remember that about 2 years ago the other hens started picking on her. One morning when I checked on her they really had done a job on her. I didn't think she was going to make the day.

I took her out of the pen and the only other place I had to put her was with the guinea hens we had at the time. I didn't know if they'd get along or not. Everyday I checked on them. The guinea hens left her alone and she lived. Now she's at least 5 years old, lays 1-2 green eggs a week, when she's not broody, and makes her home with the other hens again, but doesn't move much from her post in the nest.

Remember a few blogs ago I tried to make cheese? Well here are the fruits of my labour. I used about 6-7 litres of milk to attain these two measly little chunks of cheese! I do believe that I'm going to try my hand at making soap.

We've been making a few renovations in the house the last few months. When you make renovations yourself, it usually takes alot longer than it would if a pro was doing it. Now don't get me wrong, Red Green a.k.a. Dave is just as good as a pro, but he doesn't do it for a living, so in between delivering propane, cleaning pigs, helping his elderly parents, doing church things and just everyday life things then.......he works on the renos. We are doing some work to our bedroom. For the last several weeks this had been our closet...the living room and the clothes hampers. It's not fun!

Finally our closet has been finished so things are back to semi normal, but it's not all done yet. A little more drywalling, then painting and putting up doors and casings. I can't wait!

Well I have so much more to blog, but it'll just have to wait till another day.

Good night!

Lisa

p.s. update on the stray cat. We thought it was a female and her name was Duchess, but now that she's alot friendlier and we can hold her, we've discovered that her name is now Duke. If you get my meaning.