Friday, May 1, 2009

A day in the life of a homestead...

Yesterday we had a rare spring day which was both sunny and warm here in north Idaho. As a result we got a lot done outside.

My dear husband is expanding our garden. It will be contiguous with our young orchard. He removed all the fencing and took some time yesterday to start working the soil. First he plowed the new area with the two-bottom plow (that's our neighbor's cow in the distance):


Then he harrowed it with a nine-tine harrow. After this he'll disc it. He'll have to borrow a neighbor's disker as we don't have one of our own:



Matilda, as you can see, doesn't know what to think about this thing invading her garden space (she has access until we re-install the fences):


Meanwhile, our new bull calf (whom we named Gimli - ain't it great?) is getting along fine with his new harem:



Here's Matilda playing kissy-face with our heifer:



While Don was hard at work on the garden, I made some potting soil by mixing dirt, composted cow manure, and sand. Friends have contributed plastic containers all winter, so I punched holes in the bottoms and filled them with soil:



I needed to get my heirloom onion seeds planted early, as they have a 120-day maturity period and we can't count on it being frost-free here past the beginning of September. Here are all my onion containers on the floor of the as-yet unfinished greenhouse:



Snapped this strutting fellow early this morning. (Sorry it's blurry.) He'd better watch out - it's hunting season:



Then this morning our farm truck up and died. Crud. Just another day o' country living, as I like to say.

1 comment:

  1. I'm impressed with all you are getting done during your short growing season. I am also rather envious of your husband's apparently powerful Ford 8N. Our 8N is in dozens of pieces in our garage, and my Self-Reliant Man is rebuilding the engine. Darn, but if it weren't for that day job of his, we might actually get it back together in time for our grass cuttin' season. Oh, excuse me .... this is Florida, we are already in our grass cuttin' season. We're in trouble!

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