Spring projects

Now that the weather is breaking, Don and I are sort of coming out of our winter hibernation mindset. In the spirit of taking advantage of increasingly good weather, we have a number of projects we're either working on or planning to work on. These include:

• Improving the fencing around the blueberries and peaches. As these plants have flourished, two things became apparent. One, the deer are still able to nibble leaves off the peaches, so we need to secure them in higher fencing.

And two, as the blueberries become more productive, I need a little more space around the back side to reach all the fruit. For this reason, we're going to redesign the enclosure to have upright fencing rather than angled fencing.

• We're going to hold another yard sale. Yeah yeah, I know I said "never again" after the massive sale we had three years ago. But we realize we have a lot of things we honestly don't need or use cluttering up corners of the house and barn, so why keep them around?

• We're going to finish building out the garden. Don is halfway through the process of building the last seven beds we need, after which we'll install them and fill them with soil.

• We're going to install the drip irrigation system we had pre-planned for the garden. We'll also install a drip system for the blueberries and peaches.

• Don is nearly finished building a permanent ladder for one of the lofts in the barn. The space is too narrow for a staircase (since we need to leave room for the tractor to get in and out), and up to this point we'd made do with just a regular extension ladder whenever we needed access to the loft. But about a year ago, while attempting to pull something down from the loft, the ladder I was on slipped out and crashed beneath me. Thankfully the base hit some things behind it so I didn't fall all the way to the floor, but I fell about four feet down, enough to bang up my shoulder and terrify me. This new ladder system can be folded flat against the wall until needed, and it's secure and won't ever slip.

• We're going to convert a shed room into a guest room. The shed below has two sides, and the right-hand side will become the guest room. Right now we literally have no where to put overnight guests. When Younger Daughter visited three years ago, she had to bunk on a foldout bed in Older Daughter's room, which made for cramped quarters. Younger Daughter is coming to visit us in June, so we want to outfit the shed into comfortable quarters for her stay, as well as for any future guests.

This is just a start. Doubtless we'll have more projects spring up as spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall. But for now, this is more than enough work to keep us both busy.