Busy Day Inside And Outside
It's been a good, busy day outside. It got off to an early start when I took the dogs out at 0430 - they took care of business and we checked on the chicks. All's well and the tiny ones were noisily running around their pen and munching their feed. Their feathers are really coming in now and everybody looks healthy.
Mini and Starr were missing from the barn this morning - no idea where they were, and they were also missing from the afternoon feeding. The hogs and cows were fine and Patch no longer looks like she's ready to have her calf. She's not due until Friday so that's cool, but as you can imagine, I'm worried that the AI didn't take and she's been teasing us all this time.
Winston found yet another new place to snooze - for the first time, he's in between the dog beds. I think he likes the small confined spaces best.
After a waffle breakfast (totally yummo!) we got busy with the day. Nancy worked on her quilting project and is making excellent progress. After completing all the 'tubes', she's cut them into the 41 strips for the main pattern (plus more for the trim) and started sewing them in pairs. She has five pairs sewn together and is joining them into one large block of squares. I continue to be amazed and impressed by the logic of how to quickly assemble 1,599 2 1/2-inch squares into a single piece.
While she was doing that, I was out at the raised beds busting up the dirt/manure. In years past, I bought some finely ground store manure to spread on top to give a fine layer of soil to hold the tiny seeds such as carrots. I tried to grind the clods between two paver stones, but that was just too cumbersome. So I wound up turning the bed deeply with the potato fork, and then getting down on my hands and knees and grabbing a handful of clods and rubbing them between my gloves to grind them into dirt. It sounds like a lot, but it really went quickly.
I redid the potato bed (found only five of the spuds I planted two weeks ago - two had sprouted) and planted the new potatoes in five rows of nine. They sure looked better than the first bunch and I'm hoping for a good harvest.
I worked a third of the second bed and planted the carrots. Nancy took a break from sewing and we worked the rest of that bed and planted the green beans. After a short break, we decided to go ahead and dig up and finish crunching the last bed. Tomorrow we'll plant the beets in 2/3 of the bed and save the last 1/3 for the pepper plants (due in a few weeks). In the picture below, there are onions in the furthest of the three beds in the foreground, potatoes in the middle bed, carrots and green beans in the bed in the foreground (the lone pat plant marks the boundary between the two), and the far bed in the background is worked and ready for beets when we get a minute and peppers when they arrive. The long thin bed in the left rear has the lettuce, radishes, and turnips growing now, and will hold the tomatoes when they arrive.
By late afternoon the winds backed to the south so the loose flap on the turret roof started flapping around and pounding the ceiling like someone was beating a heavy rug against the roof. I sure hope the guy is able to come fix it soon.
Tomorrow should be another busy day. We need to move several buckets of manure from the barn to the corn patch and crush five or six large bags of leaves that have been stored in the shop all winter. Sometime tomorrow afternoon Dennis should return to finish tilling the corn patch and then he'll deliver a trailer load of peat moss and till that in before tilling in the manure and leaves - should make for a most totally excellent corn patch!
And at 1400, I need to head in to the fire station to help a few of the guys paint the new walls in the dining room area.
If possible, I'd like to plant the beets, but that might slide to Monday. Until next time, take care of each other.
