Garden 2018...the Beginning...

My garden is planted about as late as it's ever been, this year!  A long week of rain and other "more important things" are my excuses!

Last evening I rototilled, and tonight I planted.

I planted a row of zinnias, a bed of sunflowers, and found two packs of seeds in my garden shed from 2014.  This is the year of experimentation...will they germinate or not?

This is my lima bean row, guarded fiercely by my two helpers.

One of these helpers is about to cause trouble.  Can you guess which one?

First, she tried to eat the lima beans as fast as I dropped them into the rows...

Then she found a piece of wood and decided to play keep away with her mother...

You can imagine the state of the garden when they were finished!

I found several volunteer dill plants growing along the edge of the garden, so I left them to grow...

My tomatoes have actually been planted for a couple of weeks.  I have blight in my soil, so each year I mulch heavily with straw, to keep the soil from splashing up onto the leaves when it rains.  I also spray them with liquid copper.  I hope they do ok this year, because I planted them, mulched them and then it began to rain, before I got them sprayed!

My cucumbers, Burpless #26, don't look too happy.  They didn't appreciate all the rain either, and turned a little yellow and sickly looking.  But now that we've had several days of sunshine, I see a blossom!  Fingers crossed!  My pickle shelf is getting empty...

And last but not least...

Totally unrelated, but located  next to my garden, are our two new additions...

Kari and Whitney are leghorn pullets, given to me by Kari's daughter Avalea.  She and her fellow classmates at our local CTC hatched them and raised them to eight weeks of age before finding them new homes.   Last evening I went inside to check on them and I found them huddled together in the nesting boxes.  Aren't they sweet?

They're still extremely shy, and they're not allowed out of the shed yet.  I want to protect them from hawks and other dangers as much as possible until they're bigger.  I've also reinforced the fence to keep out foxes and other predators.

Hopefully they'll be joined before too long by some other hens, to keep them company.  (and to keep us in eggs!!)

Wait! I Thought It Was Spring!

Just when we were starting to feel a hint of spring in the chilly air, and when the earliest daffodils decided to bloom...

We have been reminded again that we are not in control!

We have around 6" so far, but thankfully it's not very cold...

My rooster is a little snow-laden...

The daily work must go on.  It doesn't feel quite right to desecrate the beauty of the snow like this, but the gutters need to be cleaned out and the manure has to be hauled out regardless...

Somebody loves the snow!  While the older dogs stay holed up in the warm barn, Phoebe goes exploring. The chickens hate walking in the snow, and when I checked for eggs, she was confused about why they weren't outside...

Now my morning chores are finished and I'm hoping to get the last of the prep work finished on the hallway before it's time to prime...maybe later today or tomorrow!! 

The warm radiators can do their part in drying the coveralls, hats and gloves...

...and we'll wait for the snow to stop...and melt.  Quickly.  The forecast is for temps in the 40's this weekend!

Spring is just around the corner!

Summer Update...

I've been terribly negligent in keeping you up to date on our corn and soybeans, and you might be surprised at how tall they are now!  This is what happens in five weeks during a typical Pennsylvania summer.

I had to use live measuring devices, since they're so tall...especially the corn! It's well over my head now, and I'm 5' 5" ...

Phoebe is the measuring device for the soybeans.  (she was looking for a cat that disappeared into the field in front of her. This was in between bounces)...

Everything is growing like crazy right now.  We've had a lot of rain (another almost 2" today!) and hot, humid temps, which together make both miserable conditions for the humans and terrific growing conditions for the crops!

Jim just finished up third cutting of alfalfa last night before the rains came, so we're happily enjoying a small break in the craziness.

How's your summer going?

The Polar Vortex Has Arrived...

The dreaded polar vortex arrived this week.  Oh how I dislike that term! Early yesterday morning the winds picked up and the temperature dropped. Brrrrr...  Cold weather has it's benefits, but I'm such a fair weather fan that I have a hard time seeing them.  Instead, I think of the headaches that come in the barn.

The box pens in the barn are full of young heifers, so we have a couple of them still at the hutches.  They have shelter, but no running water over winter.  Thus, we have to carry water for them several times a day.  Our trusty green wagon gets a lot of use these days...

Drink fast girls, before it freezes again...

My negligence in gathering eggs last evening resulted in this...

Jim had ordered a truckload of sawdust, but postponed the delivery yesterday because of the strong winds.  The barn doors are quite heavy, and if the winds catch them, there could be some pretty serious damage...both to the doors and to whoever might be in the vicinity.  The barn hill catches the brunt of the brutal north and west winds...

The winds died down over night, so the sawdust was delivered this morning...

All the animals keep the inside of the barn much warmer...although we often drain the water lines on the west side of the barn when it's really cold and windy.  Yesterday (and again this morning) we used a hose to fill a big water tub for the outside pen heifers.

In the calf pens, this young heifer and Jolyn enjoyed some playful moments this morning while I was feeding a newborn...

...and when I turned my back, Phoebe crawled into the pen and curled up in a feed tub.  It's not a good place for a dog to be, but I must say that once again, she was being resourceful!  She found a warm place and made the best of it...near her people...

And of course there's always the dilemma of the glasses steaming up, going from warm to cold and back again.  I wish I could just take them off, but...

Hopefully you're keeping warm where you are!

Phoebe the Resourceful Puppy...

Winter finally feels like it's threatening to pay us a visit, and the dogs are finding warm places to sleep at night.  They have numerous options...upstairs in the barn in either the sawdust pile, the hay mow or the straw mow (their usual first choice)...in the dog house with the flannel blanket...or downstairs in the barn with the cows.  We let the door open so they can go in and out as they please.

This morning when we went out to milk, I found Phoebe curled up in the cow stable in a pile of corn fodder...

Last night this bale was intact, but by this morning, she had torn it apart and made a nice warm nest for sleeping.  She's a late riser, and was still quite sleepy and calm when I found her.  I actually curled up beside her for a few minutes before I had to get back to work!

Some may think she made a mess by tearing up a fodder bale...but since it was going into the gutter in a few short hours anyway, I call it "being resourceful"!  :)

Fall 2016...

It's been a while since I've posted...

A lot has been happening, but my "get up and go" must've "got up and went"! My camera has been pretty idle.  There have been a bunch of things that I've had to cross off my list...stressful things...but hopefully I can put them behind me. The time change certainly hasn't helped anything.  This getting dark early stuff is for the birds! I need lots of sunlight/daylight to keep me going!

In the meantime...fall has been in full swing.  The rye grass behind the barn is growing, and I think this is one of the most beautiful views of the farm!

The corn and soybean harvest have been finished for a while now, and they both yielded very well.  Jim is about finished with baling corn fodder. The barn is full...

He finished cleaning out heifer pens...aka spreading pazutski...over the weekend, and now it's on to some other things like moving calves around, repairing some leaky water bowls and lots of other busy work. The weather has been beautiful!  It's actually rather dry, and the fall leaves have been hanging on extra long this year.  Jenna and I went on a college visit near Philadelphia on Friday, and the drive was spectacular!

Phoebe is growing...and is a mixture of sweet...

and naughty!

I will say, I wasn't very happy with her this weekend!  On Friday night we noticed that we are down one chicken...thanks to miss Phoebe.  :(  And on Sunday morning, Jim noticed that she had chewed off some wires on his sprayer.  :(  It's a good thing she's so sweet!

Yesterday afternoon, when Jim and I returned home from an afternoon at Eric's cross country banquet at college, we were greeted by the sweetest, most enthusiastic, warm, wiggling little brown body, and it almost made me forget that I was frustrated with her.  Puppies are definitely a lot of work.  We don't want her to be "one of those dogs" that people don't want to be around because she jumps up, destroys things, etc. We're slowly getting there!

What are your fall days busy with?