Wow, what a week and what a weekend! Can it get any busier? (Please don't answer that question). We are smack dab in the middle of the pinch between catching up from a very late start to spring (thank you, April 14th blizzard), and the push of planting the rest of the gardens on Memorial Day weekend. With the way things are going, we may not get to plant anything in any gardens until Memorial Day weekend. Sigh. There are too many things to get done and there is no time for "special" projects like pulling fences or revamping flower beds. Nope, just the rush, rush, rush of trying to get the highest priority tasks done before it's too late. Speaking of that, let's have a look into this last weekend of farm work, shall we?
The weekend started off with getting some great new raspberry plants for transplanting. We picked three buckets full (not ice cream pails - buckets) and the raspberries were in the ground and watered in before the sun became too hot on Sunday. While transplanting the raspberry plants, the chickens decided that where I was working seemed like a great place to scratch for worms and bugs. It was quite cute and fun to watch - until I noticed them ripping out my newly-planted raspberry plants with their feet! Oh, chickens! I love them but sometimes get frustrated at how destructive they can be. Fudgie the cat decided that being adorable made up for rolling around on the newly cultivated soil and crushing my raspberry plants. Um, no, but nice try.
The weekend was also packed with splitting wood, cleaning up more of the tree (project started last weekend), mowing our orchards and the lawn for the first time (always time-consuming), and general farm clean-up and maintenance.
We are trying our hand in dehydrating some things, including violet flowers and leaves. We heard they make a good tea, so we are looking forward to making tea from the small amount harvested from our yard. We are also attempting to make dandelion jelly, so there might be an update on that adventure in next week's blog.
Overall, it was a wonderfully productive but exhausting weekend. I wish we had another month of weekends to get everything done, but then again, what would we do if everything was done? It's time for bed and some "time off" from the farm while we work our regular jobs. Stay tuned for more stories next Sunday. Have a farmiful week!
