The Only Constant

This last half of February has been a blessing. The weather has been so springlike and beautiful—it’s supposed to be 71° today!—and I’ve loved being able to make such great strides in the garden so early. DH has loved how little firewood we’ve used, and we’ve all loved how much time we have been able to spend outside.

Last week was a hard week. The untimely death of a friend, and the death of an uncle have brought up a great deal of…stuff. Introspection, musings on mortality, wondering what it’s all about—you know, the usual.

It has also become increasingly apparent that Bernard needs more than she can get from home schooling. She seems to need more mental challenge and certainly more social interactions than she’s getting here with me right now. We’ve been planning for her to go to the early college program starting next fall, but there turned out to be an opening for her right now, so she’s starting tomorrow morning! We’ll take her in tomorrow and get her schedule set up, but after that she’ll be taking the bus. I’m so very happy for her, and so grateful that this program is available to her, but it’s going to be a big change for all of us—I’ve been homeschooling since 1996!

The other change around here is that we’ve all decided to get off facebook for a while. Bernard because she is going to need all her focus for school for the rest of the school year, me because it triggers some addiction part of my brain, and I can’t leave it alone, and ED because she doesn’t really care about it. I’ve just got too much going on to get sucked in on facebook during the day—one of the problems with being at home all the time!

Joon

February 23, 2011 | Tags: | Comments Closed

Ben

February 22, 2011 | Tags: | Comments Closed

Signs of Spring

Out of all the patches of garlic chives all over the farm, this is the only one coming up red!

You can't tell from this picture because the light's too strong, but this is actually a green Araucana egg.

Peas

Yesterday I planted snow peas—Oregon Sugar Pod II peas from Baker Creek. I soaked them for 36 hours, and coated them with inoculant, and planted them in the bed in front of the greenhouse. That bed is still pretty clay-ey and getting it ready yesterday was some serious labor, though I wouldn’t have been able to do it so early last year. Last year’s manure really improved it, and I’m guessing it will be considerably better next year.

In the greenhouse bed I planted 5 lettuces, and lots of cilantro and arugula.

ED has spent the last several days shearing, especially the Icelandics, who were just starting to rue. February is absolutely the latest we can get away with for shearing the Icelandics—the Cotswolds and crosses can wait a while longer if necessary, though I think she’s going to go ahead and shear everybody now while it’s warm and before they lamb.

We’re really pleased with the two Icelandic/Cotswold crosses. They’ve grown quickly, and have kept condition through the winter. One of them may have gotten bred day before yesterday, so we could be looking at lambs in July. Everybody else is due in March.

The chickens are content in the chicken tractor—we’re getting an average of 2 eggs a day, which should increase rapidly with the day length—which for us is 10 hours and 58 minutes today, but a month from now, on St. Patrick’s Day, will be 12 hours and 1 minute! Yay sun!