Hello everyone! I hope you have all had a good week. Things have been a little challenging here but nothing too serious. We had approximately 10 inches of rain in just a few days and it is pouring rain now as I make this post. All that rain caused our pump box to flood which in turned caused our pump to not work. We spent a few days without water but everything is working fine now.

A picture of the garden just a few days ago. Nothing is planted there yet so no harm done.

I took this picture at the top of the upper garden from one of my favorite sitting places. (Actually they are all my favorite sitting places).

I love how pretty this bed is. The purple you see is purple bok choy. Isn’t it pretty!

Everything is starting to come alive!

This is the Josta berry bush Jess and her family got me for my birthday.

One of the grapevines is starting to get some green on it.

I am trying something different this year in this planter. Instead of flowers I planted peppers in it. These are Ancho peppers.

I also put two cherry tomatoes in these pots. I am not putting any pots up in the garden. Way to much work to water them. But these are here on the deck. I can just water them when I water the flowers.

Well that’s about all for now. I hope you all have a good week. God bless.

Hello everyone! I received the sweetest surprise yesterday for Mother’s day.Jess was coming over to bring back some tools they had used. When she pulled in, all these babies jumped out and said “Surprise, Mawmaw! Happy Mother’s Day !!”This was the first time since all the Corona virus thing started that they had been here to the farm.Dave and Jess brought food and we had a socially distant picnic. We even walked around (once again socially distant) and I got to show them my garden and what is growing so far.It was a WONDERFUL mother’s day gift!! In addition to that, they also got me these solar lights which I love.There are 8 of them altogether. I have them put all around the house.I hope you all have a great day! God bless.

Grace and I took a little walk yesterday.

The crimson clover is beautiful this year!

I love getting pictures of Grace when she is taking pictures!

Time to cut some hay!

I know it’s just a simple old farmhouse but we love it!

We finished the chicken cage and started working on the inside of the chicken house.

We removed the old roosts. We are changing the inside a little as we want to have the ducks and the chickens in here together at night. Also the cage will be in here while they are little. We want to put wire around the bottom and make sure there are no gaps anywhere where critters can get in.

The baby geese hatched out at the pond. Grace is getting pictures of them. Juicy is helping. He is a very curious cat, always seeing what is going on.

That’s all for now. God bless.

Good morning everyone! Just a little update on my seedlings. They are doing very well so far. I started hardening them off today. They will (hopefully) get planted about the third week of May. Usually by then all danger of frost is gone but we’ll see.Another project I’ve been working on. Grace and I want to get baby chicks and baby ducks this spring. As you know, we have had trouble before with critters, especially weasels. This was an old rabbit cage George had built for Julie. As you can tell, it hasn’t been used in years.I thought we some modifications it would work great for the babies.I took it all apart, removed the old wire, cut it down so it would fit through the chicken house door and put new wire on it.It is almost finished. I have three more sides to put the new wire on. I am really pleased with how it has turned out. Baby chicks and ducks coming last of May or first of June!I hope you all have a good weekend God bless.

Grace and I took a little walk the other day. Things are starting to get green here.

I love it! Grace took one of her furbys out with us and got so many cute pictures with it!

I feel we are extremely blessed to live where we do.

It is such a beautiful place!

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone! I thought I would share a little update on the garden. The radishes, beets and turnips are looking great. It always amazes me how fast radishes grow!Broccoli and cabbage are doing good.Green onions! These are also fast growers.Blueberry bushes! Yum!These flowers came up from last year! It looks like they will soon have some blooms on them. I love it!I also spent some time potting up my seedlings this week. If all goes well, we will have about 140 tomato plants and about 40 pepper plants.We did a little tilling this week and planted a few potatoes.We had a terrible storm here on Thursday. Lots of hail and some scary wind. Our power was off for a few hours, so Grace worked on this drawing.I think it is so pretty!That’s all for now. God bless.

Good morning everyone! I hope you all have had a great week. One of our goals for this week was to start on this mountain of mulch. It is a LOT of work but it makes the garden look so much better and means less mowing and less weed eating during the summer. So definitely worth all the work.

We have about one third of it done. I love how how neat and clean it looks. We get the mulch from our local sawmill.

In other garden news, I planted radishes, turnips, beets and carrots in this tractor rim. They are coming up nicely.

Planted greens in this bed. Some are old favorites and some are new varieties to try.

The tomato seeds are up and doing good.

These peppers popped up yesterday.

I’ve been enjoying hanging clothes on the line.

Also making fresh lemon balm tea!

God bless.

Hello everyone! I pray you are all staying safe during this time. We are all good. Getting things done at home.

So many things are coming to life here on the farm. This is an apple tree some good friends bought for us last fall. It looks like it survived the winter. We are very excited to have our own apples soon.

I see dandelion jelly coming soon!

We have starting making our fresh teas. We gathered this mullein the other day.

Today I am making lemon balm tea. I scavenged around and found a little curly leaf spearmint to add to it.

We found blood root blooming on one of our walks.

Our forsythia bush is beautiful this year.

I straightened up my little fire pit and have it ready to go. It is hard to have an outside fire here sometimes because we have so much wind.

We have been doing lots of garden work. I have planted a few things already. Beets, turnips, radishes,-things like that. Yesterday I planted peas and onions. Today I have some cabbage and broccoli plants to plant, also lettuces, kale, lots of greens. I LOVE this time of year and am so thankful I have the health and the space to grow all this yummy food.

Grace and I built this little teepee for our malabar spinach to run on. It is something new we are trying this year.

We mowed the yard for the first time. It takes us a long time to mow. Almost 3 hours with 2 push mowers and that’s not counting the weed eating. But it looks so good when it is all finished.

I have also started my tomato and pepper seeds. I plan on starting cucumber, yellow squash and zucchini in a few weeks.

Our little greenhouse. I keep it on the glassed in front porch because of the wind.

My helper!

Our amaryllis is blooming so pretty.

I hope you all stay safe and have a great week. God bless.

Hello everyone! I know these past few weeks have been crazy so I thought I would just share a few normal, happy things. My amaryllis is blooming so pretty. It has two full blooms that are open now and two more that will open soon. It brightens up the room so much.

Also Grace and I built this teepee the other day for the garden. We want to try to grow Red Malabar Spinach on it. This will be the first year I have grown it so we will see if it is a keeper or not.

Our forsythia bush is in full bloom. I think it is so pretty this year.

I ventured out to town yesterday to get a few things we needed. I stopped at our local greenhouse and picked up some garden soil to amend the raised beds.

I also picked up a few herb plants. They look so nice and healthy.

I put them in bigger pots this morning.

They will stay on the glassed in front porch until it gets a little warmer outside.

They make the porch smell so nice!

I think this purple basil is so pretty. I love the varigated one.

I guess that’s all for now. Everyone stay safe and stay home as much as possible.

God bless.

Sunday the Bates crew came over and helped us get lots of stuff done. Dave and I worked on the fence that goes around the garden. Then we moved the arches down to the lower garden and put them up as trellises.I think they will be much more efficient this way. The arches were pretty but I didn’t have much success growing things on them last year. Now I have trellises in the upper and lower garden.I did leave one arch up over this raised bed. I think it adds a little cuteness to the garden.Our neighbor came and tilled the garden for us. He comes every year and tills it for the first time. Then Grace and I keep it up after that. I LOVE the look, the smell, the feel of fresh turned dirt!Then it was time to bring in the greenhouse. At first, I thought maybe I would not start seeds this year. That maybe I would just buy plants. But after Grace and I calculated the price, we thought it would be much more cost effective to start our own seeds. And, of course, much more fun. Juicy was helping me, as usual. He loves it when we bring in “new” things! He is so curious!Another reason to start seeds is that we have a lot of seeds. Some we saved last year from our own plants and some that are bought.Another new thing I have been doing is fermenting. I have done it before but not on a regular basis.I did these carrots with a little garlic and they are delicious.Dave and Jess ordered me some more glass weights and burping lids so I can now make more than one jar at a time.This is what I am fermenting right now. One of the carrot jars is for Dave and Jess.Jess has been put on a low inflammatory diet due to health reasons. She has been diagnosed with Lyme related arthritis. She has been in so much pain from this. She has been on this new plan for about 3 weeks.This is a picture of her before she stopped eating foods that are inflammatory. She is basically doing a vegetarian diet with no processed foods and no sugar.Picture of her now. I am so proud of her. It is so hard to change how we eat. She says though that it is definitely helping with her pain level so that motivates her to eat as she should.I know this has been a long post but I had a lot to catch up on. I hope you all have a great day and God bless.