New hoop house and other stuff...

Cedar caught eating freshly mowed grass, its mostly clover, so it was probably yummy!

We finanly put up our "hoop house"! We made it out of some 16' cattle panels and some free greenhouse plastic I picked up at one of the local garden centers.

Back side, letting air flow through. Its about 80 today.

Brocolli and cabbage freshly mulched with grass clippings. My favorite choice of mulch!

Red lettuce here as well, it was mulched last week.

Some of the onions and the garlic growing strong. We are about to put in a lot more, this is getting a lot more fun as we get more in the ground!

Not time for bed yet, we still have soap to make!

Tommorrow lawns start back up, it looks like we'll have about 8-9 to do! Spring is

 here and it is quickly welcoming in summer! We love this time of the year.

 Perfect for a fire at the end of the day! Life is good!

Our 15 turkey chicks arrived today as well, and we are supposed to get the 100 chicks Thurs. or Fri., AND we found out that our cat had kittens! I happen to be in the barn loft when I saw her

 sneak through and under some hay bales, so I followed her and found that she had made a den under all the bales. Very clever and safe from the dogs. The twin baby goats are doing great,

however we lost the little boy. Having animals can be fun but there are also the not

so fun times. We did find a good home for the

goats, so we are happy for that!

New Spring Goats!

Spring is definately here! Our two goats are now momma goats again. Our youngest one  gave birth to twins, a boy and girl, 3 days ago. The older goat had 1 little boy this morning. Goats are cute when they're little

http://vimeo.com/10524394

Potato planting day....

Making rows for potatoes

Cutting up potatoes for planting

Kids are having fun!

Fischer's job was to turn the potatoes upright so they have a better start

Potatoes in, getting ready to cover 'em up

Making more room, wow thats a lot of potatoes, do we really need that much? We'll see!

Hard work needs rest time!

Fischer giving Sky and Jewel and "underdog" push, good job Fischer!

All done, now we just wait for some growth so we can start hilling them up!

Another day...

Jewel showing off some new clothes and very proud that she can touch her feet, the boys aquired a fox from the neighbor and are attempting to skin it by themselves, they just informed me that they are done. This is thier first solo run, and they did great! For those of you wondering about the last picture of Marley, he was shaking at the time I took the pic., this is what he really looks like. He is aboutt 6 months old now. There is a great shot of wildman Cedar.  He'll get his first haircut when he turns 3, they anly have baby hair once! And, that is Jewel cleaning her knee, she is very proud of that as well!

Mushrooms and Fire....

 

 Inoculating logs with Shitake mushroom spores.

 

It was a perfect evening!

We have been waiting all winter to use our fire ring!

Their "real" side!

What happened to Marley?

Cory and Jewel enjoying the fire.

Finally!

We were finally able to start planting yesterday! This has been an unusually cold and long winter for those of us with California and Texas blood! We are getting through it though. Most of our onions are in now, and we also did some spring garlic. The day was so nice, about 65 with full sun, we were loving it! The nights are still a bit cold, so we have to be creative with the wood stove! Today we are going to put in some more asparagus, which is a little time consuming, but well worth it. We should have a few other things that we can plant outdoors as well.

First garden spot, ready for planting...about 1/2acre, make sgreat sweet potatoes!

Chicken tractors waiting to be occupied, and a little letttuce in some hotboxes.

Kiddos prepping the garlic for planting, we get a lot done with this workforce!

Cory and Cedar planting onions

Fischer picking a few random weeds, he's a "workin' man"

Onions

Cory and the younger kids planted over 1500 onions, and the older ones and I made 7  65' long "beds"

We hope to plant a little more intensively this year, its a lot of work, thankfully we have the tractor for tillage.