Earth Day

Ok, I admit I had no clue it was Earth Day until I saw the news last night. But it was fitting, we spent the whole day plowing, moving, grinding and remodeling...the Earth!

This is a newly plowed field in back of our house. Its a small area, in the past we've cultivated nothing more than ragweed in this area which causes me much misery each fall. This is where we spread a lot of our goat manure after cleaning stalls, so, theoretically at least, the soil should be great. We have big hopes for a small area of sweet corn, squash (to keep it from taking over our main garden), melons, kale (for the goats) and pumpkins. After having my first pumpkin success last year the dreams are getting bigger. Rog asked me- what are we going to do with all these pumpkins? I asked - how are we going to keep all that weeded sufficiently? Should be a disaster...

We also are trying to finish up our feeder hog pen. The project was aborted when the sheet metal for the roof started blowing away and we decided it wasn't important enough to risk decapitation. So, yes, we are getting piggies...since we don't have enough to do already. But piggies will drink a lot of milk that would otherwise get dumped in the lawn, they will eat a lot of pumpkins (a natural pig de-wormer, I learned) and they taste really good...

Mmmmm...bacon

Partially finished pig house. Strategically placed on the southeast corner of our property so we cannot smell them!

We also did some bee management this week. Rog installed the observation hive at the park and also successfully captured a swarm in our backyard and has installed it into a new hive for our apiary. The early spring has made for busy bees...the hives are already loaded with honey and young bees. We may be splitting more hives sooner than we think.

Hmmm... why does he always do these projects when I'm wearing black?