Friday, March 30, 2012

What's blooming?

Lilacs - check out the butterfly!
and another butterfly!
Tulips
Irises

and Strawberries!

What's blooming at your house?

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Orchard, so far

Last Wednesday, Dad and I planted our fruit trees. From east to west we have: goldcot apricot, intrepid peach and reliance peach. On the west side of the lonely apple is the bartlett pear.

We (or at least I) are still in the market for cherries and at least one apple.



Preparing the Garden

Back in Springfield, preparing the garden included pulling out last year's plants for the compost pile, and then raking the soil level and planting. No big deal.

It's a little different on the farm. Ok, a lot different. There's a big difference between preparing four 4'x8' raised beds and preparing a 60'x150' garden plot.

 
On Tuesday night, Dad used the subsoiler. This is a long blade that goes into the ground about 12"

 
Yesterday he plowed with the tractor. 

And then got the tiller out. This is a family heirloom of sorts. It used to belong to my great-grandparents (my mom's mom's parents) and traveled to our farm from Witt, IL. It doesn't have a name, but I think we could call it "Horse".
Dad tilled an area about 15' wide for the width of the garden.
 
 Then he made straight rows for us to plant onions and garlic.
The plants I picked up in Springfield made half a row of garlic (the package had 5 heads), and three rows of onions.

On the list to plant this week is blueberries, asparagus and rhubarb.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

MOOoooo!

Yesterday, my brother came up to Grandma's to find half the cows in her fenced-in front yard. We've been needing to mow, but that will be put on hold for a little longer.  The cows sunk in.



They even decided to take a walk through the lettuce and beets we had growing in a raised bed....


Monday, March 26, 2012

Lunch Bunch

Today's lunch was inspired by a recipe on Daily Garnish for Healthy Unfried Rice.

I made a few changes:
1. I used 3 huge carrots.
2. I added a bell pepper
3. I used a whole bag of frozen, shelled edamame (nutrition label said it had three servings)
4. I used Bob's Red Mill Wild and Brown Rice Mix.
5. I didn't add the egg. I thought that might have a funny texture after three days (which is how many days it will take for me to eat all this!)

Music Monday: Patty Loveless "I'm That Kind of Girl

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Weather

We've had some weird weather lately. Friday it hailed. So much hail that when I got home several hours later, there was still a pile of it by the front door. And there were several piles along the road on my drive home.
Even Saturday morning when I went in to run errands there were still piles of hail by the road. Grandma said there was about three inches of marble sized hail.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The "Nursery"

 Yesterday, there were two chores I helped with: picking up tree debris from when the utility company cut the cedar trees along the county road, and moving a newborn calf to the barn lot.
We picked up three loads of wood this size.
 Imagine being this close to a momma cow, who is not very happy about her baby being moved by strangers! I sat in the back of the trailer and held on tight to the calf so it wouldn't jump out while we were in motion.
 The first night, momma and newborn stay in the barnlot, so the newborn can get used to his legs without being trampled by the other cows.
 The next day, they'll get moved to this field that Dad calls "the Nursery", where we currently have 7 other calves that have been born in the last two weeks or so, as well as the calves that we weaned back in the fall.

Evacuation Plans


When I'm not reviewing building plans, I'm taking this:
Plans of the building I work in, from 1936
and putting them into CAD:
So that if we ever have an emergency (we're in tornado alley and the New Madrid Fault Zone), we'll be organized like this:
Source
and not look like this:


Source
 I'm also working on evacuation plans for the rest of City owned buildings.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...