The Homestead, Lately

I think just about every entry that I post starts with some variation of the phrase, "Busy, busy, busy." At the risk of sounding repetitious, I will simply say that we have been swept up into the hustle and bustle of summer farm life. I will try to catch you all up on our activities starting from about January on... Jordan and I spent a great deal of time cross-country skiing around the property. We scouted out a pretty ideal spot for our future large-scale garden, permanent community root cellar, barn, and possibly a pond for animals. It was so surreal skiing through the woods, hearing nothing but the slide of our skis and the hooting of an owl. About mid-March to early April, we started our starts for our garden. Jordan fashioned up a make-shift soil block maker, which turned out great! We started cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, bok choy, herbs, brussel sprouts, pumpkin, and squash. Spinach, kohlrabi, turnips, beets, arugula, lettuce, green onions, peas, carrots, corn, and potatoes will be directly seeded. Now, to more recent events... Yesterday, Shannon and I planted all of our starts, except for the pumpkin and squash. I also decided to direct seed the kohlrabi (we will see if it works out.) A friend of Shannon's gave us some spare horseradish root from her garden, and J and I planted it the other day in a spare water trough. We also decided to dig up some of the strawberries (that normally get eaten by the moose) and transplanted them into individual pots. Last night, after dinner J and I decided to start digging our trenches for potatoes. (My back is so sore!) Today we will hopefully get those planted and mulched. Other than garden things, we have been super busy getting Taproot Farms ready to launch. Hopefully, we will have some products to sell within the next couple of months. (So keep your eyes peeled for a website link soon!) The goats are doing well, and are loving being outside in their fenced in pasture. The chickens are doing well too, even though I am told that the roosters are now starting to crow at 4:30am! Hopefully soon we will have all of our animals (and hopefully +1 cow) over at our place soon. Oh, I almost forgot the most exciting news... J and I are moved into our home!!! We are both so relieved to finally be able to have a place of our own. We spend most of our evenings sitting by the wood stove, reading and talking about how we love having our own place. Well, I better get out there and finish those trenches! I will leave you with some of the pictures that have been sitting idle in my camera since January... Happy to be skiing on the tree farm. That's King Mountain behind me.

Beautiful eggs as "payment" from farm sitting for some friends. Yes, that is a green egg on the top row!

Little egg, big egg... from when the Wyandotte hen first started laying.

Turning the steaming compost piles. We should have good compost in about six weeks.They have been getting up to 150 degrees in the center. That's a hot pile of poo!

There are a couple of other pictures I want to share, but I can't get the dang computer to load 'em! Oh well, I've got a couple of ticked off goats calling my name... I am a tad late on the milkin' and the girls get pretty irritated when I am off schedule! That's all for now folks.