Busy time on the farm, Spring is upon us...



Happy Easter!

Spring always seems endless to me, Rose on the other hand is always saying we have 3 weeks till we need to mow, and two weeks before the bugs come out... Perspective...
 


This is weekend four of yard cleanup, with Poop patrol, bed cleanup, planting new Rose bushes, and phlox, fixing mud season reminders, (places we sunk in the mud when driving on the lawn) raking, filling holes that appeared in the lawn, mowing overgrown field areas, pruning dead apple tree branches, raking up the gravel the plow pushed 30 feet up onto the lawn, seeding the lawn bare spots (really, grass seed is now $68 per bag, WTH?). We still have to mulch 6 or so of the smaller beds, we need to get the mulch down before the grass and weeds come up!  Hurry, Hurry...

We've been tested...
We nearly lost the entire workshop roof several weeks back doe to some 50-70 mph winds that came through. It was wicked dangerous up on the roof with the panels catching every wind gust and folding the panels back on themselves and slamming them onto the roof.  We got 'er done though.  We saved the roofing panels but there will be more work to do to repair all the damage done.

Yeah, it's an old building, we did not expect to lose the roof though.
Dogs...
We've been working with the dogs, Hannah is just on the radio fence for the past two weeks, she's a smart one, she's doing great on the radio fence.  She's also out of the crate at night now.  We still have her on two collars one for the radio fence the other is a training collar vibration only as a reminder to cool it when she sometimes gets rambunctious with Gordon who's 9 now, or jumping up on people.  Gordon's been sick, he's starting to feel better and is eating once again.

Hannah 11 months

Hannah,  Hunting Robins in the back yard

 

Gordon "Gordo"

 Puppies...

Our Vet had a litter of German Shepherd puppies, these are the Sables, when we brought the dogs in for their yearly shots and boosters, lime, we found out they had a litter of Nine little fur-balls, four weeks old.  These in the video were just the five boys from the litter, we decided on a male pup.

Guess how many we're taking home...   Nope just one ;-)


This guy is coming home with us in four weeks... he's the only bi-color in the litter of nine pups.

No name yet, we're listing out potential names now, got a good one?  Let me know.

Mulching, Mulching, and then Mulching some more...
We're bark mulching all the beds, we recalculated the amount needed, and ended up with 12 yards instead of the 20+ we thought we'd need.  Whew!  Still 12 yards is a bunch of bark mulch!  We're probably half done mulching,  Rose has been weeding and trenching the edges of the beds, I help with the mulch deployments on the weekends, our 3 largest main beds are covered in 3-4" of nice brown mulch now.  The Pile of Mulch finally appears to be diminishing. 

The mulched bed...   two weeks ago look at that brown grass...

We picked up James and Jason Friday evening to spend the weekend.  The boys at 13 now and are an unbelievable help when doing chores on the weekend.  They helped with the birdhouses, scratching up the areas for seeding, the seeding and mulching on the big bed down at the driveway.  They're making money for Mothers Day coming up...

Crocuses and Daffodils are blooming, the Forsythia just started blooming.

The fields are greening up to fast. We'll be mowing before you know it.  I just ordered the tune up kit for the DR Field and brush mower, I threw a belt in the fall running down some 2" saplings that were in the way.

The Birds
Jarrod gave Rose this beautiful Martin house for Christmas, the ground is finally thawed enough that we were able to dig a 3 foot deep hole to set the post into. Phoebe arrived on Thursday, twenty two years using the same shelf on the barn for her nest. Bluebirds showed up Saturday, and then the Swallows on Friday this week, the swallows spent the day fighting the sparrows for the birdhouses...

BUGS are a coming
Yeah, the Ticks are here... found one crawling on the couch last night, most likely came in on one of the dogs .  Rosie's been warning me for several weeks, "the ticks are coming", due any day, we always do a tick check when showering and in the evening before bed too.  I'll probably put the Ortho MAX down this morning, this stuff really seems to work well for us, within a couple weeks, we don't see any more ticks after application.


Black Flies were out Saturday evening at Dimitri's in Weare when we picked up the subs for dinner...  they looked hungry bouncing off the windows on the car.


Opening Day of Fishing Season 2019  next Saturday 4/27 the 4th Saturday in April!  

Boys, Get your rods ready!