Cool and Breezy spring

April has been a tease of beautiful days and chilly temperatures. I guess it keep the bugs away and the early spring transplanting season extended. One of the hardest things we did recently was to rip up an established but way overgrown raspberry patch. With nowhere to put a hundred old bushes, it was tough to pull them (they are very shallow rooted) and pile them in the truck to take down the road to the brush pile. The lucky part of the day was when a customer came for some beef on Saturday, and we were in the midst of pulling plants I asked them if they wanted some and they did!! Luckily again, they had a pickup truck and we filled the back with plants and off they went, all excited about their new berry patch! Last year we offered everyone we saw some plants and no one wanted to come and get them. This year, after agonizing all year long about having to throw the plants away, they are gone. We thanked them for the delicious summer and fall berries and said good-bye! Next to go - the blackberry sprouts! The original 6 foot square plot is expanding around the edges and since the canes on the bush grow to be 6 to 12 feet long, they end up in your face when you are mowing the lawn around them. The sprouts will surely find homes too since the berries are as big as your thumb. Now the empty space can be begin to be the herb and perma-culture garden. Bring on the rhubarb and we hope to find a white or black currant too.

We are making a big mess in the front of the house too; digging up the stone walk which is half buried in sod and moving the stones to the pathway being worn in the grass. The shrub garden beside the walk had been growing and forcing you to walk farther out from the stone path. These stones were a real find for Alan years ago. When the road crews were tearing up the old stone sidewalks in the village and preparing to replace them with concrete, Alan was on hand with a truck to happily take them right on home for his walkways. He made steps, walks, and used them to top the stone walls in front of the house. Then again last year, we heard that the village of Ft Edward was ripping up their stones too and giving them to the homeowners along the route. A couple of friends did not want theirs, so off Alan went with a trailer and the crew to load them. The projects with these stones are still on the drawing board. They are large, 48" x 36" and are only an inch or so thick but they are very heavy. We will be landscaping a whole lot this spring!

In the midst of all this, we co mingled the pigs yesterday accidentally. There are three generations now; 8 big ones, 10 teenagers, and 6 little ones. The smaller ones were in the barn stalls getting used to us and the routine here, so they were mixed with the teens in the barnyard area so they could all learn about the electric fences. When I opened the door in the upstairs of the barn to feed them some treats, the black pig got spooked and bolted through the gate into the pasture and let all the other pigs out too. So for the second day now they are running around chasing each other, sniffing each other and otherwise getting to know each other. They have 3 separate places to sleep until they begin mixing and with their different sizes, it is actually easier for them as the pecking order is fairly obvious. They are still pretty tired at night!

The best news of the week is that Alan's favorite tractor's engine block returned home today from the machinist. It was supposed to be there for a couple of days and come back, put back together and run again. but a couple days turned into a couple of weeks. So now Colin and Joe and Alan will have dirty greasy hands for a few days until it is running smoothly. The beauty of the older John Deere tractors is their simplicity. They are easy to work on and repair and hence there are many old 1940 and 1950 tractors still doing farm work around here. We have nine of them; most working and some in various states of repair or used for parts. The old ones have a distinctive put-put from their 2 cycle engines and have a top speed of 12 miles an hour. Haying takes a long time around here!

Well, back to work while the rain has quit temporarily - to the shovels and stones.

the mid April when will winter end blues

It is flurrying snowflakes again today. On Sunday I took pictures of the daffodils in the snow because no one would believe me if I didn't. Looking into the valley, no one else had snow and our fields on the top of the hill were totally white again. luckily Sunday afternoon, after we both finished our books, the sun came out and it was a glorious day. The garden is starting to look planted and neat again. The kale, arugula and lettuce are sown. The weeds are slowly being removed from the bottom of the garden to the top section. The weeds all go into the whellbarrow and head down to the pigpen for the new weanlings and the piglet recovering from her bout with some kind of bronchitis. I swear it was the chicken soup that finally cured her and now the greens are doing their part. The flats in the greenhouse are planted weekly with a few things to help spread out the harvest as last year I was a bit amibitous in anticipating the volume we could eat. I am sworn to small successive planmtings this year.



Our perennial gardens are in need of a big facelift this year. That is always a daunting task when you begin with a mature patch of plants and stand beside it with your shovel. Which ones to keep and which are too wild, weedy or invasive? Where to move them? But the earlier you get this accomplished the better off you are. I'd like to incorporate some permaculture features too but don't have a plan yet.