Some Rain, Finally

We've been getting a lot of rain the last few days and the

weatherman says it's going to stick around for awhile. That's good news, it should give all the transplants and the seeded crop

a real shot in the arm. Squash and tomatoes are coming along great and should be early this year and the cabbage is finally starting to head up, after the hail pretty much destroyed it. 

A new Tiller

It was a rough week, with a lot of work involved, but everything is out and planted. There's even a few small tomatoes on the vines already.

I picked up a used tiller for a real good price, earlier in the week, and it's a real workhorse for it's age and size. After I plow and disk the ground with the tractor, I use a tiller to smooth out my rows to plant in. It makes the Earthway seed planter's job a lot easier

Feed Crops

My trusty tiller is giving me some problems this spring, but not to worry, I keep a lot of old time, hand powered planting tools on hand.

I planted my feed crops this week, which keeps the cost of feeding the goats and hens down, and hopefully, in the future will eliminate feed costs altogether. Corn, sunflowers, cowpeas and collard greens, along with the already planted oats, should make for a good feed

Oats and New Transplants

My oats have already started bouncing back after the hail damage, which I expected. Oats are a tough crop and can take severe weather as well as anything. I started replacing some of the lost transplants, with some backups I always make sure to have on hand. You can never have enough seedlings on hand. I even put out a few Early Girl tomatoes and some okra seedlings. Just gambling again.

The baby goats are doing great. They look big and strong, and exactly what I was hoping for at this point.

Freeze and Bad Hail Storm

We had a hard freeze early last week, all the way down to 18 degrees, which killed any chances of my fruit trees producing this year. I was expecting this, since everything bloomed so early, but it's still disheartening thing.

That's not all though, a few days later we got a devastating hail storm. Quarter sized hail came down for 20 minutes and covered the ground like a snowfall. All my early transplants and even my oats were turned to mulch. Basically anything above ground will be set back a few weeks at best, or replanted at worst. This is why I call my early transplants 'gamble crops'. It's always a gamble in April, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This year, I lost.

Turnip Greens and Oats

I took some turnip greens from the small cold frame this week, and fried them up in butter, with a pinch of salt and a tsp of brown sugar. They were great.







My oats took off after the watering I gave them and as you can see 

they have a good start and my garlic is coming along nicely as well. 

 

Early Blooming Trees

It's a bit early for my fruit trees to be blooming, but this warm weather has set them off. As pretty as they are to look at, I know this is a disaster waiting to happen. There's just no way we get through to summer without another freeze, and that means no fruit this year. I don't see any way around it, but here's some nice pictures of my sure to be doomed plumb trees.

We had some baby goats born this last week, and they all three look sound and healthy. These are a cross of 3/4 French Alpine dairy and 1/ 4 Boer meat goat. I'm hoping for a good duel

purpose animal with strong milk producing does and meaty bucks. Right now they're just fun to watch.

I got four rows of potatoes put in and started putting some water on

the oats this week. It's been dry and the oats need a jump start. I really need a rain.