Easter weekend update

All of my kids (and their dogs!) were home for the holiday weekend and we had an opportunity to work on some projects at the farm on Friday and Saturday.  I was so glad for the help and so pleased with what we were able to accomplish.  We have made good headway on preparing the garden for spring planting.  A good chunk of the south side of the cornfield (the large garden) is ready to plant.  Some of the rows, at least 15, have had the trash from last years crops and weeds removed, the planting rows are turned, and had compost applied and turned in.  A layer of leaves have been applied to those finished rows in the walking paths.  The trellises have been installed on two rows designated on my garden plan for legumes and the peas have been planted.  The new numbers have been nailed to the posts replacing the stick-on ones that kept falling off.  The hole for the last  post is started.  We ran into some difficulty and the hole is not as deep as it should go.  We are not sure if it is because of the frost not being fully out yet or if there is some object, possibly a rock or a tree root blocking our progress.  I will try again in a few days to see if we can go further, otherwise I will finish the post at the depth that it is. 

Nikole and Brad arrived on Friday ahead of the others that came on Saturday.  They brought a pickup load of wood chips to go around the front of the house.  Last fall Mom and I removed the old plantings, got the grading done, plastic laid, and the edging placed where we wanted it and temporarily attached.  A pickup load did not get us a really thick layer of chips but it covered all the area that we wanted to cover.  A few more wood chips to make a  thicker layer can be added at any time  We were able to get some work done in the greenhouse emptying spent planters. That was a good job to get done as we will need the space for the summer garden transplant seedlings that have been started in the house.  They installed a fan that will be used to bring outside air into the greenhouse.  It works either separately or in conjunction with the other fan that removes hot air from the greenhouse and it has already been successful at keeping the greenhouse from getting overly warm on the sunny Saturday and Sunday of the weekend.  The three of us also finished the tomato cages that I had started.  Boy does it go a lot faster with three.  Our cages are a piece of gridded wire fencing attached to a 2x2 post.  I built a few last year and the ones that we finished now will be greatly expand our caging supplies.  This was a great way to use some of the extra fencing Nikole and Brad shared. 

On Sunday we had breakfast at the farm and then headed into town for dinner with my parents.  We took along a great salad that Bobbie, Brad's mom had found on Pinterest and it turned out to be as good as was reported.  We used kale grown in the greenhouse.  It had a warm onion balsamic dressing that was massaged into the kale and then topped with goat cheese and pine nuts.  The warm dressing slightly wilted the kale.  It was very good.  I didn't get any pictures of it but will be posting the recipe on my farmstand cookbook blog. 

The last project of the weekend was a window project.  My farmhouse has original wood windows and all of them are energy inefficient but many of them are rotting and starting to have real issues.  Before winter arrived, while we were painting the house, Dad built a 'bandaid' for the worst one at that time to get us by while I agonize over replacements.  Just before the weekend a new worst one developed.  Nathan stabilized the window and took some measurements for another 'bandaid'.

I have such a great family. 

A few pictures from our weekend projects:

The new wood chips around the font of the house

The finished end of the garden, ready for planting.

the trellis that will hold the pole beans

new numbers on the posts

this trellis will hold the peas

the leaf pile is gone

the new fan in the greenhouse

the tomato cages