Cleaning up the Garden

I am so totally in a project kinda mood! Our weather has been so pretty with highs in the 60s, although it's chilly this morning! I'm so ready for spring!

Yesterday the 3 younger kids and I (Odin had spent the night at a friends)cleaned out our garden area. We hauled out downed tree limbs, moved cages, markers and various things from last years garden off to the side and pulled up the remains of stumps from last years peppers and tomatoes. Basically just getting stuff cleared so I can till.

I'm going to enlarge the garden space this year to about double what it was last year. I have a working space of 114' by 38'. Not to bad! I'm going to reduce the number of different things I'm going to grow and focus on growing more of what I'd like to can and freeze. Ah, the best laid plans, huh?

That leaves me with a 50' x 50' space in the very back of the high fenced old orchard to make either a hog or calf pen. I'm not sure which yet. Since I know (hope!) we'll have a calf come April when Daisy pops I suppose getting a calf pen finished first would make more sense. I'm just not sure I want it way back there. That said, I sure would like to raise a couple hogs (mmm! bacon! And Sausage and ham and chops...). Kendal isn't too convinced about hogs though after our foray with the neighbors escape artist feral hogs last year. I keep trying to tell him domesticated pigs will be much happier to just stay in their pen and eat. Then there's the whole issue with me getting attached to cute little piggies...

Anyway, here's the garden about midway through cleanup. Like the neighbors junk yard there in the back? *SIGH* They are nice folks, good neighbors and our only real close neighbor. Just figures they have to have a junk yard! That's my beautiful old Taf there in the pictures. She'll be 35 this year!

I did a soil test. PH is around 7, all the elements tested low, but that's ok. I'm going to spot fertilize as I plant and hope that the weeds will die out. It looks so dead right now, but with a little bit of rain the whole thing starts to grow! In the back where I didn't till last year we had a neat little prairie. Grass, flowers, interesting bugs and weeds.

Here's Bella doing pull-ups on a low branch of the apricot tree. This tree produced so well the year we moved in, but I'm afraid the last couple years of drought/flood weather has killed it. It was pretty old though. There's a plum tree in back that produces well still. Yum! We also have a pear tree and an apple tree and a couple peach trees. If the weather would just cooperate maybe we'll get some good fruit!

Here's the view looking out my back fence. It is so pretty out here! It's a combination of rolling hills, open fields and dense Texas scrub.

Last year I finally had a moment of inspiration and hauled some toys out to the garden so the little kids would have something to do when they got sick of helping me work. Since it's been cold we haven't been out to the garden in a while. Soren was very excited to rediscover his work bench and Bella shot some hoops. I'm hoping to get a swing set out there soon. That's Taf's official paddock in the background there. She's enjoying roaming & fertilizing the whole garden area right now. Pretty soon she'll be locked back up in her paddock.

Coming back from working on the garden we gave in and fed the beggar chickens. Soren LOVES to feed the chickens. He gets the bucket, the scoop and knows which bag is their feed. Then he carries it out and dumps the whole bucket in one spot and proceeds to fling chicken feed everywhere.

Ok, there's 2 kids, 2 dogs and I'm not sure how many of the chickens in this picture. Can you find them all?

Speaking of the dogs... here's Koda and Raven. Raven is sporting her new sweater that I just knit for her. I'm pretty happy with this design. I couldn't find a ready made pattern for her that I really liked, so I just made one up. Now I need to make some in pretty colors and with cute patterns. Raven gets cold so easy she's had to wear clothes all winter.