April 18,2009

I just love my husband. Don't know what i would do without him. He finished planting all my fruit trees this week. Then yesterday he and sil and my oldest son and I got the fencing up around the 25 by 100 foot strawberry/raspberry plot. He looked so sexy out there hauling trees and pulling fence and stuffing fence posts. Never have I appreciated muscle so much. Because if he were not here, I would have had to figure out how to do it. Anyway, the trees are in. I spent Monday in town with the 5 youngest kids buying fencing and strawbales while he got the rest of the trees planted. Doing farm errans at four different stores with 5 kids under 9 is a great way to develop patience. Then a strawbales blew off the truck in the middle of the only 4 lane in our little town and stopped traffic. I really did not know how to handle it. But after I made the kids promise 10 times they would not get out of the truck on the busy higway, I went back to heave-ho the bales out of the road. Luckily a nice muscled man stopped his truck jumped out heaved into his truck and then drove it up to mine and the kids listened for once.
The next day the rains hit and we did inside work. Thursday the 300 strawberry plants and 60 raspberry plants came by parcel post. The weather broke Thurs. so we spent the day and all day yesterday fencing
. It is alot of work. My sil had already cut the locust posts from our property,then the tractor dug the holes or at least part way. Then the men dug the holes some more and put the posts in,then stuffed the holes with gravel. [ luckily we had two loads of gravel delivered this week for the driveway ] Then tamped the holes. Then strung the wire. I was the gofer person as I have noticed that for every 3 or 4 men working, you need one to go find all the things they need and forgot where they put them. So I went for the shovels and tamping bars and shoveled and hauled the buckets of gravel and got the wire cutters, etc.
Today most of the family will be at the Special Olympics as our down syndrome son is competing, but the oldest son will put the chicken wire along the bottom on the woven wire fence so that rabbits can not get in. When we return we will haul manure [ we had a dump truck load delivered last night ] to the plot and then make 3 foot beds for the strawberries and raspberries. Then hopefully plant before the plants rot in my cold room. Also yesterday, my sil put a 5 gallon bucket of water on each fruit tree that went in this week. We contracted with the bulldozer that is working above us in the Christmas tree fields to do some bulldozer work for us on Monday. it will give us more workable land. I want to put in more fruit trees and blueberries. We have 40 blueberry plants now waiting patiently to be planted.
I got my tomatoes in the greenhouse wall of waters. We should be eating salads from the greenhouse in two weeks and I hope to never buy salad greens again. I need to study Eliot Coleman's book this summer and learn how he does the year round growing.When we lived in Maine, I kept greens in the greenhouse all but 3 months out of the year. Now i am going to do 12.Did some transplanting also as the trays of peppers and tomatoes are ready to go to the next pot. Also planted some nasturtiums and watermelens in flats. Need to do some more of my fancy tomato seeds and some cayenne peppers.
Also we made some great chevre cheese this week. Different ones had dried apricots, dill, garlic, etc. Even the kids liked them on their bagels. I have been making them hot chocolate everyday with the abundance of goat milk we have coming in. We are getting 1.5 gallons a day from two goats. We need to make more cheese today. We want to try hard cheeses as soon as we have time to read the book and order the supplies. Our chickens [ we have 18 ] are giving us 10 eggs a day. that should increase to 15 in the near future. I have 60 baby chicks coming on May 5.
Well that's it. My gator was a great investment. We have used it alot for farm work and fun. Need to wak up the kids for a big day at the Olympics.