This week has brought about a "fight of the seasons". We went from the windows being opened, to the furnace running again, freezing temperatures at night, and finally some much-needed rain.
We lost a few nice tomato, zucchini and pepper plants. For the most part we came thru okay. I'm hoping the nights of covering a large portion of the garden are over. I'll be re-starting some seeds on some of the unusual/heirloom variety plants to hopefully still have these varieties-although late. I've got some of the old "standby variety" tomato/pepper plants to get in the garden this week, so at least we'll have some available around the normal time.
Onions, lettuce, spinach, radishes, rhubarb and peas seem to have come thru okay. We are gearing up to participate in our first Farmers' Market this year. We are going to do a "test set up" in the next week or two. We have our canopy, tables, baskets, several of the signs/labels made. I'm sure it will be quite the learning experience, but we are looking forward to it. If any of you have some helpful hints/advice, please feel free to leave me comments here - they would be much appreciated.
Our new laying chickens are growing very well. Many of them were put with the "odd-n-ends" assorted pen of chickens and they are all getting along well, although I'm not sure what the older chickens are thinking about all of the activity in their pen now. The spring meat chickens are growing well, some are getting brave enough to go out on sunny days and check out all the fresh green grass. We hope to be butchering this first round of chickens in mid-late May. Thanks to Herrick Kimball's how-to's and plans for building our own chicken plucker, we started butchering our own chickens last year.
I'm looking forward to the forecast of a few rainy days, so I have the excuse to finish up some craft items for the Farmers' Market too. I'd like to get one or two more batches of soap made, since they need to cure a couple weeks. As you can see in the picture, I spent the other day adding warp to the loom to start on a new batch of placemats and rugs. All the warp is on the loom, now I have 360 strings to tie onto the old ones, to make it easier to feed the new warp (strings) thru and get the tension tight for the next rug. That is the most tedious part. One of these days, I need to learn how to use the other two looms I have so I can designate each loom for particular projects. I was fortunate to find and old "Purdue Weaver's Club" loom a couple years ago. It still has a delicate woven tapestry that someone was working on several decades ago. This loom is portable enough to possibly use it for demonstrations one day, now I just need to become proficient in the use of it. I truly enjoy taking an "antique" piece of equipment and using it to make beautiful and useful "current" pieces for the home.
If you're interested, feel free to check out our website - It will give you a little more insight as to our farm and the crafts we make. Double Bar G
Wishing you all a week of beautiful spring weather ahead and a chance to get out and enjoy it!
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