Spring Gardening Time!

We're so excited for spring to be in full spring. We had a nice thunderstorm last night with lots of rain, and with the temperatures being in the 60s, and even forecast to get into the 70s in the coming days, no doubt everything will start exploding with growth!

I didn't get my seeds started as early as I would have liked (no surprise there!), but I'm hoping I'll have enough time to get at least some of the spring crops before it gets too hot for them. 

I did some cleaning and rearranging in the greenhouse, which will also double as some a storage space for my housefire-salvaged "stuff". 

These lettuce and brassicas over-wintered in the hoophouse and will be 

transplanted into the main garden. 

First time growing onions! Hope they do well!

We'll have about 75 tomato plants this year! I plan on doing a LOT of canning!

Blackberries are coming in nicely!

Lots of seeds started for the summer garden!

The boys helped me with some new mulch for the rose garden. I want to keep it well managed this year- last year it pretty much grew wild and the weeds and grass were out of control!

Repurposed Roof for Horsebarn!

This was a major project that's been on the top of our priority list for a long time. The old shingle roof was so bad and even the underlying plywood, that the entire roof had to be ripped off.

"Before"

Measuring all of our used metal we got off the milkbarn (greenhouse) roof.

Removing the old roof.

It looked so different without a roof!

Handy Husband, goofing off. :)

Half way done!

The new fascia boards look great!

We had saved all the metal we'd taken off the old milkbarn (now the Greenhouse), and only had to buy a few extra pieces to have enough metal for the whole roof. It turned out great! It's such a relief to not have to worry about that anymore!

Greenhouse Half-Done

Over the last few months handy husband has been remodeling the milk barn, turning it into my long-desired greenhouse. We replaced the tin roof with corrugated plastic, and cleared out the old fixtures inside. So far we only have the front half completed, and ready to use. We don't have any beds built yet, so will just do container gardening for now. I'm very excited about getting to use this little space and can't wait to see the growing potential!

Blackberries!

We had no idea this was even here, but look at all the blackberries we have on this massive bush out by the milk barn! We made cobbler with this first batch, and hopefully we will have a lot more in the coming days!

Evening walk...

Handy Husband and I took a walk through some of the pastures tonight, checking on fence-lines, taking inventory of what needs fixing and where. The above photo is taken from the hay pasture in the back of the property, looking up to the farmstead. From left to right, the buildings are: haybarn, milkbarn, chicken/rabbit barn, horse barn.

The sun cast some beautiful rays through the aisle of the horse barn:



Outbuildings, part 1

Inside view of the horse barn. Most of the stalls only
need minor work. We'll be bringing my horse home in the
spring... he's currently being boarded at my parent's farm.

Our farm was a dairy at one time.
The milk barn, shown here, is a good, solid, block building.