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Monday, May 21, 2012

First major kid work day!

Since the kids have been off of school since the afternoon of the 14th they have been going to ... bible school ... the last week.  Well now they are officially on our work time now, and today they are getting their first full day of work since they started school.  We are also putting them on a "withdrawal diet", as they'd been eating food from the school which of course is all prepackaged.. and then I learn as par for the course they'd get soda's from teachers.  They'd come home very crabby from this and so we are taking the processed crud out of their diets  this whole week.

We started the morning off with some pond digging, the one good thing about the dry weather we've had is it's making it much easier to dig the pond.  Our pick is cutting through the dirt much faster now, the only thing holding us up now is my eldest daughter who takes 10 minutes to shovel the dirt that we cut out in a couple of minutes.  We only got 5 wheel barrows full done before the time allotted for that chore ran out.

After our lunch break we are going to dig out the chicken yard some more, this will be assisted by my youngest as my son helped with the pond.  So the older 2 kids will be on puppy watch while me and my youngest works on the chicken yard.  Silver's been out clearing more with the weedeater, and I'm hoping this fall we'll get all the brush out of our clearing and we can start setting up for  new garden beds in late fall.

I have some pictures to show you now that I had to take with our phone as our camera still has no batteries, so if the quality isn't that great sorry:

This is one of the buckets we are going to use for our tomato plants, as you can see the bottom has a big crack in it.  We got 5 of these about 2 years ago from the MFA here for $5 each.  They had contained some kind of feed for livestock, they sell the broken ones for a song to anyone who wants them.

This is one of the buckets after I have put in three of my tomato plants and a dill plant.  I read last year that dill will keep horn worms off of tomatoes, so we will try it.  The soil for these pots is, chicken manure, our clay soil, perlite, and oyster shell.

This tire pot has 2 basil plants and a stevia in it.  Yes, I'm using tires; they are our old tires from the van.  I am hoping that it works out well for growing things in, I've heard recently a large amount of people using used tires for all kinds of things so; I figured what the hay.

This one has marjoram, oregano, thyme, and peppermint in it. Now these pots have the same mix as the tomato one, except I did not put in any oyster shell.  As I am using the oyster shell to prevent blossom end rot on the tomatoes.  TI worked last year when placed on top of the soil, so I'm trying it mixed into it.

This is one of the volunteer squash plants, if you can see it; they are getting ready to flower.  I am guessing it's a summer squash type, but I am not sure which kind of summer squash it is.

This is one of the four wintergreen plants that I bought and planted.  As you can see it has new growth on it, I am hoping they all take well to the ground.

This is part of our bush beans that I planted, they seem to love the space they are in as they are growing very fast and lush.  I am hoping that they flower out soon, and I'm hoping to get lots of beans as my favorite thing in the garden is to go out and pick beans right from the plant and snack on them.

This is the Darkstar summer squash that I planted, every single seed had sprouted, I am hoping they grow well past this point, as I'm looking forward to having some nice squash stir fry's for lunch in mid summer.

This is the one lonely sweet pepper that we got from the ones I started, all the rest of our peppers are hot ones.  So I put the sweet out into the garden and when I get more soil set up I am going to be potting the hot peppers.

This is 3 of our now 5 Brussel sprouts, they are having some minor cabbage worm issues but otherwise they seem to be fine.

This is one little bit of the wild blackberry plants growing in  our clearing.  I wanted to show everyone how many berries are appearing on the plants this year, which is like double that there were last year.  I just hope they get good sized by picking time.

I'm hoping this is an actual wild grape, I need to locate the book I have that shows the difference in the leaves between the grape and the other plant (I can't recall if it's moon berry, or moon weed).  They seem to be producing a lot so far.

This is the wild rose that I have been "training" into a piece of fence.  It is going to have a ton of flowers this year!  I can't wait to see them.

Well I need to get off here and heat up lunch, we're having beef soup from last night.  Then I get to go out and drag my girls to help me muck out the chicken yard, so we can mix up more soil later.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

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