I just finished reading through the past couple of months' worth of posts and have discovered that I have started nearly every one with an apology that it's taken me so long between postings. Oh, my. I'm just not gonna' do that anymore. My goal is to be more consistent and post more often and I will keep working towards that, but I'm going to quit apologizing with every post. Life just is what it is right now and, sometimes, it's challenging. That means I don't get to put in the time to writing posts as much as I'd like to right now. I'm just going to keep forging ahead and we'll see how things go from here. Thanks very much for taking the ride with me and for reading, regardless of how often I am able to post.
It's raining here in our part of the northeast today and it's about 34 degrees out. An overall cold, raw, day. Challenging to deal with the dogs because none of us (me or the dogs) like it when they go out in the rain. They come in as wet mudballs and none of us enjoys dealing with that. But, they don't really like being stuck inside, either. Beau just hurt his paw jumping up to try to reach a rawhide chew that I'd put up because they were fighting over it. Usually, it's all just a grand game for them and nothing is serious. This time, however, Marcie got very serious about defending it and scared me when she lunged for Beau when he got too close. That is NOT acceptable so I put her in time out and put up the chew. When I let her out, Beau tried to resume the game by jumping up to get the chew, but caught his paw on the door to Marcie's crate when I told him to get down and hurt himself badly enough to yelp. No visible damage, thank goodness! Now that the drama has subsided, they are all sacked out on the floor and peace has returned to our tiny temporary home.
Tiny by my standards, anyway. Somewhere around 300 square feet. We never thought we'd be in here so long but the house is taking longer to complete than we expected. Things are finally moving along, though, and the interior work is picking up speed. All of the downstairs has been drywalled and the kitchen cabinets are about to be installed. Fireplace (with hand forged 18th century reproduction crane! yay!) and masonry for the woodstove have been completed, just waiting on the exterior chimney to be finished. I need to go take some pictures for you when it's sunny again. I am hoping to be able to move in in March, but it will probably be April or May.
Farm work right now consists of garden planning and getting space ready for livestock. If all goes according to plan this year we'll have chickens, turkeys, pigs, and maybe even a couple of sheep, with a livestock guardian dog to go along with them all. And most likely, no vacations together. It may be silly, but that is a sad trade-off for me. It is, however, a reality of farming for most.
Planning the garden isn't as simple as just deciding what to plant (though that's not always simple, either), it also includes WHERE to plant it. We have a long term permaculture plan for our farm, so that has to be taken into consideration. We also have to consider issues of succession planting. For example, you shouldn't plant nightshades (ie: tomatoes and potatoes) in the same ground two years in a row. We had lots of tomatoes and potatoes last year, so that will take some serious consideration. And we want to plant legumes (peas, beans) where the corn was to restore some of the nitrogen in the soil that the corn (a heavy nitrogen feeder) depleted. I also really want to try a couple of traditional 3 Sisters mounds, so we need to decide where to place those. The list goes on with things like that, and then there is the added issue of companion planting to seriously complicate it even more! Slow going, but it will be worthwhile in the end. I'm just getting anxious about ordering seeds, because I know I was behind last year and had to scramble to find bouquet dill when my first choice source sold out. I also couldn't get some flowers that I wanted for the same reason, so I am pushing myself to get the plan completed and things ordered asap. And, just to throw a wrench into the whole works, school is starting again for me. Fortunately, I have a less involved schedule this semester. I'm pretty happy about that because I think, between school, house and farm, things are going to be pretty busy.
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