Still waiting

We are still in the negotiating process on the farm we hope to buy. We did get good news from the contractor we spoke with regarding an addition - he will be glad to let us do as much of the work we would like in order to save money and to learn some valuable skills. The boys are excited about the prospect of picking up some extra money for painting barns and outbuildings there and the girls are talking through decorating ideas.

We went ahead and decided to put the plants I bought almost two months ago in the ground here yesterday. Most of the plants I bought survived but are kind of leggy. Not sure what kind of harvest we will get but we figured some is better than none and by the time we move it will be about 3 weeks from first frost. One of the boys put up three cattle panels and we planted peppers (Chocolate, Purple Beauty, King of the North red, Orange Bell and Jalapeno) and tomatoes (Roma, Gold Medal, Persimmon, Goliath, Early Girl) along these.

We also planted three rows of cabbage (we eat a lot of fermented sauerkraut and coleslaw), one row of bunching onions and 4 rows of potatoes. Today we will plant the one pumpkin plant, several butternut squash and few melon plants that survived. We dont expect any harvest from these but hopefully the new owners can put a frost cover over them and get some benefit.

We had several potato plants spring up in our garden beds from last year as well as quite a few squash plants. Today we will weed those. My lettuce, peppers and tomatoes in the earth boxes are doing well and we should harvest from all of those, God willing. We have a beautiful stand of oats growing in our used hay/manure pile so we have been pulling handfuls of this and feeding it to the animals.

We plan to haul all of our used hay/manure from this past winter to the new place (going to rent a tractor for this) and use it to fertilize and mark new garden beds. I will continue with Dick Raymond and Ruth Stout methodology and see how it works (raised beds and tilled beds). I am excited to use "Dick Raymond's Gardening Year" next year.

Finally, looking forward to listening to Vision Forum's Baby Conference on CD soon and a couple of books are being added to my wish list - the first being, "Kick the Hay Habit" by Jim Gerrish and soon to follow, Joel Salatin's new book, being released in September.

That's all for now...:-)