Season is moving on

How does time fly by so fast? Whooosh and it's been a month.

Tree planting season almost slipped by, but tree orders should be arriving this month and a few of the potted ones have been planted - the two pears that I got last year, very late, and didn't get planted. Those are in the back of the orchard, where we have to protect them from the neighbor's goat. There's an 8 foot fence going up on the north side of the property, which act as a trellis; the hardy kiwis will finally get planted, along with a grape or two. But enough of future plans...

Some starts got planted out under a tarp in the upper beds, and some in the lower beds without protection. The ones in the lower beds don't look so good, they look dry - it's been dry and cold mostly, lately. Seeds planted a few weeks ago haven't come up yet. The kale is putting out small new leaves which are yummy, I eat those whenever we can! There are still beets and carrots in the garden, and one parsnip. And we still have onions, garlic, and potatoes. Dunno if any of the squash is unrotted; the test ones in the SB root cellar have spots but aren't totally gone. I'm giving a talk on seed saving on March 19, for the permaculture group; I'm excited out it, trying to prepare well. There's a lot of talk about seed saving but I hope I can get past both the mystique that intimidates people, but clarify the long term genetic issues so people know where they are going.

The turkey adventure is over; something (most likely a racoon) ate or scared away one male and both females. So we butchered the last two males. The narragansetts are smaller (about 20# live weight at 9mo) and with less breast then the BBB but we smoked him, it was still a very satisfactory turkey. Better a 20# live weight turkey than a 50# or 60#! We'll try again this year, trading tomato plants for poults or eggs.

I just ordered potatoes - forgot to separate and mark the seed potatoes after harvest last year, and I can't handle not knowing if I'm planing yukon gold or carola. I still need asparagus - new aspargus bed in the orchard is dug. And sweet potatoes, going to try again this year. I've received orders for nearly 200 tomato and pepper plants already, I'll start the seed starting this weekend. And we're still milking Lily; Calla and the sheep are due this month. The grass isn't really growing strongly yet in the pastures but the sheep need to come off the hayfield this weekend - we're trying to fence off the side yard so the sheep can act as lawn mowers.