Farm Stuff

Garlic Chives Blossom

The few days I spent at the farm between the weddings was spent mowing and planting the garden. We  had the drywaller come while we weren't there to do the ceiling. It looks really good (which is a relief) and saved us a lot of time.
Gardening update... neighbor Jim came over with his tractor & plowed two long furrows for potaoes. That saved me so much time. I planted Yukon Gold, Yellow Finn, Rose Finn Fingerlings & German Butterball. Most of them are coming up already after a week and a half. Next came ten kinds of beans (Lazy Housewife, Calypso, Ireland Creek Annie, Hidatsa Shield, Hidatsa Red, Charlevoix Dark Red Kidney, Boston, Lina Ciscos Bird Egg, Fiskeby soybean , Envy soybean), Purple Top White Globe turnips, Lacinato kale, Silverbeet & Rainbow chard, radishes (French Breakfast), sunflowers, cilantro, beets (Detroit Red, Chioogia), zucchini (Black Beauty, Cocozelle Bush), cucumbers (Double Yield, Poona Kheera, Parade), pumpkins (Small Sugar, Young's Beauty, Dickenson) and squash (Jauneet Et Verde, Verte Et Blanc, Table Queen, Summer Crookneck, Waltham Butternut, Long Island Cheese).
Then & planted some flowers. Feverfew, Crane's Bill, Rudbeckia, Carpathian Harbell & Astilbe. That was all in one day. The next day I planted transplants. Peppers (Habernaro,
Sheeprose Pimento, Golden), tomatoes (Cherry Roma, Beam's Yellow Pear, Amish Paste), eggplant, leeks, brussels sprout, cabbage (green & red). One to the herbs of oregano, basil, chocolate mint, hyssop & plain & curly parsley.
This was all planted on half the garden space. The other half I planted in organic clovers (Cinnamon & yellow). I plan to leave this area dormant until we move up there. Clover will help bring nitrogen into the soil and hopefully keep the weeds out. After I broadcast the seed, I went over the soil with the golf cart to compact the seed so the birds wouldn't eat it all.

Clover is coming up.

I still had a few things left to plant before I left the next day, so I planted peppermint, Black-eyed Susan and ten Blue Spruce pine trees I received for joining The Arbor Day Foundation again. Oh, I also put down 5 bags of mulch in the flower border.
I was totally whipped after a hard day of mowing and two full days of planting. I left the next morning for home to start packing again. Can't wait to settle down again into a semi-calm state :-)
We were at the farm this past weekend (Memorial Day) and moved a lot of our stuff. After unloading the van & trailer, Steve started mowing & trimming and I went to work in the garden again.
Here is what I planted on Sunday...
Lettuce-Gold Rush, Slobolt, Barcarole, Jericho
Spinach-Monnopa, America
Carrot-Scarlet Nantes, Scarlet Keeper, Dragon
Two other squash-forgot to write them down :-)
Eggplant (3)
Onion sets-yellow, white & red (60 each)
Tomato transplants-Amish Paste, Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry
Pepper transplants-King of the North, Wenk's Yellow
Nasturtium-Black Velvet & Ladybird (edible flowers)
More mints-catmint & peppermint

I tried something different this year in the garden. I pla nted onions throughtout the garden & leeks bordering the one side of the garden by the potatoes. I am hoping that plants in the allium family will help keep away pests when mixed thoughout the garden.

The garlic is huge now. Should be getting scapes soon. After the garlic is harvested in July, I will be planting the fall crop of lettuces, etc. where the garlic was. The beans are all up too. Strawberries are getting started. A few ripe ones on the vines and there are a lot of blueberries on the bushes. We covered them with netting before we left for home so the birds won't be the ones enjoying them.

Columbine

I am done ( I think) planting the garden. This coming weekend is the final move of excess stuff to the farm. The townhouse here will be empty and I will be cleaning it next Wednesday before the closing on Thursday. We are very lucky to have sold it when we did. Even though we lost a lot of money, it could be even worse. A short sale went on the market last week for $40,000 lower than what we got. It is a terrible time for real estate around here now. We are thankful we didn't end up paying the bank to get rid of it. An option if we wouldn't have sold it was to rent it out, but we didn't want to take the risk of a non-payer when we are on a lower income at the farm. That would hurt the budget.
So I have written enough and taken up an hour of packing time. Have to get busy now. Hope everyone is having a great spring!

                                              Garden is planted and beans are up.

Still here...

Where does the time go? We've been so busy lately, I seem to come to the end of the day with no brain cells left to blog.

On the house sale front...we finally got word that the buyer has his loan commitment as of last Friday. Banks are really slow to approve anything right now. He was pre-approved too. I was holding my breath until that phone call. We are set to close on the 10th of June. I should be packing up the garage right now but I have the urge to write. We took a van & trailer load to the farm this weekend and have only one weekend left to get the rest moved out. Not too much left, but enough to keep us busy.

 I wanted to let everyone know that we had two beautiful wedding events, first Amy (our daughter) & Rob on May 15th. It was perfect in every way. The sun came out as the ceremony was starting. Everyone had a great time & of course, the bride was beautiful. They had a band and Steve & I danced almost every dance. Fun! Here are a few picures.

Rob's sister officiated & did a great job.

Rob's niece Savanna.

Amy's best friend Lea.

Steve & Amy.

The happy couple!

The following weekend was my niece Kellie & Eric's wedding. It was another beautiful day for an outside wedding. It was in Chicago at Architectural Artifacts. It was fun to look around at all the antiques while we waited for the wedding to start & afterwards. Some pics...

My sister Cathy, mother of the bride & Eric's brother.

Niece Trisha, sister of the bride.

Great-niece Addy, flower girl.

Great-niece Noelle, flower girl.

The happy couple, Kellie & Eric.

Son Shane & Jaelyn.

Kristin, Tim & Jaelyn came up for both events. Jaelyn made her "debut" as most of the extended family hadn't seen her yet. She was a happy baby for both events. So we got to see her 3 weekends in a row (including the baptism the week before Amy's wedding.) I am having withdrawals :-(.

Here is a family photo from Kellie's wedding.

The day after.

In between the weddings, I made it to the farm for a few days to mow & put the garden in. I'll blog about farm stuff next post.

Welcome Rain at the Farm

We drove up yesterday afternoon after having lunch with Steve's dad. Rain was in the forecast but we just got sprinkled on. We brought a van full of stuff from the attic at home. It is exciting to be moving stuff from the town home to here. Next week we will begin packing up garage stuff and the rest of the boxes in the attic and bring up another load. The buyer's bank called to let us know that the appraiser will be calling us next week to set up a time to come over. The sooner the better :-). When the appraisal is done, we can start moving some of the furniture to the farm. The closing is set for June 10th. Next weekend is the last weekend we will be up here for a while. Since it rained so much today, I didn't get the chance to mow and it is long after a 2 week absence. Tomorrows forecast is rain, too. My gooseberry & jostaberry trees were delivered on Thursday but they will have to wait until next weekend to be planted, I'm afraid.
So today we built a shelf in the basement out of lumber we had here to hold some of the boxes we are bringing up. Next week we will probably build another one for the garage items.

We are starting to try to keep things organized. I am going up in the attic tomorrow to categorize the piles of boxes so I can find things more easily. We will be moving almost everything from the town home here, so it needs to be in some order.

Tonight we walked over to Eli & Lizzie's to get some eggs. The boys were shoeing a horse, the baby sheep were running around in the pasture and the new calf was peaking out of the barn. Everyone seemed to be healthy. We stayed & talked until a visitor (Lizzie's brother) arrived from Ohio.

Last Sunday, I headed down to visit Kristin, Tim & Jaelyn and stayed until Tuesday afternoon. I just love being there! I got to watch Jaelyn all day Monday while Kristin & Tim went to work. Kristin's day off is Tuesday, so we got a chance to hang out too. Jaelyn is so sweet. She loves seeing herself in the mirror now. She smiles & makes noises like she is talking.

I had to get back home by Wednesday morning for the home inspection. Everything went pretty well. We did find out that the central air unit wasn't grounded. Wish our inspector had found that when we bought. We had it fixed by Thursday morning at a cost of $80. The only other thing (that I heard about so far) is having CO2 detectors installed. It is a new law as of 2008. Not sure if we will have to do that or if the buyer will do it. Haven't got the final report back yet.

So things are moving along. June will be here before we know it. With a baptism and two weddings before we move, seems like every moment has to be productive. We have three weekends free to finish moving. What a rush!