This is shameful

Who is in charge of laundry around here? 

Right, me.

Grammy's Workout

Since I've been living on the farm, I haven't worked out...okay...actually, I have an aversion to working out at all...much unlike nearly all of the Four Sisters Farm family...like Pop who believes in a consistent workout involving strength training and aerobics like running, EJ who loves to run - a long way - like miles, DW who is training to run farther than she's ever run before, and Farm Chick, Pretty Princess, and Rock Star who faithfully go to the gym to hit the treadmill or eliptical. (shudder)

Today, it occurred to me that although I don't run or go to the gym, I am far from sedentary. I enjoy being outside and working on things. So if I'm outside and working, doesn't that mean I'm working out? It's just semantics really, right?

Anyway...I decided to run you through my workout today. You might want to try it and see if you can keep up. Keep in mind that this was just the morning routine (try not to feel sorry for me).

• I began with Flexibility Training - I climbed up and down the porch railing to install steel "eyes" on the roof line trim boards for hanging plants, Christmas lights, etc. repeating this up and down process until the entire porch has enough eyes (it's a big porch, okay?).
• Next I moved on to Strength Training - I loaded firewood into big wagon and drug the wagon to the back door; then carried the wood down the stairs to the fireplace...repeating until the wagon was empty. Next, I grabbed a sledge hammer and pounded the pieces of old damaged firebricks into small pieces in the driveway. (I noticed the dogs backed way off when I started this routine!)
• Then it was time for Aerobics - I watered all the animals by making trips between the well house and the hydrant. Dogs - check! - 1 and 2 and cats - check! - 3 and 4 and chickens - check! 5 and 6 and ...well you get the idea. I'm just glad we don't have a horse, cow, pig, goat or other livestock yet...I'll have to work up to that but it's good to have goals.
• Next, I moved on to Step Aerobics - I began in the basement and carried up a load of laundry, washed it, moved it to the dryer, carried up the next load, etc. and when it was all clean, I carried it all back down the steps and put them away. Granted, it's a slow moving kind of step aerobics but it does involve steps.
• After all that, I went for Advanced Aerobics - I chased the one crazy chicken who "flew the coop" while the water in the chicken watering thing was being replenished. (Note: all the other chickens were being good and patient through this process.)

I think if I keep it up I'll be really fit. Now if I can just "exercise" self-control and limit my portions of Farm Chick's awesome cooking!!

A is for Apricots

I know you are expecting a blog about a certain wedding...but...Pretty Princess and Romeo have been busy getting married, going on their honeymoon, and moving into an apartment. They will do a post soon, but in the meantime...

We have a lot of apricots! There are three apricot trees at Four Sisters Farm and they are ripening! I'm in apricot heaven! Pop and I picked a bunch and then started to work...sorting, washing, pitting, soaking, dehydrating, freezing, and enjoying some fresh...as in a fresh apricot cobbler! YUMMY!

WEEDING WEEDING, and MORE WEEDING!!!!

Ok so this past Saturday my lovely bride and I went hunting and gathering (went to Aldi the greatest grocery store in the world, which happens to be owned by one of the top 10-15 richest people in the world), and then weeded and did some much needed gardening, or at least as much as you can do when you've received 10"+ of rain in the last 10 days. For those of you counting that's over 1"/day, when most people would say that 1"/week is good. So we may be losing some plants because of them drowning.

Here are the green onions that came up from bulbs. Growing nicely...

Next to the green onions is 3 rows of carrots...also coming along very nicely.Here's one of the more mature pea plants grabbing ahold of the trellis.

Here's the corn after we have put down the newspaper and put hay on top of that for mulch so we don't have to weed! How awesome it that!

You can see our 50+ garlic that are coming up here. You can see the freshly tilled dirt to the left where we planted our basil, dill, parsley, and thyme. So now we have our full herb garden.

Here's some modern art that we constructed in the middle of the garden to symbolize the bean in it's struggle to grow out of the dirt and once it does....ok that's big load of poo....ha ha. These are our Tee pees that we built, I built two already and we just built three more. This metal one is the tallest. I don't know if the beans will fully use this, but we'll see.

As you can see most of them are more like around 5' tall or so.

These are just some of the weeds that we ad to pull.

This is not a weed, but lettuce, either buttercrunch or salad bowl, I don't know which they gave me a mix at the seed shop.

Here's a couple of broccoli, both have a "tree" coming out also!

My new Pet........Bobcat...

Ok so it's not the "pet" kind, instead it's the "toy" kind. OH WHAT FUN IT IS TO PLAY WITH MY BOBCAT!!!! I moved a mountain of dirt and limbs and grass today from the side yard to the burn pile. It only took me about an hour and I was done. It would have taken forever to move any other way. I'll also be able to pile more together the burn pile as it is and make it taller instead of so spread out. Oh the amazing things I will be able to do with this pet, oh I mean toy. Like when I have my 9 tons of manure delivered I'll be able to manipulate it very easily!

The most gardening done yet...

So Saturday we needed to get some more things done on the garden before it got much more warm. So we were out both Farm Chick (FC) and I and the cowboys. This is the first time we were going to try to do all of this together. I have done most of the gardening on my own while the cowboys were playing or FC was doing various other things. So now we were all out there getting our hands dirty. To get ready to garden, I put the gate up and put some toys in with the tires for the boys. I had especially built this area for us to keep the boys in and NOT in the garden stepping on stuff and digging things up...etc. So as you see it here is how it sat for most of the time that we were out there because the littlest cowboys thought that since his mommy was there that he had to be right at her heels. This didn't make for a good time for FC and I.

So I had to take matters into my own hands....I parked the tractor just outside the fence and look who was playing, just sitting on the seat for around 2 hours of his Saturday!!!

So we planted green onions (sets) pictured here... red and yellow...around 120+ of them.
Here's another picture of them...with the eldest cowboy. He helped us pack them into the soil, and put them into the valley.

Then we also planted regular onions and lettuce. We planted around 132 onions by my count, I did them in staggering 3 rows here. Right next to the lettuce that we planted also, which is between them and the peas. They look soooo good now just standing straight up and already there. We even have about 30-50 onions left over that we could plant later if we wanted to.

We then planted 7 strawberry plants and a blueberry plant in our raised bed that you can see in the background here. So we now have 9 different things in the ground growing. OH AND WE HAVE PEAS that have germinated! WAHOO!!! I won't have to plant but a couple of things in April, and then another 9 things in May. So we'll have a break for a while. However tomorrow we get our drip system and I'm sure that I'll be more excited than a 4 year old on Christmas eve when I get home tomorrow night, ready to set it up!

Keep posted on the updates on how that goes!

Some St. Patty's Day Farmin'

Ok so here's the trellis that I built for the peas. Again, there's t-posts with 2x4s lashed to the top of them. Halfway nailed in nails to tie the line to. I ran the line both horizontal and vertical to create the grid.

Here's another view.

Today I got off work, just a bit early and hoed my potato rows. The veggie bible that I have read said to put them 3-4" deep, so I dug the trenches about 3' apart and 3-4" deep. This is pretty tough work. It'll be gratifying in the end though. As I grow older I have become more and more willing to do really hard work to get to the end I want. Not that I didn't do hard work or laboring work when I was younger, in fact most of my jobs that were summer jobs were hard labor jobs. Now I just really am enjoying more of this kind of work.
I also took and planted my broccoli plants! Don't they look great!??!! It's now also nice to have some things growing ABOVE the ground! Makes it look even more like a garden. I'm a little nervous about myself because I'm rather impatient and have a hard time waiting. I realize now God is probably up there thinking..."ha ha ha, EJ has this great idea to plant a garden, this is going to be really funny to watch how he deals with the waiting...I hope he grows and learns to be better." If not Him, then I know my lovely wife will be saying that!

Tending to the Chickens

Last week, I loaded the our children up in the ol' SUV and headed to the farm for an afternoon visit. I hadn't been there since the chickens started laying eggs!


My memories of chickens revolve around a scary rooster experience as a kid, so I was sort of surprised that the chickens think that they are pets! They even let us pet them. Farm Chick says they are like cats...they arch their backs and stick up their tail feathers when you pet them!


I apologize for the dust flecks on my camera lens but I had to include this photo of the littlest cowboy. I think I will dub him "the chicken whisperer!" So cute!

The chickens don't quite "get it" yet when it comes to laying eggs in the nesting boxes. So you have to be careful not to step on eggs that they have randomly laid around the chicken coop!

It was a record setting egg day...there were 8 to collect in the afternoon and Farm Chick found 2 more after we left!

I was cracking up at the oldest Cowboy's "copy chicken!"

EJ had given the kids a chore to do. Their job was to get hay, bring it to the chicken coop and put it in the nesting boxes for the chickens. Hopefully more hay will encourage the chickens to nest down in it and lay eggs there instead of the floor!

So off to the pole barn they went, wagon in tow!

Lou is pretty handy with a pitch fork as long as everyone stays out of accidental "poking range!"

After the wagon was loaded up, they headed back to the chicken coop!

They filled those nesting boxes with every last bit of hay from the wagon!

The kids love spending time at the farm and I love to see them excited to help out and do things that are productive and helpful! "Good stuff" as Grammy says!