Happenings on and Off the Farm

It’s been a while since I updated, because my attention was elsewhere. Life here goes on, chores have to be done and spring sweeps onward too quickly. But my father, the Farmer, went in to have a kidney removed this last week, and that held my attention much more than the farm. He won’t be home to the Farm for a while, he’s going to convalesce at his parent’s house, but in the meantime, life at the farm must go on. Yesterday I picked up the plants Dad and I had ordered a couple months ago, long before his diagnosis. We’d projected having the two of us to get them in the ground, so we got a little carried away. I planted eight fruit trees, peaches, apricots, and apples and one cherry yesterday as soon as I got home from the sale. They came bare-root and I knew those roots would dry out in the heat of a beautiful day like it was yesterday. Then Johann and I took the fifteen elderberry “twigs” out to the wettest swale in the pasture and put them in around the rocks down there. Dad and I plan to “Guild” the big rocks in our pasture (there are a lot of them – this is New Hampshire!) by planting berries on the south side and fruit or nut trees to the north side. This guild system will mark the rocks, and in a few years, produce useful results. But this swale is so wet that I can’t think of a tree that will be happy down there. We may just let it become a thicket of Elderberries.

Johann's sitting on one of the rocks we are marking.

Also that evening I planted the five lilacs and five rugosa roses up on the area around the house. They will fill in an area nicely behind one of my flowerbeds. I still have a couple hundred plants to put in, though! Sugar Maples, Balsam Fir, Bayberries, Blueberries, Strawberries, Figs, and Asparagus. It’ll be a busy week for all of us. I want to get a bunch of mulch, too, to keep my new babies from being overgrown.

The remainder of the plants waiting for homes.
Worms are our friends on the Farm!

While we were digging holes we found a lot of worms. Here on the farm, we love our worms. They are good to have in the soil, and Johann collects them and adds them to the greenhouse whenever he can. He used to put them in a bucket and called it his worm house, but his Grandpa persuaded him that the greenhouse could be his gigantic worm house, so now the little guy does some of Grandpa’s work for him by bringing them in it!


Comments

One response to “Happenings on and Off the Farm”

  1. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    I like this Cedar!! keep going..you’re doing a great job!