It was a cooler day after the bit of warmth we had last week. I was up before Herbie this morning, I woke at 5:30am and couldn’t fall asleep again, so started the day early on 4 hours sleep. It was our 9th wedding anniversary on Friday, and Herbie came downstairs all showered and shaved this morning, thinking I was going to surprise him with breakfast at a great place. I wasn’t, but we found a great place in Ada, we enjoyed it so much, although it was too cold to sit on the patio, that we made dinner reservations for Saturday. We invited Jackie and Gary to go with us.
Herbie spent hours cleaning Noddy, hand polished him nogal, so that we can put him up for sale. I really, really want to keep him, but Herbie said he can’t cut grass or make hay, so he has to go !!
I got stuck into my berry garden after walking Teri through it pointing out the herbs that came back up, and picking some asparagus spears for her to eat. She brought me a new mosquito plant and bought a lot of eggs, and I dug up an elderberry foundling seeing as the slips I gave her last time don’t seem to be doing too well. Hope this one grows. It should as I got a nice chunk of root with it. She also took a bit of marjoram and lemon balm with some roots to grow in her garden back in Chicago.
Marcela and Michael came for some maple syrup, soup bones and eggs, bringing their grand daughter who enjoyed the various animals.
I’ve planted some annuals in Maddies’ Garden after weeding and adding soil, so it’s looking prettyish. Need more seedlings, as well as a layer of farm compost over the new soil. I had 2 dump-truck loads of topsoil delivered. They couldn’t get the truck up our driveway, and Herbie didn’t want it going over the tunnel, so I spoke to Sue and had it dumped at the bottom of our driveway and then I brought it up, bucket load by bucket load, with our big tractor. Re-seeded her lawn and put straw over it to protect it from birds and erosion. I’ve spread most of it in our backyard as the path to the chicken house was sticking out about 2” which makes the tractor want to slip when there’s ice and snow on the ground. Still have to re-seed ours, but need to dig out the electric cable to the chicken house as it hasn’t worked for the last 2 years first. It already looks much better, Herbie congratulated me, although the geese have made another pond or two already. I can see all the plantain coming up, very little grass. Oy, animals are hard on the land !!
Hopefully I can cut hay this week. I walked across the hayfield on Friday after unsuccessfully looking for morels again, and the grass is already forming seed heads. But it rained today, and more is expected tomorrow and Tuesday, so maybe I can cut on Tuesday afternoon. We upgraded ¾ of our haying equipment. A 2005 haybine, a newish circular hay rake, and a brand new tedder, which should shorten the drying time by a day or two. Herbie took a loan against his 401K, but we couldn’t afford to include a round baler, but did manage to get a hay wagon. With us being down to 5 cows, well, 2 hopefully preggers Jersey heifers, 2 Jersey bulls, one not yet a year old, and our last remaining Scottish Highland yearling bull - beef for next year, maybe I can bale enough of our own hay for the Winter so we don’t have to buy. Will still have to pay Mike to bale for us, but that’s 80% cheaper than buying in.
I have gem squash seeds sprouting, thank you Susan and Jilian, and perhaps some of the 3 kinds of tomato seeds I’ve started are showing signs of sprouting. Herbie was enticed to grow leaf lettuce on a windowsill by one of his work colleagues, although I’m actually doing the work ! Seems the be a new thing on the farm - Herbie says what he would like, and I’m expected to execute. Well the lettuce is already about 2” tall, and I need to thin them out which is amazing as I’ve never been able to grow lettuce previously. But I need to re-fence the berry garden to keep the poultry out before I can plant anything delicious 😋. I bought a 330’ roll of sheep and goat fence, but it’s not enough to fence the whole veggie garden, plus I have to design and make poultry-proof gates too, but it may be enough for the berry garden.
For a late lunch today, I heated the leftovers from the FrankenChicken I roasted yesterday, with Yukon Gold potatoes, sweet potatoes, red and sweet onion, garlic cloves and lots of carrots, although I forgot there were peas too. Saw them on Herbies’ plate a little later.
Going to try catch some zzzzs, goodnight 😴.