Welcome back to the farm everyone. It has been a while since you have heard from us, I know. The cold winter months are usually the time when less gets done physically and more gets done mentally around the farm. It was no different here.
So, what have we been up to this winter? Well, a lot of it was the same as what was said in the beginning of Garden: Part 1 that delayed that blog from being posted. OVERTIME. From early February through April things go hairy at my jobs. The weeks where I didn’t put in over 70 hours a week between my EMS job and my Tractor Supply job were easily countable on one hand and didn’t take up very many fingers! That left precious little time to do farm projects, much less write about them.
May brought about a lot of changes though. Early in May, I accepted a promotion at Tractor Supply and shifted my status at my EMS job to part time. This has provided me more time at home and a lot less stress in my life. Another thing that happened in May was our first vacation of any size since 2019. We had been places but not on a real vacation. We ventured to Texas to see my best friend and his newly minted fiancé to celebrate with them. It was a great week of relaxation and fun getting to spend time with them again.
As for the farm during this time, not a lot happened. We got some chicks at the store, and they fell victim to a hungry opossum one night just before they were to go out on pasture and slowly be integrated into the flock. We lost our precious Red but the circumstances are unclear what happened. She disappeared on day and weeks later I found what was left as I was cutting out a walking path around the pasture with the mower. She is sorely missed.
March 30th, we had a large storm system that rolled through our area. There were tornadoes that touched down in our county and the counties around us. I was at my EMS job and Delisa was in the storm shelter with the dogs all secure and safe. When I got home the next morning, I surveyed the damage. There was a tree down across our fence onto the levee of the pond. Luckily it didn’t block access to the back of the property and none of the animals were harmed. The duck hut, which has sat pretty much completely unused, was flipped over. The chicken tractor we used for the meat birds last year faired the worst. It was flipped and tossed and flattened. Despite the damage, it is being rebuilt. I was worried it was completely destroyed but most of the side panels are usable with minor repairs and braces. The tarp is a total loss and the chicken wire is in shambles but the lumber is repairable.
Another small project we did manage to get done was some tree planting. We bought four trees at the end of the fall for 75% off to plant around the farm. We got two cypress trees, one weeping willow and red bud tree. The cypress trees went by the pond on the far end to offer shade to that side of the pasture. The willow was planted near where we feed the fish in the pond and where we will put the dock one day. The red bud we planted in the back yard near the storage shed to give us a pop of color and more shade for the pups when they are outside in the summer.
The majority of what we did was planning. We planned projects for the rest of the year and years to come. Some of these projects you will see write ups on soon, such as the garden planting and some rotational grazing. The mid-term length projects that will take most of the summer and part of the fall that we hope to complete are the addition of a small aquatic system for beauty and growth of plants in our back yard and the dock in the pond. Others are the long-term projects still in development that will affect our farm, our life, and possibly spawn a business that will help us be more self-sufficient. With these still being more nebulous ideas and goals that are ever changing as research is done and our knowledge expands on the subjects, its not even worth revealing until more details are firm and there is an actual possible start date.
I hope you will follow us along on all of the journeys and projects we undertake here at the farm and offer us insight and suggestions as we learn through our experiments. Going forward from here we have a goal to try and post twice a week on the blog and be far more active on our social media accounts which can be found at the bottom of the page. As always, have a Sunflowery day
Sunflower Farms MS 