I started off this week determined that we were not only going to finish planting our market garden but also plant our corn. Our market garden this year is a little more than half an acre, and what planting needs to be done is done by hand do to our lack of equipment. Same thing with the corn Steve uses the lawn tractor to make the rows and then we plant buy hand. It's a lot of work and after our long winter of lounging around in the house every muscle in my back is killing me.
So like the title says the garden is almost in. We learned quite a lot with last years attempt at a garden. Our plants are much closer together and so are our rows so this year we are planting probably three times the amount of seeds we planted last year in about the same space. We purchased stacks last year in order to hold up our many tomato plants and saved them to reuse this year. Yesterday about half way through the garden planting we realized we didn't have near enough stakes to finish. I don't have the money to buy more stacks so the 235 stacks that are needed in order to plant the peas and Jacob's Cattle bean's will have to be cut by my father and husband later today in order to finish the last 6 rows of our garden.
In light of this we finished planting our bush beans and set to work on the corn. Our corn rows are about 100 ft long each and sectioned in squares. We put in about a pound of seed per section, Five sections total. My hope is that we will have enough corn to eat fresh, sell, can, and to dry for soups, and to dry to supplement the chickens during the winter. Whether that will be enough I have no idea. It's trial and error here folks.So I'll let you all know how that turns out come fall.
It was really nice working in the garden and seeing all my chickens outside at their coop. They haven't got to much sense yet and with each pacing shower we got this weekend Steve and I had to manually put them into the coop to get them out of the soaking rain. They haven't got all there adult feather's yet and it's still only in the 60's for temperature here, so I thought being wet through might do them in, especially if they can't get dry before dark when the temperature goes back into the 40's. I decided we were going to have to move them into there coop manually when in the middle of one rain storm they were all huddled together under the coop with the wind ruffling their feathers and spraying them with rain. Hopefully they gain some common sense with age and figure out that in the coop is dry and warm during a storm, out of the coop is cold and wet. Are chickens supposed to be that clueless?
The rhubarb is almost ripe and I'm now searching around town looking for used canning jars so I can try my hand at some of the recipes I have for strawberry rhubarb pie filling and the various rhubarb jams, and I even have one for a rhubarb syrup. All the recipes will be located on the Recipe page that I'm adding to the site. Each time I can something new or make something new I'll add it to the list. The list should go in order of what ripens first and is therefore available. So of course rubarb is first followed by the various berries. I think it will be fun and you all get the benefits of my mistakes. I hope everyone enjoys it and I'll try to make sure I have pictures for each treat.
Well that's all for now, Time to go finish the planting, and tend to the kids. Hope you all enjoy the rest of the day.
God Bless
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