I Am A Proud Strawberry Mama

When the arrived a few days ago, they were just tangled roots and a couple of stalks and - despite lovingly planting them and watering in - I honestly thought they wouldn't survive. Well, look what a bit of loving can do! They are beginning to get leafy. I have them in the multi tower, and since our weather is so changeable right now, they are in the kitchen and under the light. I'm hoping all 25 will flourish but I'm def a proud strawberry mama right now.
 

The Little Things All Add Up

Today has been another day of accomplishments, of little things that are getting us slowly towards our ultimate goal.

Hubby dug up one of our fruit trees over here, a peach, and we took that, and the 2 chestnut trees, over to the new property and he planted them. The peach went into the orchard area, and the 2 chestnuts are down near the swampy bit of the creek

where the deer come to feed. We have tree protectors around them, attached to a fence pole, but apparently they are an amazing source of deer food, so should encourage plenty of visitors once they are grown. It'll be nice to watch them early mornings and at dusk, when we are living over there. Hopefully, they'll come to get to know me like the ones here did.

Unfortunately, overnight we had our 2 unwelcome guests come rooting down there, the hogs. 

A friend is going to sit out there and try to take care of the problem for us, and fill his freezer at the same time. I can't have them tearing everywhere up.

On our way home, as we got to the end of our road where the goats live, we saw someone outside and ended up speaking to the goats owner. Having had goats ourselves, I know how expensive it can be to keep them fed through Winter ... and here we have a grass/weed area that they could munch on for free, so I'd been trying to see them outside for about a month to let them know they could take them down there if they wanted to.

The lady (Amy) apparently used to live by us here and remembered going by ours when we had goats roaming the front yard with our chickens and dogs. She used to live in the subdivision just down the road. I still miss my goats.

Rammy was our first, we got him when he was 3 weeks old, in June 2003. She has a female with very similar markings. Rammy had such a quirky personality, but sadly long gone now. Then we added Cleo, Red and Sadie. Sadie used to run with the dogs when she was the last one left, with a chicken on her back! Our animals have always been just as crazy as us!.

We are now thinking of m-a-y-b-e getting a couple of goats again. I have to weigh up a lot of things before making that decision though. We have so much else to do with getting the new place how we want it, and do we really need the responsibility of goats again? Watering, feeding, mucking out stalls? A lot to think about, we are a lot older now and they can be a lot of work.

It's been a really nice day though, and I'm feeling content.

The Drearies Are Here

 Grey clouds, rain showers and fog, yes the drearies are upon us for the next few days. Hubby has taken our 2 sons to dump trash and recycles, and pick up breakfast from Crossroads again. The great-grand-puppy is in the bedroom with me having "nanny time". 

My plans for today, other than this afternoon's school run, are to divide and transplant one of my Pothos plants (too big for the pot and needs a lot more root space), pedal on my bike for a few, and pot the 2 chestnut trees (that are coming today) in large Jiffy pots so that we can plant them out when we go back over to the property on the next dry day. 

The strawberries that I planted the other day, that looked so sad and wilted, are perking up nicely with being bedded in the tower pots and given plenty of light in the kitchen. I don't want to put them outside until we are over the cold spell promised for next week. One is even trying to leaf ... aaah.

Another Productive Visit

 With rain expected to be rolling in again, today's trip was basically to take down the water barrel and get it set up near the orchard. Hubby loaded it up, from here, this morning, and then set it up down there. The wraps for the trunks had arrived in the mail yesterday, so he wrapped the fruit trees as well.

The arborist from ChipDrop came by and dropped off a load of mulch, he asked if we wanted a second load and I said, "def, yes please!"

We have plenty of uses for it (and future drops!).

We grabbed Arnold's for lunch, one of our "treats". Just plain food, good people. I like supporting a local business.

After we came home, hubby set to "fixing" the lawnmower. He replaced one wheel and changed the cutting blades. When he showed me the difference between the one he'd taken off and a new blade, it was like "yeah, that def needed changing". Half the old blade was eroded away.

Today has thus been quite productive, very satisfying.

Contentment

Overall, today's been a pretty good day. I did the school run, and hubby went to the coffee shop while I was gone. They were out of the cinnamon rolls that I love so much, so he got me a cranberry orange scone, and they are so good too. I do love Crossroads. 

He had a VA appointment for his eyes, and that went pretty much ok. They like to keep track on him because of his diabetes.

While he was gone, I pedalled for 25 minutes on my bike and read some of one of the books I'm reading.

When he got home from that, he changed the rakes on my car ... when he showed me the ones that came off it was a definite, "yep, they needed doing". He also did the cabin air filter, so I'm all good to go right now.

We decided to treat ourselves to Panda Express for lunch, I had the Honey Sesame Chicken and he opted for the Walnut Chicken. It was good, filled a spot.

Whilst waiting at the school, I got a phone call from the barn people, and we now have a tentaive build date of March 2nd thru the 6th. Once it's up, we can begin getting his workshop area set up in it and start organizing the rest of the building how we want it. Part will be kind of a nursery area for starting plants until he builds me a greenhouse. Everything is going to take time to do, and money, so things will def be slowing down after the barn is erected. 

On our way back from the afternoon school run, we stopped by the library and dropped off the books I'd read and needed to take back.

My 25 strawberry plants got delivered today, so I spent about an hour planting them in the tower planter that I got. They looked quite sad, so I hope they do flourish. We shall see. 

The blueberry that came with them was in it's own little pot, so I transplanted it into a bigger pot. I wanted to give it space to spread it's roots before planting it outside in a few weeks.

Tomorrow, when we go over to the property, we'll be wrapping the fruit trees to help keep them safer from wildlife who might want to munch on them. We're also planning on taking the water barrels and table over, and setting them up. It's supposed to rain again Friday, so they can start getting filled up and be ready for when we need to soak the trees.

We Had Rain!

Yesterday was a lazy day for us, a day of rest for my poor hubby who has been doing all manner of things over on the property over recent weeks. We had rain, an awesome excuse to just stay home and wind down, knowing all my new trees and plants were getting a wonderful soaking without us having to take water over in gallon jugs because we don't yet have water there yet. That should be getting remedied soon, but can't until we get an end to spasmodic rain as Lee's trucks weigh more than last week's concrete trucks did.

Hubby and I did some upkeep on my gardenia cuttings, I changed water in some, picked off dead leaves and re-rooting-powdered others. I don't think they've like the Winter much, even being inside. I also potted the honeysuckle vine that had finally rooted pretty well. Eventually I want to have honeysuckle, moonflower and morning glory vines along all the chain link perimeter fences over at the property. Smell sweet and look pretty.

Today, we went back over and hubby mowed some of 2 different areas. One is not our land, although the fencing makes it appear it is. Mark is trying to locate the marker studs that define that property as the new neighbour's fenceline is square around his home and back yard, and actually should be wider onto "our" driveway, and then 10-15 feet deeper past their pole barn and across to the perimeter, as can be seen by the yellow line on the aerial pic.

They bought the house in December, after we bought the land in November. The former owners of both should have taken care of this a few years ago before selling the land to the person we bought it from, but hopefully between Mark and Josiah (the young lad who owns the house now) we can get it figured out and fenced correctly.

On the pic above, the privacy tree row that we planted is level from the pole barn and going down towards the creek, and my mini orchard is being set up to the left of where it says the 8.97 acres. The barn's concrete slab is in the area where the words "home pad" are, with the covered porch area facing the road and privacy trees.

Progress is slow and steady, but we are "gettin' 'er done".

Tomorrow's project is for him to put new brakes on my car, and then putting a new wheel on the lawnmower. Wednesday we'll be back over there to water trees, take more plants over plus our rainwater barrels and table, so that we can set them up near the orchard ready to hook up the flat soaker hoses for watering in future.

We have to paint the new beehive also. We'll have 2 this year, and we get our bees April 11th. We missed the cutoff for the first shipment. We are well prepared though with everything for them.

Another Awesome Day!

Today has been another absolutely lovely. We've been over at the property, Mark and a lad who came to help us, Corey, started to block in the compost heap, and planted 2 cherry trees. My other fruit trees didn't arrive until after we had left the house, so Jel brought them over to us and Mark got them planted. The line-up thus far is a 4-in-1 apple, 2 3-in-1 pears, 2 cherry trees, and a 4-in-1 Western Fruit Cocktail tree. The 2-in-1 cherry and the 4-in-1 pluot tree didn't come in the shipment so I've messaged them and will follow up with a call on Monday. The 2 rows are about 20 feet apart and the trees are planted 10 feet apart, so our orchard will be fairly compact (they call it basically a "postage stamp orchard") which makes it easier to pick the fruit later on.

Mark plans to add more blocks around the beginning compost heap. We have to take more over. Thus far, we have grass cuttings, paper recycleables and a couple of bags of veggie peelinge et.al. that we've taken over from here. We are supposed to get a good rain overnight and tomorrow, and I'm hoping that will start the paper products breaking down. I am looking at a couple of options for some animal manure to add to it. I want to end up with a really rich mixture.

He also cleared a bit of area around the creek near the front of the property so that I have a more open view of it. It's really nice to be able to look at it more closely now that a lot of the overgrowth has been cut back (or Wintered away).

The pond rake for cutting and clearing the cat tails struggled, I guess we just have so many and they are so thick. It was neat watching them send like dust bunnies up in the air as they were pulled. It reminded me of blowing dandelion puffballs.

I also met our new neighbour, he hasn't moved in yet either. He and his fiance get married next month and will then be moving in afterwards. They bought the house in December, as we'd bought the land in November, so we are both new and just "visiting" our places at the mo. He has a cute little black dog who took an immediate liking to me but manages to get through numerous places in the fence to get over onto our property, so we discussed him and Mark doing some better fencing once he gets moved in. We also will need to introduce Brunel and Lightning so that if she does come over when they are there, thatw e don't end up with a dogfight, and they see her as a friend. I can then always take her back home.

Corey is a really nice young man, and he is planning on stopping over at different times to track the wild hogs and hopefully load his freezer by doing so, and sharing some of the meat with us. I told him he mustn't hurt my deer though, as I want to enjoy their visits once we are over there more often.

It's nice to have things falling into place. God is so good, and I don't deserve this but I am very thankful for my blessings.