Spring Fever

It's been a busy time here at Outlaw Farm. We've dug two new vegetable beds and are about to dig one more at least. The first two were for the potatoes and onions, and the next will be for the birdhouse gourds and Jerusalem artichokes. Sixty one trees have been planted so far. The latest were native wild fruit trees. Blackberry, elderberry, black chokeberry and paw paw were planted on the edge of the wood lot, and serviceberry, golden currant, black cherry, wild plum, persimmon and red mulberry were planted in the orchard. There was five of each of these, except for the blackberry, where we had six. It took some digging to get all these in, because the ground is so full of rocks that I had to use a tree bar and post hole digger to get them in. I was averaging a five gallon buck of stones for every five trees.

These stones won't go to waste though. I am saving them to make corner posts for the livestock pastures. The idea is to make cylinders of welded fence wire and fill the cylinders with the stones. This will save me having to buy fence posts and then struggle getting them in the ground. The cylinders are kept in place by a couple of t posts and just sit on the ground rather than in it.

On a sad note, the kitten we found in the barn died. Whether mom had abandoned her, we don't know. I have seen Midnight about since so nothing happened to her. Hopefully the kitten was just one she had left behind, and the rest of the litter are doing okay.

The next jobs are more planting. I have more paw paw and elderberry to plant as well as two types of grapes. The grapes will be trained up and along the fence separating the orchard from the front yard.

I managed to get a truck load of manure last night. A friend of ours has cows and a mule, and this was a load from last winter when the snow storm hit us. He had struggled to get feed out the animals and the hay was frozen, making it difficult to  remove the netting. As he usually spreads his manure with machinery, this load was of no use to him as the netting would jam up the spreader. For us it's perfect as it's matured well and pulling out the odd length of netting by hand is no big deal. There is more to be had when this load is used up too.

One last point. This blog is more of a journal for our benefit, but if you are reading it and you find something we had done that you like, then please feel free to try it. That's what blogs are for in my mind. I'm a member of several homesteading forums, and although there are lots of great information on them, there seems to be a lot of politics and religious opinions posted on them, that tends to be a little tiring at times. I would like to state here and now, that apart from this paragraph, you will never see me write about politics, religion, prepping, conspiracies, or anything else that I consider to be private. If you do, then you are more than welcome to flame me.

It's a busy time at the moment. Just last weekend we planted ten flowering trees along the bottom of the front yard. These are all native trees and they are hopefully going to break up the monotony of all the green with lots of spring color from the blossom and the color throughout the summer and fall from the leaves.

We have also cut a vegetable bed behind the well house and planted three rows of potatoes. I am in the process of cutting another bed for onions. It's heavy going though, even with the tiller. I've probably picked up enough rocks to build a wall.

Lea Ann has been busy in the side garden with all her other vegetable seedlings. Also the Iris' we were given last year are starting to blossom so she is excited about them too.

The fifty native fruit trees arrived this week and we will be planting them this next weekend. These were bought at a very good price from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Soon after we moved in we noticed a small dark cat snooping about the place. It would come sneaking around the house at night and occasionally I would see it around the pond in the morning. I assumed it was a neighbor's cat that visited for the cuisine. Well the kids were playing Frisbee around the barn the other evening and Lea Ann said she thought she could hear a kitten crying. I crept into the barn and sure enough, tucked behind a bit of baseboard was a single blond colored kitten. We had named the dark cat Midnight, so the kids named the kitten Sunshine. I've been quietly checking on the kitten each day and it seems to be doing okay. I wondered if it had been abandoned by the mother and she had taken the rest of the litter elsewhere, or that it was the lone survivor of the litter and the others had been killed by a possum or raccoon.

The dead oak in the front yard has been felled and the wood from that should keep us in fuel for a couple of years. It was a load off our minds as this was large, and too near the house for comfort.

We feel there is going to be a lot to do this year, but it will be worth it in the end. To think that by the end of the summer we will have our own vegetables and even our own eggs if I can pull my finger out and build the chicken coop.