2011: A Very Good Year!

Here's two words that describe January and February 2011: COLD and SNOW.

(There, now we're caught up to March, lol. No, really, that was about all there was to the first part of this year...oh, wait, there were some more animals that came to live at Ten Springs Farm...)

September and October: Glorious Fall!

I love fall! It is a beautiful time of year, exciting and full of a different kind of busy-ness, but with the promise of rest and comfort coming soon as the holidays and quiet winter days loom closer and closer. It is definately a time for reflection, a time to pause and survey the results of harvest, of a year of hard work and whatever curveballs Life has thrown you since the same moment 365 days before. What were we doing around this time last year? Leaving the city to become gen-U-WINE country folk and beginning farmers!

Wow--it's so hard to believe that we have already been on our little slice of paradise for over a year now! We moved to this beautiful farmstead a year ago this past October, and this first year has just FLOWN by. We did not get everything done that we intended these past 12 months (getting to a farmer's market was the big one, but that was due to extended family circumstances taking up way more of my time than I thought possible), but then again, what a phenomenal amount of progress we have made:

* We planted three 30'x40' garden plots and raised a lot of great veggies--and we learned that we need to double our space if we're going to have enough for all our family's needs AND a good selection to take to market.

Having Fun, And Then Some!

(This "Catch-up Blog" is continued from the previous post)

July was more gardening, more harvesting tons of produce, more enjoying the animals and working in beautiful surroundings. And we had some new additions to the farm: twenty-four new chickens: 3 month old Auracaunas, French Black Copper Marans, and a Blue Cochin that were an amazing deal on craigslist I couldn't pass up; another broody hen hatched out three chicks from her clutch of 10 eggs,

And our family welcomed a new canine member: Queenie, a sweet German Shepherd that my sister rescued from being put down as a vicious dog when she was dumped at her shelter two years ago.

Time Flies, When You're...

Wow--never expected to be gone this long from our little blog! Now that the amazingly busy summer months are behind us, and the frantic pace seems to have slowed, I have time to stop and reflect on all the wonderful things that have transpired this year.

And a wonderful year it has been--as well as a hard, frustrating, and surprising year. Everything with the farm has been progressing nicely--I have so many cool pictures to post!--but life is what happens when you are making other plans, or so the saying goes, and it certainly rang true for us this year. Of course, I have a habit of dreaming up elaborate, grandiose plans and then believing I can get it all done, lol. It is certainly fun trying, and you've got to keep dreaming, right? Right.

Spring is Here--& So Are the Farm Babies!

Finally--everything is turning green and flowers are beginning to bloom at Ten Springs Farm. Spring is a beautiful season full of hope and renewal--and new life bursts forth everywhere you look. It's one of the busiest times on a farm, and the past few weeks have flown by! We have been finalizing garden plans, planting seeds of early spring veggies (spinach, lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli, radishes, carrots, turnips, peas and potatoes), tending our tomato, pepper, squash, cucumber and herb seedlings, and have added a few new animals to our growing livestock count: sixty-five new chicks and two little piglets!

Our First Cold Frames

We built and planted our first cold frames here at the farm the first part of March, and I am eagerly anticipating the fresh lettuces and spinach the new plantings promise!  We have a lot of clean up to do around the farm this spring, and I'm sure we'll be finding windows and lumber galore to use in building more permanent cold frames, but since we already had a big delivery of old hay bales and plenty of plastic sheeting left over from insulating the chicken coop, I decided to use what we had on hand: hay bales and plastic. After researching many do-it-yourself designs, I settled on using the bales and plastic sheeting to form the side walls and top of our first frames, but I decided to use the cement block foundation of our farmhouse on the south side to form the back wall of each frame, instead of more bales. The residual heat coming off the cement foundation from sunny days will be more than enough to keep our cold frames in the ideal 55-70 degree range.

Life and Death on the Farm

As usual, there has been a multitude of goings-on since my last post and there is much to blog about, both positive and negative. The negatives have been few, thank goodness, but are still difficult: a week ago, our neighbor's big black dog crossed the fence line and terrorized our chickens, chasing them around inside the hen house and all over the yard, killing six hens outright and injuring a half dozen others. Sammie is the one who noticed first, he went outside with Blue Eyes as he was planning to tinker around in the garage, but Sammie ran straight to the back gate and started barking frantically.