So that was my weekend.  Phoebe and Nell came down with me as gophers.  The actual contribution on their parts was pretty minimal, but they stayed out of my parent’s way which was good because they had a full-house at the B&B (http://roundbarnfarm.com/) and though the fence is not fixed yet, all of the beds there have been turned over, and hopefully the weeds from last year have had the roots killed.

Admittedly, this is never going to be a war I win.  All I can do is keep them at bay long enough to get  a crop each year.  There were sections from last year where plantings were lost in the weeds and abandoned by me due to time available.  This year I cannot spend as much time as I did last year, so it is going to be more of a concentrate of corn which can grow above the weeds.

The only actual physical planting I did was with Nell, of 7 rows, in a 15X40′ bed of Painted Mountain flour corn.  Going in this early will create weed issues, as the native grasses will sprout about the same time the corn does.  I marked all of the rows with twine so I can find them when I come back to weed and till again with a cultivating tiller.

Physically I am hurting too much to say more.  Wrestling around a walk-behind tiller for more than 9 hours yesterday has left me pretty much an invalid today.  Parts of my body I had forgotten even existed between last year and this year are screaming at me, and I am self-medicating with wine to try to calm the muscle spasms.  Curious, in a kind of morbid way, how I am going to come out of this.

The tomato plants placed in the ground have all lived so far. The extended forecasts continue to show night time low temps staying above freezing, and the trees everywhere are putting out their leaves. This is an interesting spring. I have not, however, placed any more tomato plants in the ground. I have not even planted most of the cooler weather crops I could have, just because we have been so busy in general. The last two weeks we were short-handed at the office and I put in more time there than I generally do. The baby decided that her favorite time to be awake and demand parental interaction and play is from 10 pm to 3 am. The school system thinks our kindergartener needs to be doing homework, and of course the two older girls have a ton of that anyway. There does not appear to be enough time in the day to get done, the things I want to get done, which annoys me, because I usually can get a lot done without a ton of sleep. I just feel as though I am not getting any sleep at all, and I know Patti is getting even less.

We did finally follow through on our plan to have the black walnut tree in our backyard removed. Not sure if I am going to have to dig all of the roots out for them to stop poisoning the gardens, or if they will just degrade now. I hired a client who does tree removal professionally to do the monkey side of the job because all of the limbs needed to be roped down. I did the ground work with the ropes, and cutting with a trimming saw just to reduce the pieces into more manageable sizes as we worked. By the end of the day the tree was a brush pile, and my body was pretty fed up with me. I am going to need to ease back into the really physical side of my outdoor activities a little more gradually I think.

Sunday morning I got up early, and took Nell with me down to Faribault where there is an old seed and nursery company that sells bare root trees in the spring. April 1st is their opening day for the “bare root room” as they call it, and it is a first come, first serve enterprise. Last year I had hoped for a Cortland and a Fireside apple tree to plant down at the Red Wing garden. Instead we just got some Harelson apple trees. Nothing BAD about that, but the Cortland and Fireside are really our favorites, so we were there bright and early. We got the trees we wanted (semi-dwarf so will never be too large) along with a North Star Cherry, and a couple of grape vines I want to try to trellis over the “bean house” in our yard. We picked up some onion and potato sets as well to split with David, though he will not be back for another week.

After this Nell and I went to visit her uncle Jamie at his new home and to have him guide us down the bluff to the Straight River to do some fossil hunting. The walk down the bluff was nice. Hauling 30 pounds of fossil bearing limestone back up the bluff was not as nice, but Nell and I had a good time.

On the way home we stopped to take care of the chickens.  They are laying up a storm now that there is plenty of sunlight and it is warm.  They are always happy to see us.

Once back at home around 4 pm, I got the 5 holes dug, the trees and vines planted, watered, and dinner made for everyone before I collapsed in bed. Back in the office here this morning, and it feels a bit like a break. Still so much to plant, but spring is early and I am not really running out of time yet.

north star cherry

fireside apple

cortland apple

I am home sick today. This stuffy head, bucket of snot, no sleeping, headache sinuses crap has been hanging on me, and the lack of consecutive sleeping hours I am pretty sure has run my immune system down.

I got the kids up, dressed, fed, and off to school without any major traumas, and without waking up Patti or the baby.  Then I collapsed for an hour.  Then the baby got up, then Patti got up, and that had me up.  Made sure Patti was fed, got a pot roast going in the slow cooker with tons of onions and carrots, and then collapsed and fell asleep again.

Phoebe got home from kindergarten around noon which got me up, so made sure she was fed, and then dug out some pepper and tomato seeds.

Two large flats of peppers, being Jimmy Nardello and Tug Hill Paprika, 60+ of each.  Those were followed by flats of three different Siberian tomatoes and another of Canabec Super, which I have not grown in 4 years.  It is a really short, determinate, very early tomato that just for fun, and to rejuvenate the seeds, I am going to grow again.  I have no complaints with taste on that one, and it is really early from what I remember, but it is REALLY determinate, which means it sets tomatoes, they ripen, and the plant dies.  Bang.  Done.  Over.  My thought though is that if we have a really warm and early spring I can do a bed of them at the Minnetonka garden, interplant them with carrots, and when the tomato plants are done the carrots (or maybe something else) will be there to fill in and finish out the bed for the year.  From what I remember, the plants only get about 16″ tall to begin with.

The Siberian types are Galina, Siberian, and Sasha’s Altai.  Galina is an indeterminate yellow cherry I have been meaning to grow for a couple of years.  Siberian is an old standby for me that in intensely flavored and makes simply incredible oven roasted tomatoes.  Sasha’s Altai was a new one for me last year, and was by far the earliest of my larger sized tomatoes.

All of the flats are on shelves above the gas stove.  The pilot lights (yeah, the stove is that old) keep the shelves above it fairly warm and we have found it works great as bottom heat for starting tomatoes and peppers.  If all goes well we should have plants breaking through in a week or so.  Maybe longer for the peppers.

If the extended forecast is to be believed, starting in 3 days, we will suddenly not have nights below freezing.  I assume it will not stay with us, but the prognosis of the frost which finally went into the ground leaving us fairly soon means that this really is going to be an early spring planting time.

It also means I am behind on some of my preparations.  I still have not started cold weather tomatoes.  The cats nailed a bunch of my pepper plants and those will have to be restarted.  There are trellis systems I need to get planned out, and the exact location for peas and early greens needs to be decided.

The baby is growing like a weed, or perhaps, like a well fed tomato plant in hot weather.  She has continued to put on a pound a week like clockwork.  If this keeps up, we will have a 50 pound 1 year old in 48 weeks, so I assume that is going to slow down at some point.  We are all a bit like the walking dead here.  She is not a crier, or colicky, but she is up every few hours to eat so there is no such thing as unbroken sleep.  Patti and I never feel as though we get enough sleep.

Once the ice is off of the lake, generally, it is safe to plant tomatoes here.  At this rate, I am going to be running a bit behind.

We will see.  Things are going to ramp up quickly here.

7 pounds, 7 ounces, 19 inches long, born at 929 this morning.  Midwife didn’t make it.  (I told her she probably wouldn’t) and I delivered her.  My wife is the one-push wonder. <grin>

We are going to rename the farm now.  Four daughter’s Farm.  Not sure if we are going to change the URL.  We will see.  If we do, it will be a redirect as well.  Need to raise more food I guess.  We have another mouth to feed.  Mom and baby are fine.  It was so nice to not be doing a 90 mph run to a hospital and then trying to explain that even though she had just gone into labor, that the baby was coming NOW.  When a woman’s body knows what to do, it is really a fairly calm non-traumatic experience to just let it do it.  Had a nice day at home, the kids stayed home from school. and they all sat happily in the bedroom and watched their sister come into the world.

Just a wonderful day overall.