The usual garden view at noon time today
No photos of a spring snowfall from this week. The weather has not been the greatest, a little cooler than usual, but we should not complain too much about the rains as, for us if not for others elsewhere, wet is better than dry. We dry out quite quickly here so even if we might have a heavy rain early in the morning we can likely get to work in the gardens in the afternoon. Not so if we were on clay. A bright, clear, sunny morning, about 10°C as I write this, and little wind. This is perfect working weather for this time of year and I think that our chickens will completely agree.
In the foreground are the daffodils, their first year, with newly planted dwarf apple trees in a row with chives behind and the walking onions behind that.
It has been too cool to not run the woodstove so it is rekindled and relit early each morning and runs all day. It is a cookstove too and so much nicer to use than the electric. We have an ample supply of wood and have a pretty good lot ready for next season as well. We will likely have the stove going regularly well into May.
A really nice little carpet of flowers between onion rows.
The hens are liking today but they have been down just a very little on the numbers of eggs laid each day. Warmth, especially with sun and no wind will see an improvement in the numbers. We still have them on their overwintering areas. A little too soon yet to have them out on good pasture again. They’ll wreck it far too quickly when it is growing so slowly still.
The hens out in the sunshine on a particularly bare spot in their run.
We are progressing well on getting the cultivators set up on the tractor. We got the sets of spring tooth units from our neighbour and they work well the way we have mounted them. We still have another two to mount behind the rear wheels and we want to put a pair of disc hillers on the outsides to delineate the outside edge of the plant beds. It will take a bit of time to get it set up just the way we want and then it will be a matter of making careful note so that when we do eventually dismount the lot we will be able to mount it all back the same. It would be ideal to have a tractor devoted solely to cultivating so that the cultivators could be left on untouched.
The tractor in the garden with the cultivators on.
The main order of seeds from William Dam Seeds has been sent, it might be several weeks before we get it, and we still have not yet heard from Whiffletree Farm and Nursery regarding our tree and shrub order but that should come available soon. The trees from Silver Creek Nursery have all been planted with the exception of rootstock. We will be getting scion wood for these any time now and get them in the ground and grafted.
The rows of garden looking over the tractor. Yhe rows here have compost dumped on that will be worked in with the tractor cultivators and things like lettuce, carrots, beets and many other vegetables will be planted here.
So much still to be done but still early for planting directly into the garden. We do have a lot of saved seeds that we can seed directly and also seed into trays for later transplanting.
Devon Acres Organic Farm 