I just realized that I need to post some new photos of my Garden Project. Last time I posted photos I was still building and filling boxes. We've enjoyed some nice warm days, though we had frost a couple nights and suffered a little bit of frost damage.

Today was the 16th Anniversary of the passing of my Grandma. I think of my Grandma all the time and on days like this I am reminded of the good memories in my life that she was a part of. My earliest memories of her are from the time she and my grandpa had a dairy farm in the upper Yakima Valley. Now years later certain smells and foods flood me with warm memories. The smell of fresh brewed coffee early in the morning, when I was little, it was the first thing I would smell in the mornings when we visited the farm. I remember always wanted to wake up as early as possible so I could go out for morning chores on the farm. There was also something new to see. Sometimes there would be baby calves to bottle feed or give hay too. I used to like to chew on the alfla pellets that were kept in a huge wooden bin. Visits in the summer meant long warm days playing under the trees in the side yard. There was a large tree stump that hosted tea parties with a tan teddy bear and grey elephant, who slept in pink rubber bunk beds with hankerchiff blankets, and served as a base for hide-in-go-seek or king of the hill. Every year there was a large garden to explore and sample green beans, pea pods or pick berries and eat them warm from the sun. I remember sitting on my grandma's lap while she rock her red rocking chair and sang songs. My grandma could whistle so sweet in the mornings while listening to music my grandpa played. I have tried all my life just to make fried potatoes as good as she could but never quite getting it right. I never saw my grandma wear anything besides a dress, though I know she wore pants at least one time cause there's an old black and white photo of her wearing a pair of overall's and cutting wood for the stove. She sew her everyday dresses out of calico and wore calico aprons that covered most of the dress. I had gotten some scraps of calico from her once and added them to a quilt I made for my first baby. My grandma loved babies, if you were a baby at any point and time in her life, you were probably at one time held in her arms. She could calm a fussy baby with in minutes just by putting it to her shoulder. My grandma loved flowers and gifts of flowers. Anytime we visited and went for a walk, we always came back with a bouquet of what ever flowers were currently in bloom along our walk. My grandma loved to read romance pocket books and could make candy with eggs whites. The photo above is my grandma when she was about 16, decades before I knew her.

My Garden Project - Dirt!

Yeah dirt! This pile of dirt is 8 yards of super composted raised bed dirt I had delivered a couple Fridays ago. It feels more like a mountain than just a pile sitting on my driveway. It ended up on the wrong side, I had requested the left side to be able to haul most of it and be able to park on it.

Oh yeah, yes the Littles have their own shovels. Otherwise I'd have to share.

They really liked the pile and were eager to get busy.

First box filled, took 8 wheel barrow loads to fill it. Got it done the first night after work.

They thought the old drip lines were pretty cool to poke into the ground then yank it it back out.

More boxes full. The one on the right is a little deeper and took 10 wheel barrow loads. The short box on the left, just 5 loads.

Box number 6 built and ready for dirt. Now I have doubled the amount of raised boxes from what I had before.

Sunday we took a break from filling boxes and went to watch my brother drag race his car. It was a great trip and the Littles have been talking about it all week.

My older son put this box together for me while I was at work. He did a great job making it like the others. Notice the spacing between these last two boxes? This space will give me a pivot point in the middle if I need to push my wheel barrow between the boxes in the future.

Different view of the boxes. I thought when I made the space in the middle that maybe I should plant a fruit tree here in the middle of my garden. I wonder if I could find a forbiden fruit tree?

Box 7 is full. Nice sunny warm day. It was nice to be able to work in the sun for a change. The ground is still pretty sodden and hard to push my wheel barrow thru some places.

Box 8 is assembled. I'm out of wood now though I still have space for 2 more boxes. Box 9 will go along side box 8 after the two old not used rabbit hutches are moved out of the way. Box 10 will be at the end of the four boxes at the back fence.

Here's my box saw, so called because it is short in length to fit inside a tool box. I used it today to cut down one of the 4' boards I needed for box 8.

A pair of horse shoes I found on my lot when we were building the house. I always hang them on my fence.

I finally planted some seeds today! This is a carrot and raddish mix. With raised boxes you don't need to waste ground space on planting in rows, just sprinkle the seeds and water. These went in the box in front of the rabbits. I only planted have of my seeds and will plant the remain seeds in July. Carrots and raddishes are fast growing crop, 60 days.

This is a lettuce and spinach mix that I sprinkled in the shallow box next to the gate. I still have about 3 yards of dirt to move around to the garden. I counted today and will need to move 3 rose bushed, 1 red leaf maple tree, 1 lilac bush that is starting to bloom and a clump of tall growing orange day lillies that came from my sister's yard.

Making some progress

The baby geese are getting bigger. I put up a partition fence so they and the meat chicks could come out of their half of the chicken house and play in the yard. They are making a big mess inside that I was having to clean just about every day. 
As soon as I taught the geese that they could play with the water in the pool they decided it would be a good idea to take a bath. Then one after another they took turns at underwater swimming. It was pretty funny to watch them. 
The new egg hens have arrived. We received 16 buff orphingtons and 10 auracanas.  I'm pretty excited to add to my flock since I believe all of my producing auracannas are gone.  There are a few of older hens around but I am finding now green eggs anymore. Some of the buff orphingtons are designated for my sister who will finally be set up to have chickens in her back yard this year.

The garden finally dried out enough to get tilled and ready to plant.  The onions are already in the ground and growing great. I planted the potatoes and green beans this week and will sprinkle some more root veggie seeds soon.
See me sitting in the garden?   Still working to find all the strawberries under all the grass that has grown into the garden and taken up residence.

The new rabbit hutch has been added now. I also put in some pavers in my walking path so that I'm not walking in the mud when I'm feeding/watering in the winter. New water bottles (heated) feeders and hay racks have been ordered and will arrive any day.  Hope to see our new bunnies in about 3 weeks.
I have decided that the garden, chickens and rabbits are my favorite things in my yard. It is a bit of work to maintain, but it is much more gratifying to do that work and see the results in your hands than to work day after day and never see the end result. Jobs in the real world make you feel you are spinning your wheels and getting no where. They are frustrating and make you tired of life.. they suck the life out of you.  Working in your own yard, producing some thing useful you can hold in your hands gives you life.

My Garden Project: More Boxes

So I have this corkscrew willow tree, aka curly willow, that I planted the first year, 2005, and since have accidentally almost killed a few times. One year my husband tripped and fell over it, breaking it to the ground. I moved it to it's current position about 4 1/2 years ago when I built my dog kennel. Apparently last year one of the dogs dug around it a bit and by fall it was leaning on the dog kennel's fence. Last time my older son was in town, he decided to try to straight it up. This is the end result. I plan on building a wood frame around the trunk and brace it between the dog's kennel and the outer fence.



A couple weekends ago, the Littles and I went to Home Depot and brought home 3 ten foot pieces of ridged perforated pipe. The Littles managed to goose a guy looking at abs pipe next to us in the isle carrying their pipe. Guy, if you are reading this, sorry once again. Actually he was pretty nice about it as it had Laurel and Hardy written all over it. So here are 2 of the sections of pipe connected together in a drainage ditch I dug to help drain the standing water from the pavers.



Our first flower in the garden. Notice the shade? The sun cooperated for once.



I build more boxes over the weekend. The one on the left next to the gate I plan on leaving just one level or 6 inches deep. I plan on sowing lettus.



I counted up the wood I had left and did some measuring and determined that I had more space than I had wood for, so I headed to home depot and got some 2x10's 8 feet long. I had one of the associates cut 3 of the boards in half. They are great about doing this for their customers. I got enough for 3 more boxes plus 2 more rolls of hardware cloth and deckmate screws.



My neighbors were also enjoying their backyard Sunday. They were playing catch and I set the Littles up to watch them on the old rabbit hutches.



I got 4 boxes built Sunday. The second one I added another level of 2x6's to make it deeper, I am planning on potatoes in atleast 2 of these boxes and onions in the other.



A better view of the last 3 boxes.



I was trying to show how much flatter the ground is when Teddy Bear ran thru. Just using my trusty shovel and garden rake, I've evened out most of the garden area. I just keep working at enlarging the area. Right now my count is 5 boxes built with plans for 3 more. I was thinking of having a 4' wide path down the middle and about that much along the fence. But if I reduce the size of the pathway I'd have room for 2 more boxes. More room for potatoes.



Cubby ends the afternoon spend outside with a smile. He looks like he is growing a goatee. We had cupcakes in the garden.

new arrivals

This is Wyatt, my oldest grandson checking out the new chicks and geese.  In this bunch are 35 Cornish cross to be used for meat and 10 new geese. I like to have geese around to scare off predators from having a snack on the chickens.

They are all growing so fast that they had to be moved out of their brooding box and have now taken over the half of the chicken house that I use for storage.  This is not my first attempt at chickens for meat. I did not do so well the last time since I had to pluck 100 chickens by myself. By the time it was done I could not eat the chickens because the smell of scalded wet chicken feathers ruined it for me. I have plans for an automatic chicken plucker this time, so I hope it works better this time. If not the dogs will eat good. Or should I say better than they do already since they get all the extra eggs too.
I have even started dehydrating the extra eggs since I can not keep up with the 3-5 doz we are getting every day. I am hoping these can be used during the next slow period for the chickens next winter. This winter it slowed down to about 1-1.5 doz a week.
Not much else going on around here due to the constant rain fall. It is said we had twice our normal in the month of March.  I am hopeful that April will be better.

As you can see here the ground is pretty saturated with water. Even when it stops raining it will take a few days before the ground is dry enough to do anything with.

So here are the seeds I have purchased for this years garden. I tried to be conservative and not double up on anything this year.  I did pretty good I think. I only have one package of pumpkins, not 5 this year.  Since it is to wet to do anything in the garden I have started my cold weather crops in the green house. 
The bench is now full of flats of cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. I plan to have these in the garden in about a month weather permitting, and make room for other seeds to be planted that will do better when it is warmer.
I have also started tomatoes, sunflowers, eggplant (cause it's pretty) bunching onions, and garlic. All are doing great and have stared to sprout. Some now 2 inches tall. I have to do regular slug patrol to make sure the nasty slimy critters don't eat them all.  I have started crushing egg shell and sprinkling them over the flats also. Slugs don't like the pointy shells and with them ground they will stick to the slugs also so they can not get far.

The onions that I planted earlier in the garden came up about a month ago and are doing good.  The Walla Walla yellow onions are slow to take off. I haven't had good results with them. They are usually eaten by something before they get very old. I hope that by planting earlier this time they will have a better chance to be eaten by me.
Notice my little buddy trying out his natural gardening skills.  Got to start them early so they can learn to love it, right?

So other than gardening..... This past weekend a new 3 hole rabbit hutch was built using scraps of the wood saved from other projects. I put mommy and daddy rabbit together about a week ago and will be expecting babies in about 6 weeks. I can never have too much rabbit poop for the garden and my sis also said she needed more bunnies too. Last year I did this and ended up with 12 babies when we wanted 4 or 5.  At least I will have plenty of room this time if I need it.

Above is a picture of the new fence around the yard designed for my smaller dogs. I planted grape plants of several varieties around two sides of the yard. I thought it would be a great place for them since it will provide a source of shade in the summer, not the winter and it already has a trellis of sorts to train them on as they grow.  Need to get 2 more to finish the two sides.  I will be moving some rodies to the third exposed side since they are in the way where they are now.
I have decided I need to have a cellar type place to store my food from the garden. We estimated there was more than 700 lbs of potatoes alone from the garden last year.  We eat them 2-3 times a week and have eaten maybe half of them. Now they are starting to grow and I don't think they will be good to eat in another month. Out they will go to the garden to be planted for this years potatoes.  Hopefully by the time they are dug up in the fall I will have a cellar to put them in. I would like them to last until June or July.
I always can find new projects to do.

Strawberry Box

This is what we woke up to last Thursday Morning, March 22nd, the 2nd official day of Spring. The next day we enjoyed sun and warm skies.



On Saturday I spent most of the day leveling this area next to the raspberry boxes. The Littles spent the day elsewhere and it kept me fairly occupied. I also had a couple stop by to view one of the puppies and they happily went home with him. It was the kind of visit where they had pretty much already had made up their minds, so we spent the visit talking about him and what to expect of him when they got home with him.



On Sunday we continued to work on leveling the ground. Here I've place the boards of the box I want to have in this area to see how level it looked. I went ahead and screwed the box together reusing the screws I collected taking the boxes apart.



Here we have attached hardware cloth. Looks pretty neat. I also use the cloth to square up the box since I have no inner bracing.



This time I found another hammer for our Teddy to use and he gently tapped the staples in. One of these times he will find out how gut wrenching a hammer feels to his thumb, but fortunately he didn't this time.



An easy tip up and step one end over then the other end over and let the box drop into place. I used a tape measure to make sure it was positioned with just enough space in between the boxes to allow for pavers in the future. Then there was the custom ceremony dance.



Monday morning found us driving to the nursery for soil. We got a half yard of raised bed garden soil for $14. The littles like to watch it get loaded into the back of the ranger. The soil is alot lighter in weight than hauling gravel. A half yard of soil is about 5 wheel barrow loads while a half yard of 5/8" minus gravel is 7 wheel barrow loads. Since I had the 2 side gates open I also removed 3 wheel barrow loads of compost leaves that one of my sons put into my yard debris box to get it out of his way.



We also got 75 more strawberry plants. They come in bundles of 25 plants packed with a little bit of potting soil. These ones are ever bearing. I like ever bearing because they don't send out a bunch of shoots though they will keep making berries until the fall and everyone is sick of them.




Here's the dirt when we got home.



Here's the dirt in the box. I also remeasured it to make sure it was where I wanted it and leveled it. I move a bit of gravel to cover some of the dirt we were walking on.



Here's the strawberries in the dirt in the box. I ended up planting 116 plants in this box. Some of the plants I got from Home Depot didn't look like they were growing but I left them in the old wheel barrow along with the 2 new grapes and the one old grape I dug up. Digging up the old grape kind of reminded me of the movie "A Walk in the Clouds" I kept asking it if it was alive.



Here is one of the first of canes of Raspberries that I planted a couple weekends ago. It's looking pretty good.