After a very busy winter, which, many of my greens and carrots grew straight through, and installing solar panels for all our electricity needs, we have finished our tilling and planting for 2017. We celebrated our first electric bill in March, which was (-$137.00) . We should have installed Solar years ago!
We have planted fewer vegetables and planted about 6000 sq ft instead of the past 10,000 sq feet. It just got too big to handle. That's a lot of real estate to weed!
Right now I am still picking Pac Choi, Spinach, Radishes, Lettuce and herbs from the winter raised beds. I did plant green beans and then after two weeks of rain, not one bean sprouted, so I have just replanted. I dug up the soil to see what the problem was and did not find one seed. I think they all washed away.
We are picking strawberries and each day its a race to see who gets the ripe ones, me or the chickens! I did just buy some cover fabric and will cover the berries and grapes to keep out the birds. I want to have a fighting chance at some of the fruit. Pears are doing great again this year. Apples look good too but I see the starts of rust on the leaves. Going to have to spray again this winter. This fungus is killing my apple crop.
Steve has been making progress on the house foundation, we are 3/4 completed with the basement wall adjustment and he has begun to rebuild the deck. We will have a 32' by 16' deck which is much bigger then it was. He also installed a new exterior back door and raised the landing to be even with the rest of the house. We had a very weird landing before going to the basement, you had to step down to a landing, then go down the stairs. Now the floor flows evenly. Just another example of a lazy contractor when they built this house.
The pond is overflowing since we have had lots of rain this spring. The ducks are very happy. We have 3 new ducks, given to us by our neighbors Miles and Angela and their 2 year old daughter, Ellis.
Miles and Angela bought the ducks for Ellis but as they grew they realized they were a bit too much to handle especially since they didn't have a pond. We were glad to welcome them into our gang. After keeping the 3 new ducks in the barn with our other duck couple, they soon became one big group. Although the older male still chases the 2 new males around a bit. Great for laughs because after about 10 seconds of chasing they turn around and then follow each other again. Ducks in a row for sure!
