Weekends are for rest?

Not around here! Weekends are for work. The evenings of weekends are for resting. Last weekend the weather was amazing. In the low 70s, slight breeze and SO much to do. Like SO many others it seems, we're a tad behind on getting our garden finished up. Not anymore! Hooray! So my super sweet husband woke up Frankie at 5 am, and they drove the truck and trailer to a farm a ways away and picked up two big loads of that great composted manure I wrote about earlier. When they got back, the work day really began.

First, we shoveled out all that compost and spread it across the whole garden. What a beautiful site to see all that black out there instead of brown. Ah for the day my soil is naturally just black and has great structure and yum.... So Clay rented a tiller and him and Frankie went to work. Frank was so proud his Daddy let him run the tiller. Look at that face. Love that dude.

While we hope to get to where we have great soil structure and never have to till it, there is nothing quite like amazing fluffy dirt. Love it.

Everyone pitched in. The ducks did their part picking out bugs and seeds. The chickens did too but you know those chickens, they're camera shy.

Adric was the resident rock picker alongside his Mama, following behind the tiller picking out any big rocks. Mom just threw the rocks in the woods but Adric was proud of showing off his spoils whenever his bucket got too heavy.

Then we made our wide rows. We are doing intensive planting via this amazing book:
I'll talk more about this as the gardening season goes forward and I can take good pictures and really show it. I did link the book picture to the great seed site partnered with this book. I love their philosophy not just their seeds. And I love that their seed catalog instead of having great color pictures to promote their seeds, they have fabulous descriptions (I use their catalog as a planting and growing guide!) they use their color pictures to show the places around the world they are teaching people how to grow food in a way that is bountiful and self-sustaining. Love it.

You know while it would seem that you could just rake that fluffy soil into rows, soil is heavy. HEAVY. It took us forever shoveling to make these rows. By the time this day was done it seemed like I shoveled dirt for 6 hours. You can see everyone working together, even the baby, putting straw over everything to help avoid erosion. We made some grand mistakes this year not knowing better. We left our soil without mulch or groundcover and suffered some horrible erosion. Our dirt was almost ruined and void of any organic matter or living organisms. It was sad. Never again. Cover crops and mulch are my friends.

We also cleared most of the rest of the orchard area. Remember when Clay started cutting trees here? It's hard work to clear all the limbs and move them out. Rewarding work though. We're closer. Hopefully soon a friend will be bringing his tractor and getting those stumps out for us. And hopefully help us clear the last few big trees that are too close for comfort to the power lines.

Okay I said all we did was work but that's not true. Can't have work without play. Saturday Clay went out and put up a swing on a tree for the littles. They LOVE it.

We started our new family activity. Knife throwing. We all suck. :)

And finally Sunday when we were all done, we had a nice relaxing evening. The sky looked like this,
accompanied with a nice wind, so the new kite came out. For his birthday Frankie got $10 from his awesome aunt. It was the most he's gotten at once yet and was SO excited. He's agonized over how to spend that $10 for months. Then he saw the kite. It was $18 and begged me to loan him the money to buy it. How could I resist after all the times he wanted to spend it and didn't? So Clay set out on building it. The new family rule? No more complicated kites allowed LOL!

And then flying it. We had so much fun. The wind was erratic and kept switching so it wasn't great kite weather but it was fun nonetheless and allowed everyone time to just unwind and enjoy themselves.

And when people are happy they let me take their picture. Cassie laughs and is silly so much yet whenever I take her picture she gets all serious.

And look at THIS guy. SO OLD. So grown up. Where's my baby?

Sigh. I feel like I just lived a whole weekend just typing this. And the idea that anyone would read this far? You deserve a prize. Here take some brownies.

The orchard beginnings

With so little space it took me a while to figure out the best place for our fruit trees. I've changed my mind a couple times. The place we're going with actually wasn't in the running most of the time. You see really we don't have the space for something like that UNLESS we clear some trees. Once I got over my mental block about cutting trees I can now see that we have some areas that can be used if we clear them. And then I realized that we had the perfect place for a mini orchard. Should there have been no trees it would have been the obvious place. You'll see better when I post the drawing of the land. But as you come in our driveway on the right hand side is this triangle wooded area that's between our driveway and side road. Or should I say WAY a wooded area. Woohoo!

Clay's started clearing the trees in the orchard area. Thankfully he spent a couple years logging in New Mexico cutting huge huge trees so he's more than comfortable cutting down trees. Me, not so much. Most are tall cedars like this one.
It's hard to see in this next one but there used to be tall trees all around him. There are a few trees on the border of the area Clay doesn't want to cut. He really hates losing trees. He wouldn't have agreed if it weren't for the fact that we're replacing with TREES of all things. But I'm trying to get him to get rid of the two big border trees so I can run the grape vines along the border instead. OH and the tip of the triangle that won't get any shade from the trees is going to have blueberries.
And of course the kids are excited now that there's a huge obstacle course of fallen trees to play on.

They won't be there long though. Clay and Frankie are clearing limbs, topping the trees and pulling the logs out. The big Cedar poles are going to be used for the goat barn we're building for the Spring and the smaller yet still fabulous tops of the poles will be used as some of the fence posts for the garden area.

I've been reading and reading about fruit trees and have to decide what we want to plant this Spring. What varieties, what sizes, what are best for Middle TN, etc. It all seems like such a big decision. But 4 years or so from now we'll be eating apples, peaches, cherries, plums, blueberries, and maybe grapes. I can't wait!