It’s a warm, sunny, blustery day. A welcome sight after a week of rain made puddles in the pasture, and threatened my sanity. We went to Ben Kaufold’s house site today and helped him erect (his word choice) his shed: it was a shed erection. He hand hewed many of the beams, and designed and made all the parts. We set them up and pegged them into place in about an hour. It was really fun, and definitely got me pumped to do the same one day on Evandale Farm.
We’ve been up to a lot this spring. Pepper and Ellie are bred and due to kid in late June, and our ducks are sitting on huge clutches of (hopefully) fertilized eggs. We built a hugel bed for our high bush blueberry transplants, which are just starting to bud. We used the chickens to clear a ledgy spot behind the barn where we planted potatoes, and I cleared a section under some ash for my first forest garden installation: mulberry, elderberries and an assortment of herbs and groundcovers. Our friends’ Jersey birthed a female calf last month, and we’re scheduled to pick her up in June/July, and we’re getting at least three pigs in June. (Maybe up to six, if we get our freezers certified, and I can sell it by the cut.)
The raspberries we transplanted the day before the October snowstorm are finally coming in, and we trellised some of the wild grapes in hopes of reaching them before they fall. We spread wood ash over all the fields, and have collected tons (literally) of manure from local farms for future fertilizing. Our giant pile of compost is heating up and growing worms, so we’re stoked to build more beds later in the summer. We have chicks in the brooder growing faster than I can believe! We also got bees this April, and they avidly pollinated the apple blossoms for two weeks straight. There was a hum above my head every time I walked beneath them.
So much is going on! I love this time of year. There’s all this energy, and hope, and excitement from a pent up winter!
Temple Grandin is speaking this Monday, the 14th, in Concord and I’m excited to attend seeing as I’m about to start cattle handling 
There’s a workshop in Lee at Tuckaway Farm on Tuesday that NOFA-NH is co-hosting that should be a blast. www.nofanh.org
Hope you’re doing well, too!
Happy Spring!
