Goat Update and Garden Bed Building

Lilly is still in milk. I feel like it is taking  forever for it to go away and give her some relief. I can only imagine how she feels about it. She is still getting Penicillin injections morning and night to prevent infection from setting in. So far, so good on that front.

Lilly is very interested at meal times. She sniffs the bottle and keeps a close eye on what is happening. After cleaning Chloe's tail end, Lilly rests her head against my hands, knee, or shoulder until baby is done. Chloe is learning her name. We call it when we enter the pasture and she follows us.

Boaz and Anna took an afternoon siesta in their lunch. 

Our biggest job today was to work in the gardens. Cameron has started our seedlings for us in his aquaponic system. We needed to make some repairs on our front garden beds to get them ready for direct sowing. We'll be building five additional 4' x 16' beds to add to the front garden. We have to get them built and fill them with garden soil and the composted manure from last year within the next 4 weeks.  Today we direct sowed 80 white onions, 100 snow peas, 144 carrots, and 125 beets. On Sunday, we'll put in some radishes, yellow onions, lettuces, and kale.

We'll also finish the first part of our back garden beds. We began them last year using 2x6 pine boards and that worked fairly well, but in an effort to use as much as we can from what the land provides us, we decided to repurpose those boards into the front garden and make some raised tiered beds by weaving limbs of Alder branches.

The start to our bottom tier.

Sean cut thicker branches into 2 foot pieces with a point on one end. We pounded these into the ground with a foot remaining above ground. Then, we used longer branches to weave in and out of the posts. To secure them, we reused baling twine that we had from the hay we feed the animals. Total cost= $0 cash dollars. Total time= 4 hours today and more ahead. We'll not remove the sod from the top of each bed. Instead, we'll line them with cardboard to block the grass. Then, we will cover it with garden soil and top it all off with our composted manure from last year. The lower bed is about 10 inches deep and the upper bed is roughly 12 inches deep. They are both 3 feet wide and 20 feet long. We have more work to do to finish these beds, but when we are done, I am looking forward to seeing how the tomatoes grow this year in them.

One thing I have missed over the winter, how my body feels in Spring... I. Can't. Walk. I mean, seriously. If I have one, it hurts. From head to toe. It feels so good to just sit, but I am very concerned about how I am going to get to bed. I may just live here forever more. It is an option that is growing on me.

In case we run out of projects, we can always rely on the animals to create job security for us. This is an image of the side of our barn. That is a hole through the OSB and Typar.

Can you guess what happened here?

Asher.

Does he look sorry to you? He doesn't to me. Not one bit.

Thanks for visiting with us today, friends. It is so nice to have your company.

~Sean & Sonja ♥