Thursday, May 19, 2011

around the homestead-midweek mumblings

We are fixing to have a workshop/fun weekend the weekend of memorial day here on the homestead. We will be building an earth bag goat shed down in the lower portion of the pasture. Then we can split the pasture in half so that we can rotate or keep some separate from the rest of the herd. We have three flat spots on the property, the goat pasture is not one of them so manthing has spent the last couple days doing prep work so that hopefully we can getter done come next weekend. In the top picture manthing is either scolding the shovel, trying to manifest a flat spot or wondering how he got suckered into another one of my brilliant ideas. The picture below is after about nine hours of him picking and shoveling our lovely Georgia red clay mixed with limestone. The dirt in front and behind will be what is used in the earth bags come next weekend.
I have been busy out in the gardens weeding, planting a few things where I can find a little place to stick things and reseeding a couple beds that had very low germination rates. We have had some really cool days and nights this week and have had to have fires inside for heat for the past three nights. Hopefully the cold weather is now done and over with and it can be spring for real finally.
Last weekend we had the opportunity to meet one of the blog readers. It was awesome to meet Ulrike and her hubby and spend a bit of time with them. They took some tobacco babies and she brought us some flowers for transplanting here and some fabulous honey. There simply is nothing in the world like fresh honey. Needless to say we have had biscuits n honey, cornbread n honey, and tomorrow we are having us some pancakes with bananas n honey. The picture above is one of the new plants I was gifted. It's a pretty little thing and it makes a good addition to the rest of the perennials in the bed that I put it in.

4 comments:

  1. How nice to meet new friends; especially ones bearing yummy gifts! When I have a large spot to dig up, I put my tiller to use, it loosens up the soil real nice and as long as I don't want to dig half way to China, I can keep loosening it up as far as I want it to go down. Sure saves a lot of picking.

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  2. Wow! You guys have done a bunch! It was so nice meeting the two of you, and we had a good time learning about all the different things. Of course the bear stories have been re-told!
    Glad you are enjoying the honey. We are in the process right now of spinning some more to jar up. Actually I slipped away for a few moments, and hubby is watching the honey spin then we will jar it up. Guess I better get back to work!

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  3. I truly believe that if you stare at a project long enough, it will do itself... So, if he keeps staring, that flat spot will appear.

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  4. HP- we used or i should say he used the liltiller to do that too... unfortunately under the "topclay" we hit limestone so a pick makes it easier n less wear n tear on the tiny tiller... the big one bit the dust a week or two back

    Ulrike- get back to work ! :)

    and Ruth...unfortunately we have found staring does not get us far... we stared at the root cellar for several years hoping it would manifest..We could really use some dirt fairies in these parts to help us out :)

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