orchard update

pear- the pears are quite tall already. They are going to be large trees. As you can see the deer nibbled on the lower branches but the taller ones are already out of ready.
peaches. There were so many peach babies on the trees I had to pull off most of them so that the little branches wouldn't break off . I had to pluck close to 3 dozen fruit off the two trees and left 4-6 on each. cherry.
apple- The one pictures is the healthiest and as you can see it is pretty short and ugly in comparison to the others
plum

Most of the orchard we planted in late winter is coming along nicely. We may even get a few fruits from the peaches this year. The apples though planted in the hardest to reach place for critters are definitely the deer's tree of choice. We may have to replace two of them this winter because of it. We broke down and bought some deer netting last weekend when we were in town to try and salvage them. All in all we cant really complain since we knew better than to leave them naked but hoped the dogs would keep them away. Even the puny little currant bushes that the nursery thought wouldn't make it are doing quite well.

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.