Weekend Update



The beautiful view from our living room door to the front of the property. Across the street, there is a hill that goes down into a creek. I vow to explore that creek this summer sometime.



Gage had a great time at the ShamROCK event at a local museum. I had to work the event and he was finally old enough to go to the teen event and he wandered around and played laser tag etc.

Me and my favorite guy - enjoying morning coffee on the front porch...Love it!

Cora, as Belle, from Beauty and The Beast for her school play.

She looks a little like Alice in Wonderland...but she's really the prettiest Belle I've ever seen in my entire life.

Just now realized that I haven't taken any recent photos of Drake (since his birthday???) on my phone. Hmm...that will need to change tonight.
We've had busy days around here.
Friday was a great day - we got to see Miss Cora perform in her school musical. All the kids sang various Disney selections. Cora's group was Beauty and The Beast. As the curtain opened and I saw her sitting there, my heart burst. She's so beautiful and graceful. Her cheeks just glowed, she worked hard and knew the songs and even danced with a boy. Time to clean the shotgun!
I had an event on Saturday night at the Boonshoft Museum - a teen focused St. Patty's Day event...it was definitely a late night. For the first time, Gage was old enough to attend. Unfortunately, it was short notice and he couldn't get a friend to tag along...but he had a good time. There was laser tag, bungee race, free vanilla latte's, a karaoke type lounge, animals...what more could a 13 year old ask for!?
We also cleaned out the alpaca barn and pasture. We took all the old straw out of the barn and pasture, cleaned the floors with a bleach water solution (there are wood floors in the barn, which I do not like) and laid new straw for the girls. They seemed so concerned about where we were taking their bedding and poop. They'd come over and smell the trash bins and then look at us...worried. Ha! Goofballs. Looking forward to all that compost for next year's garden!
The peach and pear trees are looking great (we'll likely have to replace a peach or two, an apple tree and an apricot tree...ugh deer!) but I can't really complain...they spent the first couple years of life in pots! Peas are starting to come up (barely) so are the onions. Some of our starts have even start to come up. I'm going to check out for now, I gotta get some work done to pay the bills to have the ability to do the project around the farm.

Reasons I love living here...

So many times, we will make a random comment about why we love living out here. I thought that we should make a list of sorts to always remember these things and never take them for granted. I'll list some today and as I think of them, I'll add more.

• The night before last, as we were sitting at the kitchen table, planting seeds, one of the kids says "Look! A horse!!" - we don't have horses on our property. I look out our front window and there are three people riding horses in the field across the street from our house. We took off running out the door, without shoes and ran down the road just a bit, as the three people on horses rode over to us and let us pet the horses. They pointed to the house they live in, down the road a little bit more (we still have yet to meet many of our neighbors, more than just a waive) and said they have more horses and if we ever wanted to ride, we should just come down. WOW!
• Last night, as I'm driving home from work (most of the time I work from home, but sometimes I need to go into Dayton for a meeting), I see a little girl "walking" (more like the animal was walking her), what I thought was a small german shepherd...but as I got closer, I realized she was walking a goat on a dog leash. Ha ha ha.

Yesterday

I'm not sure what type of flower this is..but we have several on the property.

Terrible picture, I know, but it's a Pear blossom opening up.

Again, not sure what this is...but they are so pretty and all over.

Anyone know what this is?

Good job Cora!

Yesterday we planted 216 starts...and we'll be doing a bunch more tonight!

Damn dog...

So the Damn Dog...AKA Ollie has decided that it's real fun to jump into our raised beds, lay on his belly with his legs stretched out and flick all of our very expensive dirt, ahem,  all over the ground outside the bed...GRR!!! So to counteract his crazy behavior, we have added poultry netting (AKA chicken wire) to the tops of the seeded beds. We have three beds planted with peas and a four bed that is a little over 1/2 way full of onion sets and seeds.

On a happier note...look at all these beautiful daffodils...one of my favorite flowers (Daisy is, and will always be, number one though).

More planting to do tonight - I keep making goals and then running out of hours in the day!

How was your Sunday?

This is our front yard - we finished laying out the 11 raised beds that we built yesterday. Nine are on the lower landing of our yard, one is on the upper front yard area and then one's in our backyard (for potatoes) - which I'm now realizing that I haven't taken a photo of.

A better image of our upper level box - this is going to be where our peas live this year.

Mark and Belly working in the beds. We had to buy organic soil this year, since our compost isn't ready yet - but next year, I'm hoping for beautiful, home-grown compost!

My handsome husband and our beautiful beds!

Strong girl!

Jack...chillin'

One of our other outside kitties - "Captain" - she's super twitchy, very nervous around people. BUT SUPER cute though.

Ending a strenous day with a beer, wine cooler and grilling out...THAT'S RIGHT!!! Grilling out, in T-shirts...in MARCH!

Grilled steak, on a bed of spinach, with feta and strawberries...YES PLEASE!

Hope all of you had a productive, wonderful weekend too!

Baby Blossom

Oh my goodness! I just realized that I forgot to share here...We are expecting!!!
...A baby alpaca :-)
The vet came out on Friday and did ultrasounds. Apparently Josie is not pregnant - I thought FOR SURE that she was. She acts pregnant, looks pregnant - so I guess that means that she's actually full of fleece and kinda bitchy lol. However, my shining star, Blossom, is going to be a first time mother. FIRST TIME, here on our farm. I am so completely excited. We should have a baby alpaca running around the pasture come the first week of May! I'm hoping that the new barn and pasture area will be in by then. We submitted our paperwork for approvals by both the building permit office and to get the required variance (since we are building closer than 50 ft. to the property line). In a perfect world, we will have all of our approvals back around March 27th and will start building (Mark and the kids are on Spring Break that following week - and it'd be nice to use that time to build).

Raised Beds

We've had a busy weekend already. Yesterday we went to get most of the supplies to create 11 raised garden beds. We went to Lowe's to grab wood, soil mix, screws and some other goodies. Then, when we got home, we built all 11 beds. Whew! I know one is going to be a potato box, another for peas...and I have to figure out the rest. We also bought all the supplies to get our seeds started. We have a bunch of our seeds and Victory Seeds is sending the rest (the order has shipped, just need to wait for delivery). It's a very exciting time of year here. My shoulders are achy, but a good achy. My cheeks are already a little warm and sunkissed from working outside much of the day yesterday. Today, we're going to Ace and hopefully they'll have potato and onion sets - and we need to pick up a few more things. Our plan is to get all the dirt into the beds (and I'm hoping to get some alpaca poo in there too!). Wishing our compost was ready for this year, but I know that next year, we should have some pretty awesome compost mix to layout on our gardens! YAY!
Last night was Spring Forward...an hour of sleep lost...this is, I believe, the first year that I've been excited about that. Happy Spring Everyone!

Found bags of dirt on sale at Lowe's - originally $6 and some change, on sale for $2.79! We bought 41 bags.

Daddy and Cora - working on building our raised garden beds. We built 11 beds yesterday.

Blue and Ollie, wanting to be in on the action - but wrapping themselves around eachother so tightly that this is as far as they can move.

It's hard to see, but there are six deer near the hedge, just off our property! Shortly after I took this photo, they all bound across the back field.



Buzzing bee on Crocus Flower