Market Garden: First Planting

Phil went out to do chores and fetched me quickly: Acorn had delivered ewe lamb number 7, without assistance. Isaiah named the baby Caterina, and she is peppy, energetic, and heavy, compared to the others. (Acorn is a Dorset-Ramboillet cross, a much larger breed of sheep.)

Last night, when we left off work, Phil had finished plowing our first garden bed. Once the sun came up this morning, he started tilling. I don't have photos of that (I was milking Bianca, making cornbread for the boys' breakfast, and dealing with little Caterina), but by the time breakfast was ready, the new garden looked ready to plant. Amazing!

We had a friend from church come to help Phil this morning. They transplanted the six or so cherry trees that have been growing where the new metal building will go. The root systems on the cherries are voluminous, and I am happy I didn't have to do the digging. Next they tagged the ears and docked the tails of the first six lambs. Phil was relieved to have number identification, since with four almost identical white ewe lambs so far, once they stop nursing, it will be challenging to tell them apart. I was relieved not to have to do the actual tagging and docking, since it involves a bit of blood and lamb distress.

I spent several hours transplanting about 500 onion starts into the new beds. They have been growing six weeks in the greenhouse and were growing through the bottom of the trays, into the weed barrier on the greenhouse floor.

It's a relief to get them into the ground. May they grow well.

The planting certainly made me dirty, though!

Phil spent the afternoon spraying the neighbor's land with a soil conditioner of some sort. It was a rough ride for him: the ground had been plowed up and down the slope, and he was driving back and forth. I watched a bit, and it looked like he was riding a bucking bronco-tractor. But after a bit over seven hours, he had finished the whole land. Good for him!