Saturday, another day without planting, was filled with little needed tasks. I marked my 100 blackberries with pink forestry tape, so we would be able to identify them, compared with any weeds that would grow up. I was gratified to find that all 100 had at least a small leaf, but most had large leaves, clearly thriving despite some less than ideal soil.
I also marked the edge of my new permaculture border: chestnuts at the edge of the woods, then apples, hazelnuts, and raspberries. I planted right up to where the pigs are currently preparing the soil for the next bed. The chestnuts have all leafed out; the apples are doing splendidly.
Phil and I worked on staking tomatoes until we ran out of twine. Phil pounded in 48 T-posts in a very short period of time, one after another, raising the 35 pound driver over his head again and again. It seems that almost everything on the farm, from pulling weeds to hauling water or feed, requires a good bit of strength. Staking tomatoes allowed me to practice the clove hitch and bowline knots, over and over again.
By late afternoon, the soil had dried enough that Phil was able to plow a new garden bed for me. It still amazes me that the plow can rip the soil, leaving enormous chunks and the fluffy peat slightly mixed in, and then the tiller somehow combines the two. In the photo, the white-streaked land has not been tilled yet. (Phil did this despite a severe headache: he's decided to go off coffee after hearing that it is a major stressor of the adrenal glands. He's never thought coffee really affected him, drinking it because he loves the taste of the "nectar of the gods," as he calls it. But I think an unexplained headache the day he quit is a pretty good indicator that some sort of chemical dependency was going on.)
The boys, for some reason, decided to open a peat bale in one of the soon-to-be plowed and tilled beds and went crazy slinging the powder around.
Even Jadon, usually steady and staid, who enjoys an impressive vocabulary for an 8-year-old (Good Friday had "bleak" weather, he informed me), jumped in.
All four boys, covered in peat from head to toe, took long bath-showers. Jadon's ear didn't get very clean inside, I noticed as we got to church, but considered the amount of dust they could have brought, I was satisfied.
Little rejected lamb Catechism has developed a penchant for squeezing out of the sheep pen and grazing where she can: in the woods, among the clover. I think that because she doesn't have a strong tie with a mother, she feels much more free to leave the fold.
Obligatory Easter photo: Jadon is not smiling, but at least he's not grimacing. Joe, on the other hand, apparently just jammed his face into a sick poking out of the woodpile, and so he is distraught, but for good reason.
Sunday afternoon, Isaiah eagerly showed me something he found.
As he lifted the box off his caterpillar treasure, he said, "Spectacular, right?"
This is a precious life we lead.
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