I confess, I am not the best at taking the time to sit down and write blog articles, but once a month is better than once every couple months. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I would really like to get more diligent with this, but my schedule always seems to get full of getting other tasks done.
Last month I posted about how I had taken what would be considered produce scraps, and planted them to try to give them new life. While they had started out to look promising, I had a couple casualties. I’m not sure what happened with the celery, but it was doing great…I had three stalks growing. Then one day, they all just went limp and fell off the root ball. The other casualty was the tomato plant. It looked good and healthy, but after a 10 day vacation, we came home to a shriveled up pot of nothing. But that’s the end of the bad news! I have some things that are still growing, and I even started some others.
I mentioned that a 10 day vacation had killed my tomato plant. Luke, me and the kids all went to Southern Florida to stay with Grandma and Grandpa. It was a much needed trip, and it was nice to have Luke with me on my birthday, since he had been out of town on business for the past several years over my birthday. We had a lot of fun in Florida. We got some of the best churros, did some shopping, played some games, went to Everglades State Park, took the kids down to Key West, went to the beach, and just spent time soaking up the sun. Coming back to cold weather in Ohio made us all ask why we live where the air hurts our faces and joints…but it was good to be back home and get back into the swing of things.
An update on the animals… you can definitely tell spring is in the air. Our chickens have been faithfully providing us with an abundance of eggs all winter, which we have been blessed to be able to fulfill customer orders. This weekend we were shocked to find the geese had started laying eggs! We got two eggs over the weekend, and we will stop collecting them after Easter, as we have seen our geese pairing up. Hopefully this means they will brood and sit on their clutches of eggs. The ducks will be starting to lay soon, as well. We have seen them doing their little mating dance…so I am hopeful that we will be able to build up the duck flock, after having harvested so many last fall (a couple were harvested by accident). We may also have a lot of kittens again this year. As of right now, I think we have 5 females pregnant. This is why we don’t have a mouse problem on our property. I would rather have a herd of cats than have mice. But, once the kittens reach 6 weeks, they are free to a good home.
The most recent homestead update, is I planted MORE seeds!!!! My kids are going crazy from all the grown lights everywhere LOL I got these awesome grow light kits, and started some of me seeds, so I will have plants to get into the ground once it is warm. I started some bell pepper seeds, jalapeno seeds, poblano seeds, heirloom tomato seeds, herbs, and some medicinal flower seeds. I can’t wait to get outside and start planting…but since it is much too cold still…I am settling for filling my house with grow lights where I can. 🙂
I also decided, after our trip to Florida, to try growing some avocado trees again. The kids and I had started an avocado pit at our last house, 8-9 years ago, and it was doing really good in our big indoor planter…until we moved. Not sure what happened, but after the move, it just died. So, we are giving it another shot, and I have started 3 pits to see if I can get them to grow.
I really need it to get warm so I can start working outside!
I have plants growing everywhere !! LOL
Blogger question: What is your favorite thing about spring? And can you guess what mine is???