Getting Ready for Spring: Part 3 – Spring Chores and Garden Expansion

Since last week’s post, we have been hard at work around the homestead. We were blessed with some very nice weather a few days this week, which allowed for some much needed chores and work to get done. Luke had been under the weather for a couple days, so I enlisted the help of the kids to get some things done.

Knowing that we had a garden expansion planned, a friend of ours was gracious enough to come over with his tractor and auger the post holes for us. Let me tell you….that auger made short work out of those post holes!  What would have taken us several days of post hole digging, using the auger we were able to get them done in under 30 minutes! We are not quite finished with the garden expansion, as we need to get some nice days when Luke and I can get out there and wrap the new posts with fencing. We have to be able to do it all at one time, otherwise the guinea and the few free range chickens we have will tear up my garden rows. I just cannot have that happen.  But to help further things along, the girls have since started laying the decorative pavers around the new garden area.

The girls were also a huge help with reconfiguring the compost area.  Having two bays for the compost and one for sawdust just wasn’t working. The compost bins were too small, and we needed more space to be able to get in there to turn it. The girls worked hard and took out the center divider of the compost piles and made one big compost bin. If we ever get a tractor with a bucket on it, the wider compost area will make it easier to get in there and stir it. We ended up with some left over cinder blocks, so we decided to lay them across the back of the compost area and we plan to make it look nice by planting some flowers in the holes of the cinder blocks.

While the girls were helping out with the compost piles and the garden pavers, Wyatt and I had a much worse spring chore…cleaning out the chicken coop. Oh, Man….it was gross!  Wyatt and I literally emptied out the whole coop, and put it all back together with fresh bedding.  And it was a blessing that the girls made the compost pile bigger, because we had a lot of dirty coop bedding to compost.  The chickens LOVED getting back into their freshly cleaned coop. They all got in there and were dust bathing in the fresh sawdust.

After the gross job, I let Wyatt have some creative freedom with helping come up with a design for the new herb garden that I’d like to put in.  We took some decorative pavers to designate a space, and then I let him decorate the exterior how he wanted to. I think it came out pretty neat.

To end this post…I have a confession to make. I have a problem….I am a chronic seed buyer. I went to the store this week, and seeds were on sale, and I just couldn’t pass them up! I walked out with 10 more packs!!! I think I have plenty of seeds to get me through this growing season….or do I? Hahaha!

I’d love to know that you stopped by the blog. Leave a message with your favorite herb/spice. Have a great week!!!