Wishing For Spring

Hard to believe this is the same yard. About now every year we are wondering how soon spring will actually get here. Our garden seeds are ordered and the stack of catalogs for ordering more is pretty tempting. Winter is long in Idaho. Doyle still likes to go outside, I like to stay inside and plan to go outside. As soon as it is warm out. At the end of every summer I am happy to see fall arrive. I have hit my limit with gardening and especially mowing. We have a lot of yard to mow. It is pretty but it is a ton of work. I garden in raised beds but we plan to add a 50'X100' row garden in the north field this spring. Hard to grow corn and melons in raised beds. This new plan will have to include electric fence as the deer love garden time too. We will also continue to add fruit trees to our planned orchard area. The pygmy goats love young fruit trees. They also love grapes. This was a problem this past year. Can a pygmy goat wear a shock collar? We may have to see. A lot of what we plan to grow next year has a lot to do with what I plan to can. Canning is somewhat addictive. It is so rewarding to see your bounty add up. I don't even have a place to store canned goods but I didn't let that stop me, or even slow me down. I won't need to make pickles for a while but the tomatos go fast. I expect next year's garden to be more work, but I also think it will feed us well into the winter.

New to the blogging world

Well, we (I) have finally taken the blog plunge. This may not provide anyone with a single bit of interest but it will allow me to look back at my projects and see progress, I hope. I love to read blogs and have found many that have to do with my hobbies. I like to garden, scrapbook, stamp, stitch and read. I'll probably touch on many if not all of these topics in the future. We garden for many reasons. We like the idea of feeding our family the freshest, most healthy fare possible. We like it when people compliment our efforts, and we get offended when they tell us how to do it better. Constructive criticism isn't really our thing. We got pygmy goats this last May and really like them. Worthless though they may be. We plan to get egg laying chickens in the spring and will likely do a round of meat chickens too. We compost, have a beef in the freezer and I recently learned to can. We plan to add an orchard. We are trying to make a difference.
The plan is to let Maecy have a veggie stand this summer. We all think she can add to her college fund in short order if she is willing to put in some effort. We will see, she gets bored easy. Can't imagine where she gets that. (wink)
So we hope you will enjoy our journey. We will do our best to keep up on this blog. Pictures are my favorite things to see on other blogs so I am certain they will be prevalent here.