St. Brigid Farm: Little Bit of Heaven Here On the Farm

Yesterday was an amazing, beautiful day. Spring has truly sprung! By the afternoon the sun was high in the sky and temps were rising. I think we hit about 60 degrees. Today it is suppose to be even warmer and we started with sun! Yeah. I got to work outside, in the garden mostly, for more than 3 hours!!! Earlier this spring I set up my little Icon shelter in the east corner of my garden. The icons I put in there are from the girls. The Theotokos one Kelsey made at camp and the little one in from of it is a rock icon of Christ that Charissa made at camp.

Below the icon shelter is a wooden cross. It isn't because there is something buried there, but because one of my kids made it and wanted it displayed. :) Joseph and Charissa made that and Joseph pounded it proudly into the ground.

The chickens were really enjoying the weather yesterday. I walked out to the run and found all these chickens laying around on the ground. They were sprawled out on their sides, legs stretched, wings stretched. They almost looked dead. They were just relishing in the warmth of the sun!

This little, old flock will become food soon. They've been a wonderful flock but they need to move on to their next purpose since the new flock is finally giving back to us now. We'll start butchering tomorrow, not sure how many we'll get done in one day. We have about 30 to do.

I worked in the garden for a long time yesterday and hope to for a long time this afternoon as well. I LOVE IT! This project that I'm working on has been going for a couple months now, but here is what I'm doing. I revamped the whole layout and decided to do a "no dig" method of gardening raised beds! There is tons of information on this on the internet. One of my favorite books though is called "Lasagna Gardening". If you google lasagna gardening you will gets lots of information as well. Since I started late in the winter I didn't have time to do LOTS of layers but decided that they will build up a little each year. We'll see how it all goes. First, I started with a layer of newspaper or cardboard, THICK.

Second step was to then put a thick layer of straw. They say some straws aren't good, I think I got one that isn't good because it is starting to sprout, but there is nothing I can do about it now. I just pluck out the little sprouts and because they aren't rooted into anything it's easy.

Third step is to put on a thick layer of compost! This is the step I'm still in the middle of doing. Well, yesterday I finished 2 beds that still needed the first 2 steps done. Today I plan to haul compost all afternoon and get all 10 beds complete. I also hope to do some planting in the beds that have been complete now for a month. The 3 closest beds you see below have been ready for a month. There is a fourth one ready, you can see a tiny corner of it in the lower part of the picture. I planted lettuce, kale and spinach in that bed 3 weeks ago.

Here is my spinach sprouting!!!

A funny picture of Nicholas. Nicholas has become my inventor. He has a "laboratory" up in his bedroom and wants to be an inventor. This has really inspired his sister as well and they often invent things together. This is a blessing, because most of the time all they do is fight. But they've worked nicely together on their inventions.

The reason I mention the inventor and his sister is because yesterday Charissa was the inventor. She spent a good part of the afternoon rigging up this watering system. Hours!
When she was done and it did what it was suppose to she was SO proud of her work. I was too. The bucket fills with water, she moves the ropes to let it dump into the buck that is waiting below.