We stopped at my parents house to visit with the girls. They are getting so big! Appearance wise, they're in an awkward stage where they have some of their big girl feathers, and some fluff. At first, they didn't appreciate us poking them, but after a bit we were able to hold a few, and we hand fed the bravest girls. One chick was far more interested in nibbling my ring than the food, and several others didn't seem to be able to tell the difference between fingers and grain, so I'm not sure that we'll be doing more hand feeding in the future...
Anyway, on Saturday evening when we finally arrived at the farm, we had a great lobster dinner with my family (I highly recommend inviting my dad over for dinner if you have the chance. Nearly every time he comes to visit us, he stops for lobster and clams on the way. It's fantastic). By Sunday, I was very ready to get farming again. While Mamie and my dad ran, I did some minor tweaking to my garden plan, and walked through the rows to check out the progress of my seedlings. Happily, lots of seedlings were sprouting up! But when I looked closely, I could see that many of my little leafy plants were marked with holes, and some had these very small shiny black bugs on them. With the help of google and input from a few more experienced farmers, I've determined that they're probably flea beetles, so I'll be going back to Skillin's to find out how to organically treat them. My poor strawberry plants have taken quite a beating, and I want to make sure that the beetles don't kill the seedlings.
Mamie, Taperman and I went to Skillins on Sunday afternoon to pick up some more garden supplies, and buy a few more herb plants. When I told Mame that I was going to buy 20 tomato cages, she told me that I was too embarrassing, and refused to help me wrangle them. In her defense, I was getting a lot of strange looks, but still. Luckily, it's much harder to embarrass Taperman, so he helped me select 20 cages and get them out to the car. I forced Mamie to document this, which she's informed me was still embarrassing. What are sisters for?
When we got home, we started planting seeds. I seem to have lost most of my newfound planting skills, but Mamie kept things focused for the most part. She quickly nixed my plan for the tomato beds. She grew tomatoes last year, and so I trust her when she tells me how big the plants will get. We transplanted the tomato and pepper seedlings last because I read that this is a task best performed in the evening. I'm quite pleased to say that I only managed to mangle one tomato plant in the process, and that was okay since I had extra plants.
On Sunday, we just had to plant the tomatoes. We dug trenches in the beds, and then filled the bottom of each trench with 1-2 inches of compost. Then we put in the seed potato pieces, and covered them with compost and then dirt. I'll keep adding to the trench as the plants come up.
Then we decided to head over to check out the compost pile. Mike did a fantastic job of turning the compost throughout the winter, so when we started turning it over we could see that things had broken down nicely, and the mix was full of worms. Mamie and I got a bit too excited with our shovels breaking apart a watermelon rind, though, and my finger ended up caught between the two shovels. Ouch! Four days later, I'm finally ready to admit that I might survive the wound, but it really hurt quite a bit. 
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