Despite the lack of blogging, we are farming

Having a newborn makes gardening rather tricky, but we have managed to get our cold weather plants in the ground over the past month, and have started our tomato seedlings as well.  We've figured out that Landon is quite happy to be worn in a wrap, so Mike has been doing the bulk of the actual farming work, while I wear Landon and supervise.  I hope that once I can wear him on my back, I'll be getting my hands dirty more often.  At any rate, a quick run-down of our progress so far this season:

Around April 15, we started the tomato seedlings inside.  We let them go in their starter cells for much longer than we did last year (due to nothing other than parenting induced exhaustion), and just transferred them into larger pots last night.  Right now we have 24 seedlings, and I plan to plant 12 of them in the actual garden, sending the extras off to Taperman and anyone else in need of tomatoes.

Tomato seedlings 4-18

Tomato seedlings 5-6

Tomato seedlings 5-13

The weekend of April 29, we did our first cold weather plantings, getting arugula, mesclun greens, sugarsnax carrots, beets and scallions in the ground.  I had wanted to get more done, but this was my first attempt at leaving the baby inside with his dad while I farmed, and I just couldn't stay outside for longer than an hour.

The next weekend we tag teamed the planting, and got the potatoes, chard, half of the cabbage, broccoli, radishes, carnival blend and koruda carrots all planted.  We've had a nice warm spring with lots of rain, which I'm hoping will be good for the garden.  So far, it's been excellent for the weeds, so we've had to spend about equal time weeding and planting each weekend.  The chickens have been the happy recipients of the weeds, which is the only upside to their presence.

This past weekend we took Landon on his first trip to the farmer's market to pick up leek, shallot, more cabbage, and brussels sprouts seedlings.  We ran into one of his baby buddies from our prenatal group, and even though he slept through the entire outing, I think he enjoyed it.  At least, we enjoyed it!  Mike broke out the rototiller and cultivator attachment for the weed whacker to create some additional space on the northern side of the garden for the brussels sprouts and for sunflowers, and he planted all of the seedlings.  Landon and I supervised (again, Landon slept).  Now we just have the warm weather crops left - eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, bush and pole beans, squash, and zucchini.  I think I'll plant them Memorial Day weekend, and we'll be hitting up the farmer's market one more time before then to get some more seedlings, since we'll need to buy eggplant and pepper seedlings.

Easter egg radishes 5-14

Rhubarb 5-14

Sugar snap pea seedlings 5-14

I'm planning on starting cauliflower seedlings inside once the tomatoes move into the garden, to be planted in July for a fall harvest.  We'll also plant a second row of sugar snap peas for a fall harvest (hopefully this will be different than last year, when I said that we'd plant a second row of peas, but never actually did). 

The fruit trees have been blooming for the last two weeks and are just beautiful.  Right now the apple and crab apple trees are in full bloom.  So lovely.

Finally, the chickens.  They aren't a pretty group.  We've tried giving them extra protein in the form of sunflower seeds, and extra mental stimulation in the form of large seed blocks, but they are still pecking each other to the point of baldness.  I think we only have one or two girls who remain unpecked, and we've given up on trying to protect them from each other.  They're laying very well, producing 12-15 eggs a day, but they certainly aren't much to look at right now.