Breaking Ground For Our Garden

In addition to remodeling our home, we've also been working on getting our organic, heirloom garden going. Since our compost pile won't be ready this year, we found some beautifully composted horse manure (I call it "black gold") at a local stable. We had to dig through stacks of manure to get to the bottom where it was slimy and full of red worms. It was beautiful stuff! We dumped an entire pick-up load over our 660 sq. ft. of garden space. Michael used the "Little Crawler" he restored to push the compost around. Doesn't that look like fun?Then we hired a guy with a tractor to come till it up for us. This was so worth $50, especially since we were were breaking new ground.There's my cute hubby, raking the garden out into rows. We were both so sore that day from all the compost slinging and raking. A friend of ours gave us some black plastic rolls, so we decided to use that to cover our planting rows this year. We'll probably go with a natural fiber landscaping material next year. Michael staked them down, but apparently not real well. We had a wind storm the next day and most of the plastic is flapping now. We haven't had time to fix it because we've been working on the addition. We also got some blank newspaper rolls and are going to use that for in between the rows and then put straw on top of the paper to help hold it down and create a weed barrier between rows. I hate weeding! 

We lost our broccoli, cauliflower, basil and cabbage seedlings when I tried to slow their growth down by putting them outside all day. Apparently, even though it was sunny that day, it was too cold, although it wasn't freezing. Oops! Oh well, less to transplant. I'll start them over when I actually should be planting them ;) All the other plants are doing great.So, while the tractor guy was here, Michael decided to have him till up part of the yard so we could level it out and replant grass. I know, like we didn't have enough projects going on! I'm still bitter about that one, especially since the task of raking and seeding has fallen to me since Michael is working on the addition. I'd rather be working on the garden! You can see how big this area is compared to the garden in the right hand corner of our lot. It's like a 1/4 acre! I'm so sore from raking this puppy. Then when the kids get back, I'm going to have the fun job of trying to keep them out if it since I'm going to re-seed it soon.

Praise God the kids are still gone since some of the remodeling has been dangerous work. I didn't realize how hazardous demo work can be. It has been so nice not worrying about the kids getting hurt. My MIL has them all week and now my mom and step-dad are wanting them for the weekend. Sweet! We are going to try to tear out the interior walls this weekend. That is when the mess will really start. The framing, sheathing (sp?), and wiring should be done today. It is really starting to come together.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

God Bless,

Jackie