It’s that time.

The temperatures are leveling out, the wind has mellowed and the spring plantings have called.

Our whole schedule changes now as a family as we switch from “Hit it Hard” – our motto for the first quarter to “Get Outside” our motto for the second quarter of this fine year.

Read more about our family mottos here.

The beautiful ones have gone from being underfoot all the time to NEVER around.  They’ve built a fort in the wood (complete with sitting area and toilet 🙂 and I have to holler… LOUD to get a visual on them.   Somehow my white floors don’t stay any cleaner even with them gone.

School has switched from a full schedule to busting thru as much math and music and french as possible in the shortest amount of time and then onto hands on discoveries of worms and caterpillars.  Did I mention how black the bath water is at the end of the day?

Egg production has gone from “I’m going to stew you bit—-s if you don’t start putting out.” to over a dozen and a half a day and this farmgirl’s temper is under control once again.  Look, I just need my eggs people.  Nothing ticks me off like low egg production!

My poor does.  Are they pregnant or aren’t they?    The constant groping they receive from me is rather pervy but really, there is a big part of me that feels like this whole homesteading thing isn’t really the real deal until I can have my home dairy up and running.    We have about a year and a half more of saving for “THE BIG FARM” and I fantasize about my own cow as much as I do owning my own flat in Paris someday.

Today is the day… hopefully that I get it together and get my bees ordered.  Better late than never.  But I find the whole bee things SO intimidating and I just want to do it right as it’s such a huge investment for me.  But boy does this little farm need bees.  We just never see them…

And the Potager…

I have to force myself not to look back at how beautiful my original potager was (if I do say so myself).  I have to be VERY grateful for what the landlord has allowed us to do around here… though if it were mine… well, the mind reels… you can only imagine.  But I reign it in and try to be practical.  You can’t save for the “THE BIG FARM” and go nuts on the rental now can you?

To have my hands in that dirt again is just a heady thing.  We are committed to growing as much food in the most beautiful way possible this year and I’ve got some spring plantings in… golden beets, pinwheels beets, rainbow chard (tons of it) peas, leeks, spinach and a hopefully what will be delightful patterns of lettuce.  I’ve added 20 lavender plants and half as many rosemary… more thyme… we’ve amended the soil with our new/old beast of a rototiller that we have named The Dominator.  It might as well be a tractor it tears it up so big and bad.

Today the first round of onions go in today… there is SO much to do as we have our HUGE field garden as well as the potager.  Alas, I am only one woman and the funny thing is, these people expect to eat three meals a day around here?!   What the heck?  And then there is violin, piano, church groups, french tutors and laundry… oh la la.

So I’d better dash before I burn the pancakes.  Kids are already out in the fort so I need to call them in.

I’ll be updating the Potager and farm every week thru the season so tune in and don’t forget to subscribe to the (newer) YouTube channel.

Happy planting.  Thank you LORD for Springtime.