We had an awesome week, got lots of stuff accomplished. The boys were able to remove some problem trees which were blocking a lot of sunlight to the garden area, and posed a threat to the house should we have another bad wind storm .

I was able to work in my garden and build some somewhat raised beds, surrounded with rock, to plant some root vegetables in. Root veggies do very well in loose, deep soil. I filled the beds with mulch, sand, manure, and some wonderful soil made from years of barn waste. It's so dark it's almost black!



Raegan, of course, wanted to be part of what we were doing, and played contentedly with some lawn garden ornaments for HOURS...a mama duck and 2 baby ducks. She washed them in the birdbath water, took them for walks, and chattered away endlessly. As you can see from the picture, we dress for comfort and work, not style, on our farm!


















Lastly, I got a few books in the mail, one I wanted to share which I started reading. It's called "Family Friendly Farming" by Joel Salatin. Joel Salatin is a farmer in Virginia I've admired for years, who promotes small, family run enterprises, in which the animals work through nature as they were meant to...not like most industrial, factory farms in our nation today, which produce the bulk of our food. The book is about working together as a family, side by side, to make a living, and especially to be good stewards of the land. I've read most of his other books and this too, looks like it will be a gem!