Just About Ready to Plant!

Ready to plant!

 I always love this time when the soil is all tilled, smooth and black!  Just waiting to receive seeds and water, to produce little plants and then to grow beautiful food.  Within a week, it will be cut up, tramped down in places and will be full of stakes and rows!  This time is all about potential, what might be!

We were hoping for a very early start, but the rains of late April and early May have lessened that possibility somewhat...we will be getting on earlier than usual but only by about ten days.  What the recent weather has brought is a full dug-out.  After the snow melted our watering pond was only half full, a big worry, but now it's full to overflowing.  The irrigation system itself needs a little work before it will be ready to use, but the soil has ample moisture now and we usually have sufficient rain through the end of May to get things going.

The dug-out full!

Farmer Man got the tilling of the main area finished last evening.  After watching the end of a hockey game, we got out close to dusk to set up the rental plots.  We gave up in the dark, before finishing, but that is getting taken off the 'to-do' list this morning.  The gardeners, with recent sunny days, have been anxious to get started!  This little farm will probably be a beehive of activity this weekend!  All the doggies will be so happy; they love the attention and all the extra pats!  We'll have to corral the chickens soon, or they will happy scratch up and pluck out everybodys' little seedlings!

There is more tilling to be done: the potato field is being moved to an area that was alfalfa/grass last spring.  We've been slowly taking back more and more of the old alfalfa field, for crop rotation and as our business expands.  The soon-to-be potato field was broken up last summer, disked in the Fall, disked again just a few days ago and will now get at least one rototilling to smooth it out.  The area around the dug-out is still a little wet and heavy, so we'll leave that for a while.  We're not in any big hurry: our last frost date is officially June 6th, so we're not in any rush to plant out our started seedlings of tomatoes and peppers.  Seeds and seed potatoes will be safe for planting now, and that will keep us busy enough for a couple of weeks!

At Least Someone is Enjoying All the Water!

It's becoming a Spring tradition.  Blaze's first swim in the dugout.  I guess the water has to warm to a certain temperature before he'll take a dip because the water has been fully available for a while.  I don't mind this Spring rite of passage because the water is fairly fresh, with none of that green slime that appears in the Summer.  That means Blaze is wet and rather dirty, but he doesn't smell bad!

The Aftermath....

Just had a Sunday morning walk-about. Quite a day at Aagaard Farms! First, on checking The Hens, heard some noises behind the trees; thought somebody was trying to steal our friends' Joe and Calla's boat. Took a peak: it's some of our neighbours cattle, perhaps scared across the road to the shelter of our tree belt during yesterdays' storm. Walking toward them seemed to head them home and they took off trotting for their own pasture. Some very large trees are down at the east end of the property. It's willow shelter belt - not too surprising. A major river coursed through the field yesterday, washing out some of Farmer Man's planting. We may have corn four feet south of where he intended! More bad news: big branches down in the asparagus patch, with some loses of lovely new asparagus! Farmer Man spoke last night to our neighbour Mike Waddell, half a mile south of us. Mike had a funnel or mini tornado go through and has a number of big trees down and quite a mess around his yard. I guess things could have been worse!

The good news: some of the potatoes are up, even in this cool weather! And the dugout level is much higher than it was ten days ago! More good news: spotted an oriole and some swallows! Swallows have nested around our garage every year - their arrival means summer is close by! We have to make sure the garage is closed up or they might nest in there. They tried that a few years ago, it got too hot and some of the babies died. We love to sit and watch the swallows on a summers' eve - they are so beautiful in motion, and eat lots of bugs as they are soaring around!

Uh, Oh....

Our snow is almost completely melted:  little pockets still hide on the north side of trees and buildings.  Yesterday we had some nice steady rain, which will certainly help green things up!  However, the dugout is just barely half full, which is not a good thing.  The dugout is our summer 'insurance policy' if Mother Nature decides to be stingey with rain in the summer.  At this time of year, after the snow melt, it should be full to the brim and even over-flowing.  In the picture, water shold be covering the patch of snow on the left.  Now, this is Manitoba, and we could still get a foot of snow - but even that won't fill the dugout.  We had much less snow than normal this year, apparently statistically, we've had low percipitation every month since the Fall!  It's not a great way to start the growing season!

Snow Day!

Woke up this morning to a fresh covering of snow - everything looks beautiful, clean and fresh! Officially we've had 6.2 cm (almost 3 inches) of new snow. Now, it's February and really, snow is not unexpected, but I could live without more. However, I realize that all the snow that sits out here now becomes the water in the irrigation dugout in the spring, so I really should be happy! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....First problem: it was also windy, so in some places the snow has blown in over a foot deep. Second problem: Farmer Man is still away, so shovelling is my duty. Blaze and The Three Bears are enjoying it! My kitchen floor: a wet, muddy mess!

Aquacize for Dogs!

Blaze likes to swim in the dugout in hot weather. It's one of the reasons he smells bad all season, with little pieces of muck hanging off him. But yesterday, it became apparent that it can be a good thing. Blaze was at the vet a week ago, who said he was a little lame because he was getting older (like the rest of us!) and because he was a little over-weight. So, during his swim yesterday he decided to give chase to a pair of ducks nesting in the area. The ducks didn't seem even slightly worried, they just swam ahead; when they got to the end they just flew up and landed maybe six feet behind him and started paddling in the opposite direction. Blaze would turn and dog paddle after them. This went on for an HOUR, maybe twenty laps of the dugout! Great workout for the old dog and did he sleep like a baby last night!

Rain. Beautiful Rain!

A beautiful, light rain all day! Just what we needed. Not a heavy downpour that would beat down the seedlings or compact the soil. Just a gorgeous, steady drizzle all day, slowly soaking in to nourish the seeds and seedlings. We knew it was going to happen, of course. We HAD just washed the truck.........

The 'girls' are rather filthy tonight - maybe they haven't learned yet the difference between a dust bath and a mud bath. Rain is suppose to happen tomorrow as well, which is wonderful for our sandy soil - it almost can't rain enough! What rained this morning has probably soaked straight through to the other side of the planet already and is making their crops happy. But, we're happy not to have to use the precious water in our dugout to water now. That water is best saved until the usual drought mid-July.