4th week of May 2008
After several warmer days tonight was much cooler so we just prepared the tomato holes with compost and we'll wait till a warmer day to actually put them in the ground. Eighty plus peppers went in this week with about a dozen different varieties. Not sure I kept perfect track of who is who but I did try to put` the "sweets" and "hots" together. Even though I haven't had great success with eggplants before and our family isn't overly fond of them I put 8 plants (Mangan and Calliope) in the ground to give them another try. In the greenhouse I'm planting summer heat resistant lettuces in flats now and starting to transplant my fall cabbages and broccoli to packs. They germinated very well so we could be making lots of sauerkraut and have abundant broccoli to freeze late fall.
After our chick massacre, it's nice to see some new life appearing. Someone brought 5 orphan ducklings and we added them to the chick brood. Our friends the Amstutz's brought 3 bee hives to our farm that they will manage over the summer. Pictured is Michael in action with one of their jr. beekeepers. I'm already noticing honey bees on the flowers more often and am hoping they give garden pollination a good boost. Another new life was a heifer calf born to one of our Jerseys after a string of 5 bull calves. Diamond gave birth to Ruby with the only "oops" being that Ruby's father was a Hereford instead of a Jersey. We're hoping this will make her a good dual purpose milk/meat cow. Until then, the children are having fun leading her around.
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