1st week of April 2010

Daffodils The daffodils are out in full force and are so brilliant. My children treat bouquet picking like a sport this time of year. They compete to see who can pick the biggest bouquet with the most unique varieties while they are running around wearing golden forsythia branch crowns. Soon our table gets overrun with flowers and we have to put a limit on how many vases are allowed on the kitchen table. They respond by putting vases throughout the house and many visitors end up with a gift of flowers. Flowers do really make people happy and we always plant plenty of them. I have a flat of snapdragons growing in the greenhouse and I need to start some marigolds and a few others yet. Most of our flower seedlings, however, come from the greenhouse of my Amish friend. We do some computer work for Nettie with printing newsletters and price sheets in exchange for goodies from her greenhouse. I also was excited to have an article I wrote about their flower business, Country Cut Flowers, appear in the spring edition of Farming Magazine.

Edible Weeds We are still enjoying plenty of greens and even include a few weeds in our sping meals. Here are a few of our weedy delicacies - chickweed, stinging nettle, water cress and of course, dandelion. Most spring weeds are full of nutrients and have cleansing qualities. The weeds are certainly much easier to grow that all the plants we try to carefully cultivate and sometimes they are full of more nutrients. The chickweed and watercress can be eaten raw in a salad while the dandelion and nettle are ones I steam and mix into various dishes. I take along a plate of weed examples for my Lehmans demos and they sometimes draws the most attention in my display plus I hear many stories from the older folks about other weeds they ate growing up. I have tried some new ones from their recommendations but I definitely am not willing to test the "little leaf of poison ivy" remedy that some suggest!

Garden Helpers Sometimes when I read books about Martha Stewart's gardens or other picture perfect gardens I have to remind myself that these people have a gardening staff to accomplish all that work. I have a gardening staff too, they are just all under the age of 15. Here is part of my gardening staff at work planting potatoes. The older ones are actually quite helpful but the toddler had a ball pulling out the sticks that mark my rows. Oh well, at least it's better than pulling out plants! I can tell my body is getting older and stiffer so I am thankful for some young bodies to tackle some of the fetching, raking, bending, planting,..... Another thing the children are really enjoying is playing with the goats. They used their Christmas money to add two Oberhaslis to the herd this spring. They are due to kid anytime and hopefully there will be news and pictures next week of the new arrivals.