The Big Wedding Scrum

The farm is looking  pretty stupendous, if I do say so myself, but not without a Herculean effort  from all of us!

We had so much to do to prepare for last weekend's wedding and first Summer Sunday pizza & music event, that we decided to try  a technique Rog uses at work, a Scrum Board. We pulled down the  big movie screen and used post-it notes to organize our  tasks. Jobs were color-coded (pink= buildings, green = garden & yard work, etc) in three columns (Backlog, In-Process and Done) and  posted under each of our names (Blue post-its)  as we tackled them. This was the chart when we started- I wish I had a photo at the end of the week- the third column became a dense mosaic of post-it notes.

Many rolls of sod were laid, as well as truckloads of gravel and  mulch.

The stockpile of plants on the patio got planted.

Our Food Forest planting session got interrupted by an injured fawn - which we patched up as best we could and released back into the woods for his mother to find. (Mae got to check "rescue baby fawn" off her bucket list!)

Six loads of cardboard were retrieved from Menards for deep mulching of the veggie garden.

The embarrassingly overgrown Granary Garden was weeded and mulched and made beautiful. Much harder than it sounds because a dense mat of mint had invaded the entire garden. (But it smelled great to weed.)

So much mowing and trimming. And cleaning up of cow pies from the pasture.And windows washed,  rugs shampooed, barns vacuumed, sticks picked up, trim painted, patios power-washed, a section of fence replaced, junk hauled away, decks stained...

and the burn pile was burned. (And then we foolishly all stayed up past midnight singing around the fire.)

I installed blue-tinted lights in the fish gazebo pond for a romantic glow at night.

The aquaponics green wall obliged by blooming enthusiastically  for the wedding.

Of course we still had to harvest and pack the CSA boxes

And bake breads and pastries for market (Mae is getting to be a master of these apple rose tarts!)

I found a luna moth in the yard one morning! I haven't see one of these in many years, but this poor battered moth had a torn wing and could not fly.

I found some instructions on a Monarch Butterfly website for repairing a butterfly wing, so I attempted moth surgery. The results were not very elegant, but the moth was able to fly away. (This task was not on the scrum board, but one must have one's priorities!)

 The night before the wedding while Rog was baking, Mae and I attended an art opening of women's works in which I had this painting, titled "Embrace."  Nothing like a deadline to help you actually accomplish art-making!

The wedding day arrived with  crazy weather and intermitttent thunderstorms, which made for uncertain celebration plans, but beautiful lighting for photos.

A downpour at the start of the ceremony had everyone scrambling for the tent, but the rain ceased a few minutes later, we dried off the chairs, and the wedding commenced beautifully.

Tori and Izaak were successfully wed!

Such a sweet couple.

One of the delectable dessert tables.

After the wedding ceremony, the couple was treated to a lovely rainbow --that has to be a good omen for starting a marriage!

A gigantic THANK YOU to Mae and Ira, our delightful WWOOFers and to our assistant  Ruth, who all worked so hard and with such good nature to whip this farm into shape!

Now we have head start for the next two weddings this month!

Word-light Wednesday: X Marks the Spot

X marks the spot where my heart sings! A little walk around the farm to show you some  wonderful spring things...

Peonies preparing to bloom, last year’s pampas grass preparing to fall, and flowering crabs in full glory.

Last year the crab apple trees had so few blooms I was afraid they were dying, but this year they are  smothered in blossoms.

So is the little cherry tree - I don't expect all these blossoms to become cherries, but just think if they did!

Serviceberries (aka Saskatoon berries, aka Juneberries) also blooming profusely.

The new orange beehive, with bees installed. I intended to paint art on the hive but the bees arrived a week early.

After 5 years of beekeeping I have finally mastered the art of  firing up the smoker.

The top bar hive now has hardware cloth over the openings to prevent the dang mice from getting inside.  For some reason it never occurred to me they could get up in there, but it turned into a perfect winter condominium for mice.

A peek at the top bar hive bees through the observation window.

SBF is now a member of the Xerces Society and we have a sign on the pollinator garden gate.

The yellow magnolia had one blossom!  I was just happy it survived the winter - the chickens had repeatedly scratched out all the mulch and soil, exposing the roots.

Tulips here and there.

Ever since we moved here I have dreamed of a sweep of Virginia Bluebells across the back yard.They are finally starting to multiply into a swath.

A 5 o’clock shadow of grass is now growing in most of the construction zones, including  around the new pond.

A few of the 150 daffodil bulbs that WWOOFer Elizabeth planted around the pond last November. They are all blooming despite having to push through heavy clay soil.

It is not very impressive yet, but I love the little pond and visit it several times a day. There are always fresh deer tracks. Once I discovered a pair of sandpipers exploring the edge.

The ducks are so happy we built them a real pond and spend all day every day swimming.

Now a pair of wild mallards are often swimming or sitting on the bank - perhaps nesting nearby?

One afternoon I heard loud singing and found toads mating - when I returned with my camera  there were strands of  pollywog eggs.
I have planted a few lily pads in the pond, released some native minnows (to hopefully consume any mosquito larvae), and planted native pond plants like marsh marigolds and blue flag iris along the edges. There are now water striders and water boatmen on the surface and will soon be pollywogs... it is so much  fun to see  this bare mud hole  transforming into a pond ecosystem!

 Columbine at the edge of the woods.

Volunteer squashes or pumpkins coming up everywhere along the path - seeds must have been in the compost they used to cover the septic construction area last fall.

Orange helping me take farm photos this morning.

The cows have now been feasting on fresh grass (and a few leaves if they can reach them) for a week and they are SO HAPPY.

I have not been milking LaFonda all winter, letting Splotch  nurse so I wouldn’t have to in the cold. But this morning she was complaining she was so full that I thought I would have to quick clean out the milking parlor (it has 100 folding chairs and my mosaic materials stored inside right now.)  Must be all that lush grass she is eating. But when I came back out to set up the milking parlor, Splotch was dutifully nursing, giving me a reprieve.
Time to get back to planting the veggie garden--photos of that coming soon.

Wild Turkey Rescue

Driving home from getting animal feed this afternoon, I saw two baby chicks run across the two-lane highway that goes to our farm. Then, in the rear-view mirror, I saw them run back across the other way. So I had to stop and collect them from the road. I pulled over onto a farm field access. As I walked back toward them,  I could hear their unmistakable peeping--wild turkey poults, of course, not chicks!

I would have probably left them to find their mother, but they still seemed totally lost and while I was walking toward them, they very nearly got squished by a big pickup truck. I was able to easily scoop them up.  They still have  a bit of an egg tooth on the end of their beaks, so must be only a day or so old. Maybe they were the last of the clutch to hatch and could not keep up with their siblings. I waited quietly, holding them, in order to hear other chicks or the hen respond to their peeping, but no sign, so I took them home.

First I tried putting them in with the 4-week old chicks and three-week-old turkey poults, but they are much, much smaller and a few chicks started pecking at them, so now they are in a box in the house for a few days.

I was thinking of myself as a their rescuer, protecting them from motor vehicles, starvation  and predators, but if I raise them and then we harvest them for Thanksgiving, I guess I am a predator too. Maybe I will let them go....but we are surrounded by avid turkey hunters.

These are the little things that interrupt my well-laid plans so I never get anything accomplished!

Fickle February

February is such a tease of a month.  It starts out with Groundhog  Day;  if the groundhog sees its shadow we will have 6 more weeks of winter. In Minnesota, ONLY 6 more weeks of winter would be welcome. We know better than to  be that optimistic.
Most of this February has been very cold. Last weekend it warmed up enough to get a bit of fresh snow that made the dog tracks through the yard look  pillowy soft.

But then we got cold again. The birds seem to know when the weather  is going to change--they gorge themselves at the feeders.  It costs a small fortune to feed these little birds, at least as much as it costs to feed my 75 chickens!

Yesterday and today we enjoyed a brief,  balmy warm spell - almost 40 degrees! Snow melted and slid off the roofs. We should have known better than to leave lawn furniture on the stage; the garden bench was out of the way of the snow blower but right in the path of the barn roof avalanche. Broken to smithereens!

Snow on the east end of the barn roof is lying in wait for an unsuspecting person or dog to walk beneath it.

It was  so warm today today (but we are forecast for a blizzard, 60 mph winds and 10 to 14 inches of snow tomorrow!) so I decided I better check on my beehives - I have to order bees pronto if i need them.  I was expecting the worst and was happy to discover the top bar hive seemed pretty active and healthy. This is the view through the observation window. The bees were  moving about. I found a few dead bees on the snow; that’s a good thing-- the result of bee housekeeping on a warm day.

Wading through the deep snow from the top bar hive to the Warre hive at the bottom of the yard was good exercise--the snow had drifted thigh deep and was dense and wet.

The Warre hive did not look so good - lots of dead bees in front of the hive, and bee droppings all over the hive and the snow.

Bee poop polka dots on the top of the hive. Bees often suffer from dysentery in late winter/early spring because they are unable to clean the hive of droppings until it warms up, usually a January thaw, which we did not get this year. There might also have been too much moisture from so many bees breathing in a small closed space - this hive was very heavily populated last fall. Or worse, it could be nosema, bee diarrhea caused by a parasitic infection. This has been an especially stressful winter with unusual, unrelenting cold.   But when I put my ear to the hive I could hear a faint humming, so perhaps the hive will survive.  Nevertheless,  I think I will order two packages of bees to ensure I have at least two hives next summer.

I’ll close on a sweeter note--dark chocolate poppyseed cakes

and  savory heart turnovers with greens, mushrooms,  walnuts and creamcheese, made for

a Valentine party at our house last Friday, "Chocolate, Champagne & Love Songs.”  Thanks to the  Nodding Wild Onions for providing the music, and thanks to all our wonderful guests for bringing a bounty of bubbly and decadent chocolate delicacies.
Sending Valentine love to you all!