Thursday, March 24, 2011

Help and Thankyou!

It's a blank canvas with only a few strokes on it.  It's a start.  I'd rather see a whole lot of green where I see a whole lot of brown!  So to get on with it, one week ago I moved our pile of 'help' into the garden beds!  A great big thank you goes out to my llamas and goats for all the 'help'!


Speaking of help and thank you's, my six and a half year old son wants to be a farmer (he even wants suspenders to look the part)!  So he eagerly asked if he could help me.  That's him on the right hand side of the photo.  Amazingly he smoothed out the manure in the middle bed and inspired our oldest to help out.  I think he realized his little brother was making him look bad!  So he pitched in too!  And that wonderful little skidsteer is what I used to transport the pile and dump it into beds.  Imminently better than a shovel and wheelbarrow!  What would have taken days, only took about two hours to complete!  Ahhhh... lots of help!

A neighbor started four organic bell pepper seeds, and they ALL sprouted!  Since like me, she hates to thin and discard seedlings, she gave two to me!  Aren't they adorable!?  Thank you!
Fresh Spring-timey green.... sigh...

On a rare trip into town today, I picked up yet another version of help, Epsom Salts.  I'll use it for the Peppers and Tomatoes.  Next on the list is Fish Emulsion and Blood Meal.  I want lots of happy pepper plants this year!

I also picked up these two Anaheim Peppers.  Hopefully I'll accumulate a few more soon.  I hope to have enough peppers for things like homemade enchilada sauce and salsa verde.  Oh, I can taste it now!

I bought a grapevine!!!  Not much choice in variety, so it's just a Thompson Seedless.  We'll see how it goes, er, grows!

This of course is a good sign!
SPRING!!!

The garlic is doing nicely!  I am very hopeful that this will be a successful crop.  Garlic is known to be an antiseptic, antimicrobial, antifungal, antiviral, antiparasitic and even anti inflammatory!  Wow!  It's a miracle plant!  Lots of help from these unassuming, even stinky (to some, but I love their odor) plants!

The apricot has finished blossoming and leaves are emerging.

Now it's the peach's turn!


I sincerely hope this year will not get started as late as last year!  Last year I got so fed up with waiting on the weather to warm up enough that I just planted on faith in early June!  You'd think being in Arizona this wouldn't be a problem!  But when you live in higher elevations, the rules change a bit.  As it is, I'm already feeling impatient waiting for planting time!

Hope you're having better success in the exercise of patience!  Boy is it tough!

This post is linked to the Dandelion House Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop!  Take a look, meet other farmgirls at heart, and be inspired!

It's fun!

7 comments:

  1. I enjoyed looking at your blog and reading about your homestead, you are the ultimate farmgirl! We would love to live on land some day but I'm not sure I could make the transition of being quite that far from a town. I live in a suburb of Kansas City right now. It is wonderful that you are living off the grid. I'll be following along, thanks for sharing!
    Jodie

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just look at you! Your high desert homestead is blossoming! Congratulations! I so loved this post and thanks for linking up again this week!
    Happy Farmgirlin'
    Deb

    ReplyDelete
  3. Things are looking good. All of those blossoms and love the garlic bed. My garlic bed was a flop, hope to try again. Hope you have early warm weather so you can get started having loads of fun. God Bless

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your Garlic bed looks great.
    We have garlic that grows in Clumps in various spots on our acreage. I've only recently (say 2 yrs) begun to harvest it and use it. I can't believe we didn't do anything with it for 13 years-- but we're still learning.

    as for "help" my brother brought a load during the winter months and I've used it in most of my raised beds.
    For the Hugelbeet and small garden-- we're using Manure Tee--

    I hope our peppers turn out-- so far we've started seed indoors for pepper and tomatoes and haven't had much luck with either!

    from Deborah Jeans FGF blog hop- Pat

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahh garlic! We plan to finally plant some this year! Love the fruit trees!

    happy day!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Going to town in the garden...garlic love planting that, will do it this year too. I start mine in Oct and harvest in June here in Ohio. Starting seedling, and garding thoughts abound...thank you for stopping over my place..I enjoy meeting new friends..and the blog hop is so fun...

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love how hard working you all are and what you are doing to sustain yourselves. Were you raised this way? Wish we neighbors so you could teach me all you know.

    ReplyDelete