Our thermometer has said 35 degrees that last 2 mornings! Hopefully that will not be cold enough to damage the peach trees that are in bloom now! Greg got them sprayed on Friday evening as they have to be sprayed at bloom time. Noticed yesterday that the apple trees were also starting to bloom.

We planted a variety of peppers Sunday in the greenhouse; several varieties of bell peppers, marconi, banana, Jimmy Nardello's, Fushimi, Hershey, cayenne, jalapeno and green chile...Also planted Machiaw, Fairy Tale, Beatrice, Dusky, Black Beauty, Ichiban and Ghostbuster eggplant.

Our Spring break help went back to school yesterday. They will be greatly missed!

Rain, Rain go away, come again another day! Preferably in July or August! Oh, well, such is Spring in Missouri. Hopefully we won't get any of the snow they are calling for.

We had to pull the cover back on the strawberries last night. That is such a miserable job when the row cover is wet! But there were four of us this time so that makes it go a lot better!

We have finally finished cleaning all the chicken houses, and put out new bedding, repaired and expanded the chicken yards, and got new gates made! The pullets are really starting to lay. We are getting around 80-90 eggs a day from them! We got two more loads of manure from William Woods yesterday. So what with cleaning out all the chicken houses and the horse manure we've been getting, our compost pile is coming along nicely. Next fall we should have a good supply to spread around on everything!

We've really enjoyed having Lucas and his friend Joe home for Spring Break. It's amazing the things you can get done with a couple of extra hands. Hopefully we didn't work Joe too hard and he'll still want to come spend the summer! He says he does!

It sure is nice to have two extra hands home to help out. We've been putting them to work doing some things we haven't had time to get to, like pulling out old cattle panels and dragging them over to the chicken yard. We worked on expanding the chicken yard and clipping chicken wings, to keep them from flying over the fences!

Today we are working on rolling up old electric wire from all the old hog pastures, and pulling stakes. Had them take down a bunch of old gates in the barn that were used for pens. Now we can get in there easier and use for more storage space. Still have more tree limbs to cart over to the brush pile, and general clean up stuff to occupy their time!

Yeah!!!! We finally got all the onions planted and finished the leeks yesterday! Helps have a couple of extra hands! Had the boys tear down the old goat pin and drag the cattle panels over to the chicken houses so they can get them ready to expand the chicken house yard. Greg took off early from work yesterday so we also got some dead tree limbs drug out to the brush pile to be burned. These are left over from the ice storm last winter, don't know if we'll ever get them all gathered up and drug off!

Greg got five beds made for all those seed potatoes on Friday before it rained. So now they will dry out faster so when we get time to get to them we don't have to worry too much about them being to wet.

Saturday we worked on the big hoop house and got it all closed back up, and tilled up inside. Our son Lucas came home for Spring Break and brought home his friend Joe. Joe is thinking about spending the summer with us and working. We'll see how he likes it after this week!

Sunday we got the drip tape and plastic laid in the big hoop house, so now we are ready to set out tomato plants in there. We also got started planting all those leeks. Hopefully we'll finish those up today if the rain holds off!

DANDELION GREENS

Now that it is warming up the dandelions will soon be popping up in full force, so I have some recipes that I got out of my American Woman's Cook Book and my United States Regional Cookbook both by Ruth Berolzheimer copyrighted 1938 and 1939 respectively that I thought you might find interesting! I also have a dandelion jelly recipe that I would like to try out this year, we'll have to see if time permits that one! But seriously dandelion greens are very good for you, just be sure not to use any that may have been treated with pesticides! Let me know if anyone tries any of these!

DANDELION GREENS
2lbs dandelion greens - 1 Tbsp. butter Salt & Pepper
Dandelions should be used before they blossom, as they become bitter after that time. Cut off the roots, pick the greens over carefully, and wash them well in several waters. Place them in a kettle, add a little boiling water, and boil until tender. Salt the water just before cooking is completed. When done, lift them into a colander, press them to drain off all the water, and chop. Add butter, salt & pepper.


DANDELION OMELET
1 cup dandelion hearts - 4 eggs Butter or other fat
Fry the hearts of very white dandelions in butter or other fat, and mix them with the well-beaten eggs. Cook like an ordinary French omelet. The taste resembles an asparagus-tip omelet.

DANDELION FLOWER WINE
4 quarts dandelion flowers - 3 lbs. sugar
4 quarts boiling water - 3 oranges, diced
1 cake yeast - 3 lemons, diced
Select fresh flowers being careful all the stems have been removed. Pour boiling water over flowers and allow to stand for 3 days. Strain, add remaining ingredients and let stand 3 weeks until fermented. Strain, bottle and seal. Makes 8 pints

APRICOT TREES ARE BLOOMING!

As you can see our apricot trees are blooming, and the bees are really out working on them this afternoon. They are the earliest of our fruit trees, so we very rarely get any fruit off of them, as I'm sure we'll have at least one more killing frost and that will be the end of that crop!

Well Greg did not find a manure spreader at his auction! That's disappointing to take time off and drive all that way to get there and not find what you're looking for! So he came home and planted a few more candy onions before he left to watch basketball! I was a little luckier at my auction, I found a couple of little things, but spent most of the day, as there was something I was really interested in, but in the end it went to high for me! So I came home did chores, and then I planted on the candy onions! Sunday we worked in the second hoop house and got it all planted in more greens, beets, toyko turnips, purple top turnips, kholrabi, kale, pak choi and spinach. We got all the transplants planted out, too. We also took the row cover off the strawberries again. Noticed a few blooms starting to appear!

Yesterday we worked on those candy onions again! We have about 7 bunches of them to go, so I will probably work on them this afternoon. This morning I repaired a chicken roost that had collapsed and re strawed the nests, they sure do love to eat out the straw, it's hard to keep the nests full! I also need to get a couple of bee hives put together, as I have a couple packages of bees coming the first of April, and I need to get my cuttings that I rooted in the greenhouse potted up, oh the fun never ends!

Lucas is bringing home a friend this weekend for Spring Break so we can meet, as he is interested in coming home with Lucas for the summer to work for us! The extra hand would come in very handy, but I'm not sure where I'm going to put him, as I have no extra beds, bedroom, floor space, etc. I just hope he doesn't mind the floor, and a messy house, and no privacy!!!!!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!!!!!!!!

Thursday I got 40 1/2 pints of peach jam made, so am slowly making a dent in my freezer! Friday we got 2 more loads of horse manure from William Woods College and unloaded. Then we got one of the hoop houses direct seeded with cherry belle, helios, purple plum, french breakfast and white globe radishes, several lettuces, totsoi, mizuna, arugula, rainbow swiss chard and kale. Then we started on the crate of candy onions! A crate was supposed to have 40 bundles of 60 plants, but we counted at least 80 bundles and they have more like 75-80 plants!!!!!!! So we didn't get those even 1/2 done, and we were hoping to get them all done, and in one bed! I told Greg that just because we had them all didn't mean we had to plant them all, but that was met with pure astonishment! There is no way you can let anything go to waste, so you all may be having to eat a lot of onions!!! I will say this if you like vidalia onions you will like these, as they are a sweet onion! But time will tell, mother nature has a way of evening out things sometimes! Today we are taking a bit of a break. Greg is going to an auction looking for a manure spreader this morning, and then going over to Columbia to watch the High School Basketball State playoffs, this is a tradition with his brother. Our son Lucas came home from school to go, too. I am going to an auction here in town. Then tomorrow it will be back to all those onions, we still have over half to go, and we haven't got all the onion sets from the other day planted yet. Plus last night UPS delivered our crate of leeks!!!!!!!!

TRYING TO GET GEARED UP!

I'm trying to get some things together so we'll have something to sell at Columbia Farmers' market in a couple of weeks...yikes! Yesterday I made some honey ointment which is really good for lip balm, and rough elbows, knees and heels. Also good as an ointment to put on scrapes, bruises, minor burns & cuts as honey is antibacterial and works as a humectant, meaning it pulls moisture to the skin. Today I made 27 1/2 pints of Damson jam. I need to get some more jams & jellies made and get my freezer emptied out! I would also like to get some more lye soap made, but time will tell...!

SPRING IS SO FICKLE

Wow what a difference a day makes! Yesterday was in the 60's and this morning my thermometer said 17! Needles to say the strawberries got their blanket put back on!Boy was that a miserable job yesterday evening in the rain and mud! Good thing I have an appointment with my chiropractor this morning!

With all this warm weather the strawberries kicked off their blanket (I wish it was that easy)! But when the temperature gets to freezing or below, it will have to go back on.

Greg working on setting up sprinkler system in hoop house

Planting onion sets

I saw my first Robin of the Spring this past Friday! The frogs sure have been singing their little lungs out! Guess I would, too, if I'd been living in the dark freezing, cold mud, barely breathing for almost 6 months! God sure is amazing the way He made His creation to work! Summer doesn't start officially for me until the Barn Swallows return, but this weather makes you believe that it will be here before you know it.
Greg took off a half day from work Friday and got 5 onion beds made and he got his tractor put back together. Saturday I made a trip down to Morgan County to the Mennonite country and picked up our order of 250 lbs. of seed potatoes, (the blue seed potatoes didn't come in. Don't know if we'll be able to find any somewhere else or not?!) 2 bushels of onion sets, 1 crate of candy onion sets, 5 boxes of tomato twine, some seeds & black plastic mulch. We didn't want to have to pay shipping on all that! I also stopped by Weaver's which is a Mennonite grocery store. They have a lot of stuff in bulk so I stocked up on baking supplies. Greg sprayed in the orchard while I was gone. When I got home after lunch we started planting those onions. We have about 2/3 bushel left to go!

KOPN Radio Show

I was on the local public radio show last night KOPN on their Farm N Fiddle program. They had about 5 different farms around the mid Missouri area that are offering CSA programs. It was interesting to hear everyone talk about their operation and the differences and the simularities. So this is a concept that is gaining popularity in this area and hopefully will continue to grow as everyone becomes more aware and concerned about where their food comes from and how it is grown.

Today is a beautiful day outside, my thermometer says it's 75 degrees! I've got tulips and daffodils popping up, buds on the forsythia bushes...

We planted about 550 more tomato seeds today. These were heirloom varieties like Kentucky Beefsteak, Red zebra, Cherokee Purple, Mr. Stripey, Earl of Edgecomb, Green Zebra, Big Rainbow, Wapsipinion Peach, Black from Tula, Indishe Fliesch, Hawaiian Pineapple, and Sudduth Brandywine, to name a few.

MORE TOMATOES BEING STARTED!!!!

We got about 200 more tomato seeds planted on Monday! These are more hybrid varieties, that when they get big enough will be planted out in the field. We are hoping to get one of the hoop houses planted with the greens we started earlier and then filling it the rest of the way with direct seeding. Hopefully we will get that done this weekend. We didn't get to do it last weekend, because the rain we got washed in under the hoop house and soaked up the West side, so Greg has been trying to get that dried up and re-tilled! Meanwhile his Ford 8000 tractor has a cracked steering plate that he had to get off and it is off at the welder's being repaired.

Our other big news is that we have 3 pullets that have started to lay! It takes about 2 pullet eggs to equal 1 regular egg, and it takes them about a month before they get big enough to sell. So we will have a lot of eggs to do something with when all 150 start to lay! I like to find recipes that use a lot of eggs, like scrambled eggs, quiches, and pound cakes.