Mostly odd lately.  We are still finishing up our shiitake logs and Ron has yet to decide if and what kind of other mushrooms he wants us to try growing.  Then we get to working on that project.

While he ponders, we are getting ready for our lavender planting.  Ron ordered just over 200 plugs in January for delivery this month.   No actually planting until after May 15, which is the average date of last possible frost in our area.  But we have a lot to do in order to be ready for it.  Twelve foot wide landscape cloth was ordered in one massive roll.   We have to cut it down into four 60 foot long lengths.  That will be great fun.  Have to pick a calm day and a nice big parking lot for that task.

And we have to mow down the winter wheat that has been growing great guns in our field.  We have been planting cover crops over the past few seasons in order to improve the quality of our soil.   So we now have to get our brush hog of out the storage unit and out to the farm.  Once the mowing is done we can lay down the cloth and wait until planting day.

It does look nice though, doesn’t it?  Seems a bit of a shame to cut it all down.  You can’t see them from this angle, but our pink pussy willows are finally showing signs of life.  Lot of green leaves on all of them.  We were getting a bit worried that they did not handle the transplanting well.  And our elderberries and pawpaws are doing nicely too.

Another bit of good news is that we finally have signs of life from our ginseng too.

We took the protective screens off and brushed away the leaves.  Less than two days later and the squirrels had already been digging in the boxes.  Ron was not pleased.  Anyone have a good recipe for squirrel stew?

We found a good deal on this small greenhouse a couple of years ago.  Set in up the our backyard and used it one year and then it sat in our garage for the next two.  Now Ron thinks he can use it out on THF.  The critters out there do seem to like what we are trying to grow.    As we are planning to try and sell some of these plants, it would be nice have them survive and get big enough to sell.  The zippered front is broken so we have to come up with a back up plan and we had to tape the whole thing together along the bottom.   It should provide some protection.

One ongoing project is collecting all the garbage the previous owner left behind.  We pulled at least 60 cement blocks out of the weeds.  Ron plans to use them to hold down the landscape cloth before, during and after our planting events.   On Wednesday we had an hour to space and decided to tackle the hill below our tiny house.  We pulled rusty cans and broken bottles out by the dozen.  There was an old rusted out TV, metal strapping, barbed wire, pipes, and a couple of large metal pieces that we could not identify.  The junk we constantly unearth is a gift that just keeps on giving.   One we could easily do without.   This project is just not a fun one.  Not like drilling holes in logs, picking rocks, hauling water, or planting stuff.  Am thinking not too many people would sign up for a trash picking party.  Not sure what we could offer as lunch in order to get folks to come out.  Hot dogs and burgers might not cut it.

But we are looking for volunteers to come help us plant our lavender.  We have hit a speed bump with the plan.  The company we ordered from months ago just informed us that they are downsizing our order.  By one third.  Needless to say, Ron is not pleased with them.  He is looking for to another source to make up the difference.  Whatever the result, we are expecting to get planting on May 20th.  Check out our FB page, Tiny House Farm Augusta NY for full details.