Rainy Day

Well, I was going to talk about the seeds we've started outside, but mud. So instead, I'll talk about nibbling away at the sea of mud, one tiny patch at a time.

I've basically picked an area that needs landscaping at random and begun a garden plan -- the front yard. It recommended itself to me because it's small and reasonably well defined by the house and driveway. Here's what I've got so far:
(click to enlarge)

I an plainly not a professional landscaper. But I think it's pretty good. The "W"s are to indicate plants with winter interest, since we basically have winter for more than half the year. The circles around the herb garden are pavers.

Of course, it's all well and good to draw a picture. Now I just need about $1500 worth of plants.

Do you ever wonder how great-grandmas made their fantastic gardens? Everyone I know has at least one great-grandma who had just a fantastic garden, like an acre of dahlias and hollyhocks and lilac, and the best tomatoes and sweet corn on earth. But these women grew up in the Depression -- there's no way they spent thousands of dollars on seeds and plants. I imagine that they must have shared seeds and divisions with their neighbors. That seems like a completely different universe from what we live in now.

Windy Day

So, we had sustained winds of 30-40 MPH with gusts up to 60 MPH (or so I hear from the internet; I haven't convinced A to spend $300 on a weather station yet but I'm working on it). Our partially finished chicken coop did not remain in its upright position. Thankfully, no chickens were harmed in our little recreation of Twister -- they're still in the living room. And in fact, the chicken coop seems to have maintained its structural integrity. We're just going to move it to its final resting place tomorrow, re-attach it to its floor, and then hopefully get the windows and doors in ASAP. At which point it will be finished, more or less -- at least move-in ready. We'll probably paint it at some point, but the house isn't even painted yet so I don't know how the chicken coop rates. Hopefully the additional weight and being more bottom heavy will prevent another tip-over.

We'll still need to fence the chicken yard, but that shouldn't take too long. More likely than not our chickens will end up as a hawk/coyote/fox buffet, but hopefully if nothing else we'll learn some things about fencing and coop building/security for next year.

Snowy Day

The view from my porch this morning. The snow was all gone by 10:00 or so, but it was sort of pretty while it lasted.

We've had a really mild winter here this year, but Latah County can have really unpredictable weather. We had snow in June 2008 -- sure, it was gone by late morning too, but it's the principle of the thing. And the record low has been below freezing in every single month of the year. The winter before last there was over 7 feet of snow. Which is all to say that North Idaho is maybe not the ideal location for a farm.

But the dirt sure is nice. When we dug the well for our house, the drilling report said we had 25 feet of topsoil, and I don't think there's a rock on our property other than the gravel we trucked in for our driveway. We're surrounded by thousands of acres of dryland wheat/pea and lentil/canola farms. The weather may not be perfect, and the markets may not be ideal. But the land is fantastic.