blooming

Kind of hard to tell, but this is a big old shagbark hickory tree in the woodsy part of our farm. If the apples don't attract the deer, the hickory nuts will.

The apples trees are blooming. I'd say we have 40-50 trees scatered around, but don't know how good they are yet. Here are a couple along the driveway.

Next weekend, we will be tilling and planting, as well as getting rocks out of the field. Our neighbor planted barley in the field, and noted a lot of rocks, so we are going to try to thin them out. Might end up with some landscaping materials.

first harvest

Well, we were lucky enough to be at the farm when morels were popping. So, along with the chives that were growing by the back door, we harvested our first "crop". This bowl of morels is just some of the mushrooms we found. We fried some , put some in omelets, made some soup, and dehydrated some.

We have several dead elms on the hillside, and that is one of the best places to find morels. We cut out a lot more prickly ash this past weekend, and plan to chip them up and use as mulch.

Memorial day weekend will be the big garden planting day, when we put in all the seeds and plants that can't take frost. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Area 51 relic?

This was left in the yard of our house in Wisconsin by the former owner. It's a bird bath, and kind of looks serene, but overall, it's just weird looking.

Some of the neglected raised beds we are spading over and will be repairing. The tiller won't fit in these smaller ones, so it took a while to till, and the sod mat is still rather chunky.