A Red Raspberry Weekend

We have been up to our chins in raspberries since Saturday. As you may have read, the raspberries were ready for picking, and they won't wait on you! So, we spent all weekend finding and picking ripe red raspberries on Flint Ridge.

Saturday didn't go so well for the picking. We had done work around the house, and by the time we made it to the patch, the mosquitoes had woke up. They were snacking on us big time, and we decided to give Sunday morning a try instead.

A Surprise Bubble Bursting

Tim had plans for a hike this weekend. I hate to burst his bubble, but:

I think the raspberries have other plans.

A weekend spent on Flint Ridge picking buckets of scrumptious, ripe, wild, red raspberries to begin in less than 24 hours!

Well, the least he can donate is a day of his time... right?!?

From the Backyard

Explored the backyard this beautiful afternoon taking "inventory" of everything coming to life, and thus all the work that will need to be done.

There's a million and one baby box elders that will need to be plucked.
Here's the "one."

The strawberries are starting to spring back to life. Going to have to trim them up and cut off any new runners soon.

Our tiny azaleas have started to bloom. They'll need to be fed some acidic vitamin goodness.

The "Sweet Williams" are blooming, and I can smell them as soon as I walk out the back door (as long as my Claritin-D has kicked in). I don't think that's really what they're called, but everyone I know calls them that - so I guess we'll just chalk it up to being Appalachian. They also pronounce Clematis vines as "Clem-nis."

The red raspberries have leafed out. We cut them back every year. They keep taking over.

Here's a very small portion of the majestic "Raspberry Forest" in the backyard. About half of our five acres consists of wild red raspberries.

The dandelions have taken over, too. They're even growing out of the rocks!

The honey bees don't seem to mind. It's nice to see them out and about! Come on honey bees! Survive!!

The grass was climbing up my legs. Tim's already mowed once this year. Guess I know what he'll be doing tonight.

Clover and I decided to take a minute to check our hot houses where we attempted to overwinter some vegetables.

There was so much condensation! And you could see the green peeking through the plastic. I knew it was probably all weeds.

So, I think my heart skipped about four beats when I opened the plastic and found baby lettuces! Not only did the seedlings we planted survive the winter, but now they're growing strong (amongst the weeds) and we're ahead of schedule for fresh greens.

The parsnips survived, too! They're the long stalky plants. You can just ignore those weeds. hehe

Add... to top it off and make me one proud garden mommy: the baby spinach is growing strong, too. Not all of it survived, but that's actually a good thing. With all the spacing now, maybe we'll get spinach before they bolt.

And these little flowers were taking over the greens' bed. Too bad they'll have to be pulled. They are quite pretty.

Friday Photo Spectacular

Fun With Night Time Photography

It's a Sunday evening, you've been to the grocery store, the pet store, and you've finished all your errands. You don't want to spend anymore money and you really don't feel like leaving the house again, yet you want to be outside. In this predicament, what else can you do? The answer was simple, we headed out back to have a fire and play with night photography.

We still have lots of maple wood left over from dad's tree that was cut down but a couple of months ago. We've been slowly doing away with it for him. This evening it was chilly, homemade potato soup was on the stove for supper, and we thought a nice hot fire would be a good way to warm the body and the soul. Even though it had rained just a bit earlier in the day, it wasn't enough to prevent us from having the fire.

After supping on simple homemade potato soup by the fire (because foods eaten outside from bowls are the best foods!) we got the camera out and started playing. Of course this was after the girls went and picked up cousin Jodi.

With the fire stoked and the tripod setup, flashlights and glow sticks were whipping around and about like crazy. We were getting a feel for what it would be like before we decided the flashlight would be best for doing some light graffiti. We all took turns trying to perfect our names (try writing yours mirror backwards!) and then did some other silly things by flinging light. After we were done with that, the girls all headed into kiddo's room for some dark room long exposure photos. What turned out is pretty darn creepy.

So the next time you have nothing else better to do, ya know 'cos you spent your last dime on food at the store, head outback. The backyard, or the front yard for that matter, can be a blast especially at night with some lights and a camera.

Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin

P.S. Check it out! We picked some of our sugar snap peas yesterday. We have a couple dozen out on the vines now. Our hamster, Q, will be the happy benefactor of our first small harvest.

Life on the farm...

If you remember correctly, a couple posts back we promised to share with you our projects around the house and how they are coming along. I may or may not have mentioned that we are working towards turning our homestead into a farm. It's a very slow process considering that Tim works a day job in a cube farm Monday - Friday and Robin plays wife, mom, daughter, photog, etc. However, on the weekends that we aren't out exploring our world, we can usually be found working outside on the farm.

Some of the current projects we have completed or are in the middle of include building a woodshed out of wooden pallets, clearing some land to plant blueberries, and raising winter crops. So far our crops are doing well. We have only 2 small kitchen gardens and a garden box at this time. The kitchen gardens are roughly 4'x8' and contain spinach, lettuce, parsnips, and sugar snap peas. The garden box stands between the two kitchen gardens at about 3 foot tall with the dimensions roughly 3'x2'. In it we have some carrots growing wonderfully. Over the last couple of weeks we winterized our gardens complete with hoop houses and hay. It's a good thing too, as we've had some frosty mornings this week. If we hadn't got that done when we did, we wouldn't have peas ready for picking now.

As for the wood shed, we've cleared a spot and mostly leveled it to begin construction on it. We still have to level the ground a bit more and get the bolts, nuts, and washers before we can really start on that project. Hopefully we can do some of that over the next couple of weekends, if it isn't too cold.

We also have half of the little pasture cleared for blueberries. We still have to clear the rest of it and remove all the little tree stumps before we can even begin to think about planting.

So that's about it for the time being. There is plenty of work to be done before we can really call it a farm but, you have to start somewhere.


Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin