Our project for this spring is to have a properly fenced garden and orchard. We’re also having several acres cleared for pasture, but we’re not doing that ourselves: We’re selling timber to pay for the stumping.
The garden is going in where the pigs spent the winter. The orchard will be in the sheep pens and on down the hill to the swamp. Two weeks ago we moved the sheep into the area up Mack Hill Road that Valerie and Kevin cleared while we were gone. It’s unfortunate, I’d rather be getting the grass established there, but there’s nowhere else to put them right now. The pigs moved down to the sheep pens, to root up the hay pack, and Lisa started putting in early veggies.
This weekend she put in the tomatoes (down to 28 plants after ‘something’ happened in the greenhouse) and we got the whole area fenced to keep out the waterfowl and provide a second line of defense against escaped sheep.
Below the garden there’s a 12 foot laneway and then the orchard paddock, which this year will also have the potato patch in the sheepie’s hay. The trees arrived two weeks ago and are heeled in waiting to get planted. The laneway fence went right through Albus’s shed and the chicken coop, so moving them was today’s job. We secured Albus in his shed with a pallet and set to work. The chicken coop went over by the well to get it out of the way. Albus and his shed then took a trip down the driveway to the “old new garden”. He wasn’t terribly happy about any of this, but he also didn’t panic, for which we’re profoundly grateful. He’s plenty big enough to make quite the mess if he gets really upset.
He now has a new place to check out, the coop is in a new spot out of the way and his front yard is ready to become the potato patch. Next week we move the other pigs, fence the laneway and start planting trees. I’m so glad I bought the backhoe.