Pretty Spring Day

We had a very pretty spring day here in the North Georgia Mountains.  I got up to start my day and just could not stay inside.  I milked the goat and then went for an early morning walk as I ate my breakfast of carrots.   As the sun came up the chill left the air and the day was beautiful.  God filled me with such joy.   I had a lot I could do inside but gave the kids off from home schooling so we could get some spring clean up done.   Why waste the day?

Last fall I had cleaned out all the old plants and dead debris from last years garden.  But did not plant a winter garden as I didn't feel I could keep it up.  Praise God our garden did so well last year I was pretty gardened out by last fall.  So the beds have sat untouched pretty much all winter.  The soil is so rich that the chickweed and henbit just monstrously grew in all the beds!  So I started to weed my raise beds to strip them out and get the soil prepared to be enriched and then planted over the next few weeks. 

                                         Two of the beds in front of the house

                                           Back row in the raised bed garden nook.

                      Middle row in the garden nook.

                  Potting bench and front row in the garden nook.

       The two side beds in the garden nook.

Looking down from above, two square herb beds on the very ends next to potting bench.

These are the raised beds from the front after weeding.  God helped the kids and I build these last spring 2012.  They were such a blessing all last year and wonderful to garden out of.  So much easier on us than the way we did it for the past 12 or 13 years.  We had a huge compost pile that we filled the raised beds with and the plants grew so well we had to cut things back several times as it turned into a jungle last year.  This year I have learned alot from some mistakes last year.  I will be planting a little different.  Spacing the plants much farther apart and in different beds as I had trouble picking some of veggies off some of them. 

Carolyn and Zeke did the same to the raised bed they share.  They never stripped out the old dead plants from last years  garden they had planted so they had a lot more to do.  Also Carolyn had planted a mint plant in her side of the bed.  We had no idea how invasive mint is.  We are going to have to dig it up and give it its own pot as it kept growing all winter and took over a huge portion of the bed.  The roots go very deep.  At least it was smelling so wonderful as she pulled up what she didn’t intend to keep.  We will have a lot that we can dry and she can make tea from it.  She loves warm tea.

The ground is still very soft from the winter being so wet, so William, my dad and I also made a gate in between two fields.  We wanted to be able to get the large John Deer tractor in a field that had no access for it.  Usually we would use the auger and drill and put in huge wooden posts to hang a real gate on.  But I had a very nice piece of hog panel laying around.  So pulled up a few T-post in the field fencing, cut thru the fencing and bent it around backwards and pounded in some t-post the exact width of the hog panel and just tied it to the T-post in a few places.  It will be easy to take down and put up if we need to get the tractor in there now.  The project cost us nothing as we used stuff we had around here and the portion of fencing we cut away was very unsightly.  So now it all looks better too.   Praise God it only took about an hour to do the whole project.   God helped us get a lot done today.

William and Zeke also cut a whole barrel of kindling sticks for next winter. While they worked on that my dad mowed the whole property for the first time this year.  The farm looks so lovely with the grass all mowed and green.  I really missed the smell of fresh cut grass all winter.

Colossians 3:23-24 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;  Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.

May God bless you in all your spring projects this year! 

susan