Happy May Day!

The sweetest thing happened today! Our door bell rang and by the time we got there to answer it, there lay beautiful flowers on our door step with a note "Happy May Day" and no one around. Well, Happy May Day to you too, anonymous flower leaving neighbor. One more reason I love our new town!

From Grass to Garden

It may not be garden yet, but it is much closer to pouring out fresh lettuce, tasty zucchini and juicy cucumbers this summer. Some might say we have our priorities skewed since we are still living amongst towers of boxes, but it's so exciting to be almost ready to have my own garden at my very own house. I have done lots of gardening, but never in my own garden where I call the shots (or at least I think that's how it's going to work). While speaking with one of our neighbors and talking about gardening, she suggest a sod cutter because the our entire yard is grass. So on Friday night Ty rented a sod cutter and Voila! we have a start to our garden. I know, it's not ready to sow any seeds yet, but at least we can see where it's going to be.

To get the most out of the rental fee we also cut out our blueberry patch and flower beds. We have a whole lot of sod. I wonder what were going to do with it?

The sod cutter makes the activity of sod cutting manageable, don't get me wrong it is still a chore (just look at all the work Ty is going through), but doing it by hand with a shovel would be out of the question, believe me I tried and last about 5 minutes. This cutter cuts about a 12 inch row, you can get up to 18 inches I don't think it makes it any faster. After you cut all you do is roll it up into a roll you can't lift (now what do I do with it?). The trick is cutting straight so you minimize the little slivers of grass that are still attached to the ground, you have to remove these with a shovel. We did find out that you should steer clear of wet areas for sod cutters don't come in 4wheel drive and are darn heavy. The whole thing worked well and made life a little easier, of course easy for me to say you don't see me in any of the pictures do you.

Welcome Home

No banner or balloons, but we are still excited about them coming! As I said in my last post we just bought a house on a half acre lot. When we originally started the house search we (or maybe just me) thought we couldn't live without at least 10 acres, then reality hit and being closer to work (not to mention financially do-able) meant a much smaller lot. So, the lot sizes slowly shrunk week by week, till in the end we were look at house lots as small as 8000 square feet ( and that's not a bad sized lot either). It seems we just have too many interests to fit in anything less then 20 acres. But, no we did not move to a secluded town of 300 on a 100 acre farm, at least not yet anyway. Instead we moved closer to work, shopping and many other amenities and still managed a small plot in a rural feeling suburb that embraces the rural lifestyle we so love. We are surrounded by houses and yet I can hear a rooster crow from at least 3 different directions. Our city has it's own riding arena and on our lot size we are allowed to have three large livestock animals (3 cows, 3 horses, 3 goats it doesn't specify). We went the more realistic route (maybe not to everyone) and brought our three small milking goats + one baby. These are the same girls from my first blog post over a year ago, they're Mini Nubians and just the perfect size for this place. We are so excited to have our goats close and be able to milk regularly. So welcome Lucy (Nigerian Dwarf), Sunny and Cher (Mini Nubians) and baby (no name yet). I love her lopsided black spot over her lips, guess she doesn't have a mirror to put her lipstick on. Wait and see, we are going to farm this place down to the last inch, I bet we can fit at least ten acres in here!