Bug Busters in the Roost

The other day whilst I was mowing, I noticed a bazillion little bugs jumping around in the hay. Oh no! The grasshoppers are back! How shall we deal with all of them? Now that we have the sod, water, pollination and such going well, we surely don't want to get wiped out by those green hoppin' things.

I sighed to God and asked Him what can we do and I thought of chickens. Then the next few thoughts involved the purchasing, receiving, keeping warm and fed until they are big enough to be outside stages. Then a day or so later, I noticed an ad at YooperYardSale.net for someone giving away roosters! Wow. What an answer! These dudes are about 2 months old and already love eating bugs (they even ate them off our daughter's shoe!) and are trained to go "in" for the night. Thanks to a nice lady in Rock, we now have 14 roosters at the farm to eat the grasshoppers and other unwanted buggies! And since there are no "girls" around, they seem to get along just fine. Thanks God for answered prayers!

Hubby says that my question regarding our hummingbird buddy was answered yesterday. They saw he had a friend so maybe we'll have babies around soon!

Cleaning up the Beds

The strawberry beds, that is. The biggest bed is 32 rows wide. It takes approximately an hour per row to weed. Whew! Yesterday was a p-e-r-f-e-c-t day for weeding...overcast with sun peeks now and again and a slight breeze just enough to blow the biting critters away for the most part. There are now 13 rows totally weeded and 11 rows totally mulched. We have more rows to hoe, ey?

There is something to be said about those vertical strawberry poles...no weeding! However, it shall be interesting to see how we can overwinter them. Yes, I know. Winter. Have to constantly be thinking about that when you live in snow country. We do have an ideer or two for overwintering those poles. Time shall tell.

I didn't get any more of the baby lilac row weeded but I did get more mowing done.

This year is definitely slower than we've been experiencing in the past few years. Just heard that our friends (aren't most Yoopers friends?) down in Trenary expect their strawberries to be ready around July 4th.

Planting Ponds?!?

Yesterday was another cloudy, cool, rainy-type day around Snowflake Farms. Hubby and our 13-year old daughter placed our last two 90-gallon ponds from our home to their new spots at the farm. They dug out the new "planting spots," placed the prefab "ponds" in their new homes, leveled them, filled them with fresh water and placed a whole bunch of water plants in each. They also landscaped around each one. The hummingbird feeder was relocated by the middle pond...that little 'ole hummingbird didn't take long to find it, either!

They also planted broccoli at the edge of the northernmost strawberry bed and a gallon ice cream bucket-full of glads behind the middle pond.

While they were doing all this, I was out on the mower, dodging those ground rats (gophers?) and ticks. The middle section of the field is back to manageable height but really needs raking!

For the past many times I've been out to the farm I have been working on weeding at least a teensy bit. The long row of baby lilacs are about 1/2 weeded and the flower bed behind the middle pond is partially done (mostly due to hubby's rototilling to put in the glads.)

I also mowed raspberry lane and our ATV/access path around the field's perimeter. The raspberries are coming along fine for the most part. While mowing the area by the bee yard, I noticed that besides wild raspberry canes, we have a whole bunch of wild strawberries! The bees were not active in the cold and gloom of the day and I only saw a sentinel or two come out briefly. I was so chilled that I had both a sweater and a coat and eventually succombed and put gloves on!!

Sure would be handy to have a tractor on the farm, no matter the color (brand.) We've had lots of fun gaining experiences doing things the real old-fashioned way, though.

Planting In The Rain!

We took all of our pepper plants to the greenhouse today. It was cool outside only 46 degrees F. Since it was quite rainy, we spent our time in the Greenhouse starting new seeds in flats.
We planted:
*Grand Bell Peppers
*Sweet Banana Peppers
*Bush Beefstake Tomatoes
*Early Cabbage

We also planted the following flowers:
*Glorosia Daisy
*Petunias
*Geraniums
*Celosia
*English Lavender.

The 25 HOSTAS we planted on Saturday will be much appreciating today's wet weather. We divided all our Hostas and planted them in a shady spot. For quite some time, I have heard that Hosta can handle sun or shade. They have never gotten very big in the sun so we'll try the shade this time. Since the deer love Hosta,
we planted them, the HOSTA not the deer, in the orchard for safety.