A brief update.
Spring/Summer is freakin here! I love it.
Plants!
I’ve never had much of a green thumb but I’m making an effort to change that this year. With the help of mother nature I have succeeded in starting lots of tomatoes, sunflowers, radishes and watermelons. I started them all inside and finally relocated the last seedlings to their nicely tilled garden. I intend on keeping this “sprout indoors, relocate outside” pattern going in to june. By the end of summer we should have more vegetables then we know what to do with.
Animals
At this point I’m pretty sure our little plot of land qualifies as a hobby farm. I haven’t looked into it but with the addition of hogs and production chickens to our already large list of animals, it’s nothing short of a hobby. We house 3 hogs for the summer which will be butchered in the fall. We’ll most likely keep that cycle going if it’s no more difficult then just feeding them as we have. We also have 11 chicks. We expect to have 6 left after we get rid of the males. We won’t be keeping a rooster. Our 6 laying hens will hopefully provide us with some fresh eggs but as of right now they are still under a heat lamp. Our 6 ferrets are doing great, the 2 horses are looking great (they are still across the street at the Santos’) and the dogs n’ cats are still healthy. Monster (white male cat) looks like he has something wrong with his eyes. If it doesn’t get better we’ll bring em to the vet.
The lake
We got a new canoe! I missed silently gliding through the water on a canoe. Now we just have to get out and trap/kill/shoot some huge snapping turtles and otters. The old heads that live around me keep telling me I need to get out there and see what I can do about bringing back the fish population otherwise it’s just going to keep getting worse. (Note: I’ve been swimming 4 times already this year. It’s great!)
The land
I’m really excited to say that Zippy and I will have all our land/lots paid off by the end of 2009 (early 2010). When we first set out to live in rural Missouri we only had a small 4 acre lot which we intended to build a house on. Rather then doing that we sought out and purchased all the available land touching what we already owned. It’s not a whole lot more but now we are working with over 11 acres. Zippy and I just finished putting up a nice electric fence for the horses on half of it which extends the previous fence zippy put up initially. All in all we are really utilizing every bit of land we have. It’s great and the outlook is only getting better. We will be able to finally build a proper house how we want it on our already established property.