1. Wow! what a wild spring and early season it has been.  I'm just now getting the planting done and it will take me all week to complete that task.  I don't know if you all know, but I'm a college student graduating this June, so my schedule has been swamped to say the least.  I am working 12-14 hrs a day to get the minimum done.  (and I'm NOT talking laundry either!)  We had snow just two weeks ago, planting is very delaying this year.  My very regular cherry tree is just NOW getting buds.  The latest I've seen this happen since  I planted fruit trees 13 years ago.

2.  My website here.  sigh.  really I need to take a poll.  This thing is costing me $30/month and with Facebook, I tend to gravitate that way for easy updates....AND it is FREE.  In this economy, who can argue with free?  Plus I'm on Localharvest.org and it's FREE too!!  I'm probably going to move that way, update my business cards and cut costs where ever possible. 

3.  My customers are the BEST!  We tried going to Denver, don't like the drive.  Will stay local and hope you all are happy with our products.

4.  We have worked diligently on the high tunnel, we have windows and doors in the east end wall.  Our neighbors down the road, sadly, lost their tunnel when we had wind speeds documented at 70 mph last Monday.  I'm really sad for them since we had the same issue just a year ago.

5.  So....I'm off to bed, very tired tonight.  Hope all is well.

    I am really moved to buy a cow or goats...again.  We had dairy goats at one time, but Nubians are so big and they repeated got out and repeatedly tried to kill my fledgling orchard by eating those apple trees.  The husband got angry (understatement) and said the goats must go, and since angry husbands are not nice to live with, I promptly sold my goats and three kids.  (Baby goats, not my children...although...some days, my teenagers....you know).  And now, after several years of sleeping in, not fighting wind and blizzards and dark of dusk in winter to milk goats, I rather, well, miss it.  I buy local raw milk, but it is one more trip to town and if gas gets as high as they say, I'd like to stay home as much as possible.  So back to the idea of dairy animals.  I wonder, get dairy goats again, but a smaller breed like Oberhasli?  Or bigger like Dexter cattle or even bigger, a Jersey cow.  So much to consider, but honestly, the pull of goats is strong.  And we have just a small pasture.  Oh well, much to contemplate.

On a more positive note, my new apple trees that I got planted on Monday look terrific and all the wet snow is watering them for me.  Stuff is growing in the tunnel, spring is coming and I'm a happy camper overall.

Well springtime is certainly here!  We have lots of heavy wet snow falling today after days of beautiful warm weather in the 60's.  I've gotten lots done as well.  Earlier this month I transplanted my little tomato seedlings as they grow in their heated greenhouse at a friends house. 

Don't they look lovely?  Got about 100 tomatoes and 25 pepper plants there and more tomatoes and peppers under grow lights in my basement here.

The past two days were so nice and warm that we were compelled to work outside.  It was so nice.  I've been planning to get a couple low tunnels built so that I could plant inside them on April 1st.  I read about them and went ahead and followed the directions, and it works really well.  I couldn't be more pleased!  I was worried that if I didn't get these up, we would get lots of snow which would cover one of my garden areas so deeply that I wouldn't be planting a thing until June!  I need more space to have spinach, salad greens, cabbages, and broccoli growing in before the season technically starts.  I did two 4'x30' long rows as my trial.  First, went and bought 10, 10' sections of EMT from Home Depot.  The pipe bender I got from Johnny's Select Seeds.  The instructions said to mount the pipe bender to a sturdy structure such as a picnic table.  Well, my picnic table is fiberglass, so we went to plan B:

One pipe bender attached with large bolts to a section of 2x8' board we had laying around plus:

Kids applied for the sturdy part.  Worked just fine, even though they are a bit small. 

And one teenage boy for muscles.  In less than an hour I had 10 hoops that were 4' wide and about 4' tall!  I've realized that I can grow lots and lots of wonderful stuff under these.  I'm using some woven plastic greenhouse cover as my covering.  We dug trenches along the sides of the beds to bury the plastic since this storm was coming in and I didn't really want to see our hard work end up in the neighbor's pasture.  The east side we just used bricks to weight it down so we can put our thermometer inside.  Plan is to take the cover off on Sunday and be able to plant spinach and salad mix inside and then re-cover.  It's really pretty easy to vent with the plastic held up by clips to each of the pipes.  Now I'm going to cover my entire main garden this way!  Talk about a cheap way to extend the season.   The rest of the growing space will wait until summer.  I read that you can cover the same area as a high tunnel for about 1/20th of the price.  But that high tunnel will be mighty wonderful full of tomatoes this summer, hopefully!

Here's a shot of one tunnel covered and one row of hoops.  We got both covered before the winds picked up later yesterday afternoon.  Happy Springtime!

When shopping, pack fresh salad greens in plastic bags so they are kept separate from other groceries, especially raw meats and poultry.

• Refrigerate salad greens at 35 to 40 degrees F within two hours of purchasing. Store in a plastic bag or lettuce keeper.
• Always wash hands before preparing salads and make sure you are working with a clean cutting board.
• Wash lettuce just before using by running cold water over leaves. Leaves can be difficult to clean so immersing the leaves in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes helps loosen sand and dirt. Presoaking lettuce for 10 minutes in dilute vinegar-water (1/2 cup distilled white vinegar per 1 cup water), followed by a clean water rinse, has been shown to reduce bacterial contamination but may affect texture and taste. After washing, blot dry with paper towels or use a salad spinner to remove excess moisture.
• Because lettuce and other salad greens are very perishable, they should be used within one week after purchase.
• Bagged salads can be convenient but added processing steps like cutting and mixing can increase the likelihood of contamination with microorganisms. To reduce the risk of foodborne illness with bagged salads keep them refrigerated at 35 to 40 degrees F, observe “Use By” dates marked on the package, and rinse well before eating, removing any damaged or spoiled leaves.

Information courtesy of the Colorado State University Extension Service

Earlier this week it was nice enough to fill the duck's wading pool, they had a grand time flapping and swimming and talking to each other.