Well now...

Rumors of this blog's death have been greatly exaggerated.

We are "summertime farmers" no more. We have somehow brought 5 chickens, a rooster, and four ducks through a Wisconsin winter. The one hen duck is currently sitting on an unknown number of eggs in an old dog house that she has appropriated. If she is successful, they will be the first animals actually born on the farm, so I'm hoping she pulls it off.

I started tomato and leek seeds yesterday. Joked with Nikki that I would try to have fewer than a dozen varieties this year (I thought we'd maybe have five or six), but when I was all done I had eleven! I don't know why tomatoes make me lose all sense of proportion like that. I started somewhere around 50 plants. Again, I am insane.

Changes for this year will include my planting the garden beds in stages rather than trying to fill the entire thing the first week of June. I'll also be installing a gravity-fed drip watering system for the beds, time to make this hill we live on do some of the work! I can't believe I'm typing this but we'll probably have 4 pigs again this year. The 25lb boxes of Pasture-raised Pork were a big hit with our customers and I can definitely see doing that again this year. I already have people trying to reserve pork for this fall, but I can't plan that far ahead.

Went through my box o' seeds last week and I really won't have to buy too many this year, so I wish they would stop sending me seed catalogs! Man, we must have received 30 or more this winter with all those tempting new varieties. It takes a lot of strength to resist against the pictures of 35 pound watermelons and plump ears of sweet corn.

More to come!