Spring on the Farm
Spring on the farm is a busy and exciting time! I’m excited to share an overview of what we focus on during this season at our homestead!
Last year I shared about Winter on the Farm and ever since have been wanting to do a full year with posts for each season!
Today is the day that I get to share about Spring – and it’s also gotten me excited to continue with the Summer post in a few months!
Mostly I’m hoping to give you a peak into farm life in the Pacific NorthWest in the Spring. Our farm is small in comparison to larger scale operations – only 4 acres. But we do most of the same chores and processes, just on a smaller scale!
Garden
In this part of spring where it’s finally warming up and raining a little less, that means doing some major weeding over beds that have gone wild since our planting days.
We carefully go through and hand weed around any desirable veggies and plants ,and then mulch with wood chips that we receive and keep on hand from chip-drop services from local arborists.
We’ve found that the wood chips really help suppress new weeds after our big clean up effort, and retain moisture from the drip irrigation system my husband sets up for each bed.
In our beds that have vining/climbing veggies (like peas), we have these tuteurs we made a few years back that we just love!
They take about 90 minutes to build, and cost about $25 in materials.
If you’d like to build some for your own garden, you can find the free DIY tuteur plans here:
If you do make some, and if you use Instagram at all – you should share your picture with the hashtag #sheholdsdearlyinspired ! I love seeing what others have done, and it’s fun to be able to share them with my friends on instagram as well.
Aren’t these happy and adorable little peas!
Another little garden tip I have is to not be distraught if you have areas in your yard that naturally recieve a little less sun than others.
We have a big cedar tree that shades a portion of our garden area. What I did was use this area for my “shade bed”! I have a big garden box with happy cilantro, kale, chard, spinach, etc!
All the things that don’t like too much sun and are inclined to bolt (go to flower) more quickly in direct sun – they do really well here.
Orchard
Out in our orchard area all the pretty blossoms are gone, but in their place are tiny fruits!
Soon this season we’ll be thinning out how many apples are in each of these clusters. Leaving just the biggest and best 1-2 apples per cluster gives them a much better chance at growing big and healthy!
*This post contains affiliate links to products I know &/or love.
Nursery Trip
Not all of our started seeds were successful, so I took a quick trip to the local hardware store and nursery and picked up a few starts of things I knew we wanted!
Cherry tomatoes are a favorite here, and they’re one of the earliest varieties to ripe – which is great in a mild climate like we have here!
They of course also had a great deal on flowers which were just begging to be brought home with me – how could I resist?
At the nursery they also had the prettiest seed packets from Botanical Interests which I loved!
Look at this broccoli illustration from their website – just gorgeous!
Bees
One of our next Spring projects was setting up our second hive for the bees!
Our current hive of bees should be getting big enough that they’ll be ready to split soon – and I’m hoping they’ll happily move in next door to this new hive!
In order to get the hive set up, my husband, Colby and I cleaned up and painted some “deeps” (that’s what these boxes that hold the frames – that house the honeycomb are called) and stacked them up on top of the bottom board with their new shiny aluminum top.
At first I couldn’t find one of the deeps I wanted to use, but after searching a few different places on the property, I remembered that I had put the entire thing in our deep freezer to preserve the honey in case the bees ended up needing it in early spring.
After cleaning up the frames (preserving the valuable existing honeycomb inside) we were able to get this pretty hive all put together.
I’m excited to see when we have some bees hopefully move in soon! Maybe in time for our Summer Farm Tour post!
Spring Flowers
One of my favorite parts of Spring are the flowers! The phrase says, “April showers, bring May flowers” – and in our part of the country we get plenty of April showers.
They pay off so beautifully though!
Earlier this month it was the lovely lilacs that were stealing the show.
Now, at least in our yard, it’s the Wisteria – we think this giant is about 30 feet tall!
And soon the peonies will all be bursting open.
The peonies blossoming at this time of year always remind me of our sweet Wren, the baby we lost back in 2017. I shared more about her here: Miscarriage and Holding Dearly.
I always hope that sharing her story might touch others who have suffered similar losses.
Bunnies
Our farm does have lots of babies this year – of the lop eared variety.
My daughters raise bunnies to sell, and Spring is one of those busy seasons with LOTS of adorable little fluffs hopping around.
They’re just the cutest!
Wood Pile
One of last big Spring jobs is to bulk up the wood pile in the “wood Lot” as we affectionately call it.
Our wood stove is our main source of heat in the winter months, so cutting wood and letting it start to “season” through the dry summer is a necessary chore!
Luckily my husband and son don’t seem to mind the task and make quick work of it with their axes.
And that’s the highlights!
I appreciate you coming along with me for this tour, and can’t wait to show you the Summer and Fall tours in the coming months.
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