The heater in the living room has been turned off now, the sunlight pouring in the big windows heats it nicely during the day and while it does cool off during the evening, we are not the room at that time..  I love the time of year when I am turning the heaters off..

The sun is drawing us outside onto the deck, mom sits with coffee, while I putter more often then not, slowly edges of tree’s are having melt out, edges of the flower beds are starting and in the front bed, I have some tiny spots of bare soil..  this area is very exciting for me as I have a few really early-early! spring plants in there that love that first heat push of spring.. that is the only bed that has house on the back with full sun, plus the cement step on the side that catches and holds heat.. plus I have heat sink rocks in that bed as well..  Their job is simple.. they are to warm in the sun and then realize the heat back into the bed later in the evening.

I do have a cover for this part of this bed but we are not there yet.. I am thinking that I will be prepping the horse trough early spring garden bed this weekend.  I still have snow up about half way on this at the moment (photo from a different year but so you see what I am talking about) and I will cover it to help heat it up, I pulled out about half the soil last fall and have it in close by under a tarp, because I need to fill up the bottom 2/3rds of this with fresh horse manure and get it started in composting, then I will water it and check the temps to see when I can add soil back on top. I have found it changes year to year on how long that first “hot” compost takes.. I have had it as short as a few days to as long as two weeks at times in the day under the glass. The outside weather makes a huge difference.

I will keep you posted on it, I can see how and why there were able to grow amazing amounts of food in the cities of the past with using the horse poo’s that were collected and used to create hot compost under beds.

From mom’s last six week holiday at the farm 3 years ago

My mom is heading to Alberta next week to have a holiday, she is going to be visiting my brothers, her sisters and of course her dear friends..  I am going to miss having someone coming down the stairs and saying good morning to me.. I know that when she visited me for four to six weeks that it would take me a week or two to get used to not having her here..

I imagine that I will be even more so this time but on the other hand, we are going to be doing some Reno work that we have been holding off on as mom finds it a bit hard when things are ripped apart mode. It should be to long in getting it done but on the other hand, it will be great to get it done before she comes back.

I am sad that she is going to be missing so much of the early spring on the farm, but I understand that she will be leaving to go to Alberta at least once or twice a year and as I well know, there is not point in going for a short time.. you need at least a month to get to see everyone etc. Its so odd that its to it being going the other way.. instead of her coming  to the farm, its her going back out West!

The good part of that is that she will be gone pretty much the whole month of march and I am going to have a bit more time to blog and I am greatly looking forward to doing a Eat from the Pantry Challenge for the month of March..  Its always a lean month and its a eat and figure out holes in my pantry to improve on.

I am going to put my thinking cap on in regards to what else I want to add in during march, I know that I will have time for a fun little project or two for the blog and I am greatly looking forward to it.  I might not start until mom leaves..