Winter in our neck of the woods dragged on, while life move forward in some ways steady and in other ways a little shaky..  I think most of us do feel that way..

In the ways of steady we are very blessed, we are here on the farm with all that if provides to us. That connection is a vast and woven into our daily lives deeply as we come into our 19th year here this month..

Hubby’s is still working full time from home and ideally will continue to do so for a good while yet with the possibility of going back in a hybred model at some point in the future.  With the cost of Gas hitting 2 dollars a liter locally right now and climbing, I am perfectly happy to not having to put out the costs of commuting and I feel hugely for those that are.

The Shaky is all around us and felt in many ways, cost of gas, cost of food, cost of propane, cost of power, cost of animal feed, cost of seeds, cost of fertilizer and the list goes on endlessly.  EVERYTHING cost more and at the very same time due to the overall pressures our dollars buying power is down.

Trying to get some things in now takes months or longer.. example its been over 5 plus months and counting since we ordered our Mavrick and we are still waiting for it.. I has priced a item for the farm last year and went, ok I will order it in the spring..  the price increased from a 1000 to 1800 in 8 months..  The worst of it is that I need it and had to still order it at that price, and to be fair my store, was like.. they wanted it to retail at 2 grand, we are giving you a discount of 200 as a loyal customer.. WOW..  do I think that it cost that company a extra grand..  I just do not know the true answer to that but I do have my doubts..

While Dear Hubbies health continues to be stable, my own has been shaky, its feels like its been just one thing after another and its been a very slow climb with a good number of one step forward and two steps backwards and more naps then you can count at times.  Its a work in process

The new farm dogs both turned two! Got the Embark tests back on Uther and he is as expected mostly lab (dad pure, momma half) the surprise was that mom’s one part was half german shepard/border collie cross.. which explains a lot really..  Dezbot turned 7 this spring and Wee Paris is 15 this year..

We ended up adding THREE new teenage male cats to the farm, all brothers or half brothers to Smudge an our late Jimmy Kitten..

Long Story Short.. the wonderful person we got Smudge from was selling their home and while was taking some of the cats with, could not take all..   The good news was they came fully vetted, vaccines and altering done and up to date on Revolution etc..  They are wonderful cats and Bells kitten has the sweetest, loving new kitty brothers..   The big white boy is called Squishie, then comes pipsqeek and last but not least is pitterpat puddytat lol

Spring has arrived finally but it was very late in coming..  the signs were there and you only needed to look to see that it was a start everything late type of year..  There was NO planting in April here on the farm at all..  It was cold, it frozen, it was a sloppy wet mess and we had snow the last week of april..

We just started putting in pea’s, salad greens and so on first week of may.. Its going to be a interesting garden season for sure.. they are calling for NO rain in may.. I hope they are wrong!

The haskcap are finally in bloom 2nd week of may, there is not a single fruit tree in bloom yet and the apple tree is still breaking bud.. the good news on that at least is that unless we get a very hard late frost, we should not have to worry to much about fruit damage that way.

Hubby asked me what I wanted to do for mothers day weekend and I said gardens..  this weekend, we got the last of the bones and bushes and more under plantings down in the Fruity Boogaloo Food Forest and finished out the other side..  with the new Crabapple tree, planted around by poppies, with two more rings of glad bulbs, and a line on the other side of the fence with phlox connecting the orange garden in and finishing that end line with the Cherry trees etc.  Spring is always such a barren time.. I will back fill in with annuals this year for the gaps..

I hope you had a good mothers day weekend..