Cow Camp

Every year for one week, two friends of mine and I run a cow camp for kids age 5-12. They are broken up into two sessions, 5-8 year-olds in the mornings and 9-12 year-olds in the afternoons. Every day they did chores, played games, walked cows and brushed cows. On the final day of camp, we have a cow show for parents to come and see all of the progress that the kids have made during the week. Last week was our third year of running cow camp.

Radish Harvest

These photos were taken about a week ago. This is a little bit less than half of my radish harvest.

Garden Update

Some good news and some bad news from the garden today.
The good news is that I pulled up a radish and it was way bigger than I expected and very tasty.

I also hilled and mulched my potatoes, they are getting huge and looking quite healthy. But I found the first potato bugs of the season, about 10 of them. 

My beans and sunflowers came up, but then a critter ate most of them; my dad thinks maybe a crow. I planted them again and this time I covered them.

  

Garden predators were out in full force as the crow was not the only creature to pay me a visit. One of my biggest cauliflower plants disappeared, leaving only a sad stump in its place. I am sure that woodchuck went to sleep with a full stomach and is dreaming about the rest of my juicy, delicious plants. I have to say he is smarter than he gets credit for since I only uncovered the plants yesterday (they were getting too big for their row cover) and he has already found them. 

I'm trying to focus on the good and exciting things from this beautiful day and remember that I still have five healthy, thriving cauliflowers. 

I wrote this post last night, but before I posted it this morning I went down to the garden to make sure that all of the plants were still alive...they weren't. The woodchuck has chewed a hole through my row cover and eaten my biggest plant.

Some Recent Photos

Here are some photos that I have taken in the past few days.

More Garden Space

Since last fall I have been working on clearing out some more garden space. it is about 20X30 feet, and until I cleared the space out, it was totally full of weeds and hadn't been a garden for several years.

 Before I started digging, all of my garden space looked just like the space to its left.

There is nothing more satisfying than standing on top of your pile of dug up grass and looking down on your cleared out garden space.

Video

I have been working on this video and just finished it. It is for a contest where students can enter 1-4 minute videos they have made sending a hopeful message about climate change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVq97CBUOTQ&feature=youtu.be

Plants Getting Big!

The plants that I have planted in my garden so far are getting big! All of the potatoes are up and I thinned my radishes a few days ago. I have also put mulch around most of my plants. For this I mostly used hay, but I used grass clippings around the oats because they are planted so close together and the short grass clippings are easier to fit in small spaces.

potatoes

cauliflower

oats

radishes