Keep on Gardening!

On Wednesday afternoon the kids and I headed over to the Garden to do some more work, this has become a great afternoon activity for me and for the kids. They just love running around the yard, playing with sticks and their new favorite activity, climbing the Apple tree! What kids wouldn't have fun doing that? And what mother wouldn't love seeing the kiddos having so much fun!


Today's agenda was setting out more rows for the garden. We didn't plant any more seeds because the local farmers are all sure that it is still going to snow, but we just wanted to get the rows prepared for planting. Gretchen and I spent a couple of hours laying out 10 more 25 foot long by 3 foot wide rows of newspaper covered with straw. Leaving the center dirt of planting. We chose 3 foot wide rows so that the kids and the ladies managing the garden wouldn't have any trouble reaching to weed around the crops.

While we were paying out the rows the kids planted seed starters that Susan is going to keep in the house. They LOVED doing that of course and thought it was great that they could bury the magic seeds and we would soon see them growing into plants!

Garden factoid I learned today: I learned about the difference between Hay and Straw. I had been saying that we were laying out hay, but I now realize that we were using Straw. Hay is something the animals eat and Straw is what is used in their pen to make beds (or gardens), but wouldn't be eaten by the animals. Interesting.

UPDATE: Oops, problem in the garden. Apparently we need to put a roof on the chicken coop because the roaming chickens got out of the coop and decided to rip up everything we have already done. They plucked all of the seeds we had already planted and even grabbed the newspaper under the straw and ripped it up until the garden no longer resembled the organized garden we had started. Oh well, I guess we will be professionals at laying out planting rows. Next time we will do an even better job!