Wednesdays are our Sunday. The store is closed Tuesday/Wednesday, so it’s time to catch up on all the stuff we fell behind on during the week. So today we started by working on the fence:

Last week we spent a good chunk of a day pulling all the fence boards off, putting up wire fencing, and replacing the fence boards. We did this to the whole front stretch of fence between the yard and the pasture in an effort to keep Barclay from going out there to eat sheep poo and chase the sheep. Within five minutes of letting him out, he had found a spot wide enough to crawl through and was back out eating poo! So today we fixed every possible spot he could squeeze through (I hope), mostly along the fence where the shelter/garden is.  There wasn’t enough wire in the roll to do that section, so we just have to put up more wood rails until he can’t slip through.

Then we worked out in the garden spreading bark chips on the paths. It has been a long process trying to get the garden finished. Although the cardboard and mulch is a no-dig method, it is certainly NOT a no-shovel method. I think my arms are permanently ‘rubber’ from all the shoveling I’ve been doing! Dave was a lot of help. He just whipped off his shirt and got to shoveling bark chips – why, I could watch that all day! 🙂 And look at the result, the garden looks beautiful, instead of walking around on cardboard covered paths!

Yesterday I planted five heritage tomato plants in the garden. That’s a total of 9 tomatoes planted, and lots of spinach, lettuce, beets, chard, and three types of squash. Also some herbs. Then today we got hit with a wind storm! Rain started just as we were getting wore out spreading bark chips, and then strong winds. I hope the plants are all ok out there!

Yesterday I used the proceeds from selling my chicks to buy a food dehydrator (yay!), so today I dried some apples and bananas. Later I’m going to dry some red bell peppers, but I’ll do it right before bed so they can dry overnight. We did peppers in food preservation class, and they come out so sweet you can snack on them like candy!

Then I did some laundry, went to the grocery store, bought a couple chickens from the ‘cheap meat’ (marked down for quick sale) section, came home and cut them up and put the pieces in the freezer, put the yucky pieces in the stockpot, took Barclay for a walk at BG Lake, came home and cooled off the stock and put 10 pints of chicken stock in the freezer (I need a bigger freezer), cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, and got the meat marinating for tonight’s dinner, and took the dogs outside to play just as the sun was going down.

If I do my job right, Barclay will be like this for the rest of the evening!

Now time to take a rest and watch some Dr Who. That will make it a perfect day off 🙂