week 19: around the farm
this week on the little dream farm
Welcome to Season Four of A Peek Inside Sarah’s Brain at Springtime on the LDF…hold onto your hats because it’s a real doozy!
Seriously y’all…this time of year my brain is constant noise. Every time I step outside my attention seems to get pulled to all the things that need to get done. Spring is springing far earlier than the previous three seasons we’ve lived here on the farm.
The pastures are fully green. Everything is taking off budding and blooming at warp speed. And while Chris and I have been chipping away at chores outside, somehow we already feel like we’re slipping behind.
The big difference this year is that we know exactly what we’re in for. Having done this now a time or two (or three), we’re going into this growing season eyes wide open and we’ve started tackling things at the start of the season that should make everything run a little more smooth this year.
So let’s get into it…here’s what we’ve been up to the last three weeks and what’s on tap for the next three.
Getting Ahead
You know us. We’ve got our giant lists and all our planning tools in place and we’ve been knocking out tasks left and right. Chris typically gets a handful of things done in the morning before work and when he’s got 30 minutes here or there. I like to save my chores for the evening when the grass is dried up and the weather is lovely. Of course, we’ve had a whole handful of things we’re tackling together. It’s been raining seemingly nonstop around here, so in between the buckets of rain here’s just a few of the things we’ve been knocking out:
Mowing
In previous years we’d hold off on mowing until mid-late May. That left us so far behind. This land grows some of the thickest, most lush, fast-growing grass I’ve ever seen, and waiting as long as we did would always make the first couple mows a real bear. So, in the interest of saving the early season headaches, we started mowing this year in mid-April and as of now everything we mow regularly (about five acres total) has gotten two or three passes. That feels so good.
Garden Beds
In previous years we’d hold off on cleaning up all the garden beds until late-May. That left us even further behind, as now we weren’t just dealing with having to break down and clear all of last year’s growth, but we also needed to weed and clean up all the spaces to prep them for growing. Now, we tear down the gardens in the fall and get everything cleared out when the season ends. We also heavily mulched all the garden beds with a thick layer of leaves. This allows us to enjoy the winter season of rest and get back to mostly ready gardens in the spring. We’ve still not yet removed the leaves from the beds—we’ll wait until after Memorial Day, which is when we put all our plant starts in the ground each year.
Farm Inventory
We’re in the process of building an inventory for our farm. When we purchased the farm, we inherited a lot of stuff from David and we’ve also acquired a bunch of new things in the last few years. Sometimes during the season it’s easy to lose sight of what we’ve already got, so we’re combing through everything we have, cleaning up and cleaning out spaces, and making ourselves a handy list of what we’ve got and where it’s at so we don’t miss a beat! We’re also focused on downsizing the stuff in our life in general, so as we’re going about this process we’re also creating a garage sale and donation pile and planning to offload everything we no longer use or need. Some spring organizing and cleaning!
Orchard Pruning
Got to learn something new this year! It’s high time that the apple and pear trees in the orchard David planted got a good pruning. The trees have been somewhat unproductive since we’ve lived here—a combination of us not pruning them regularly and also not adding any implements to them each year. While it has been on my radar to do both, they were just not at the top of the priority list these last few years. So this year I watched a handful of helpful videos and read a few guides and got out there to do my best at pruning some relatively young trees that we’re in dire need of some pruning. This is something we can now add to our annual spring plan.
Cleanup
Then there’s the general bucket of a dozen cleanup-type tasks that needed to get done. This was everything from trimming hedges, bushes, and shrubs, to chopping up and hauling away fallen trees (we had three major ones over the winter, one of which our neighbor helped with by hauling it away with his tractor fork). We’ve been through the dahlia patch twice to make sure that’s ready for our community planting event in a few weeks, and Chris has been busy buzzing around the farm to a series of groundhog holes that we’ve been judiciously filling in and keeping an eye on. This year we’re intent on better management of the groundhogs, as we’ve lost far too much of our gardens to them the last two seasons.
What’s On Tap
There’s no slowing down now! The list gets longer as the days do, too, and until about July we’ll be in go go go mode when things shift to more upkeep and harvesting-related tasks. So here’s a few things on tap in the coming weeks:
Rebuild and Repair
We’ve got some fences to rebuild. We’ve got a rotting barn door on the chicken coop. We’ve got some panels to replace on the run-in sheds. We’ve got some tools, machines, and equipment that need servicing. We’re knocking these out one by one the next few weeks.
Deliveries
Wood: This week our two cords of wood for this coming winter will get delivered and Chris is going to have to take on that monstrous task on his own this year. We’ve agreed (well, he insisted and I’m begrudgingly obliging) that I’m not even going to attempt to help load the wood shed this year because of my back—got to keep on healing as well as I have. Two cords of wood is a big job so I’ve nudged him to spread it out over a few days. Let’s see if he listens!
Cattle: Remember that the cattle are coming back this year?! Typically the farmer drops them off in mid-May depending on what the weather has been like and what they’ve got going on down on their farm. We don’t have a date from them yet but it should be soon!
Dahlia Tubers: This one’s a pickup! We’ve got to head over to our friend’s farm to where we store our dahlia boxes and pick them all up to set them up in our barn for the community dahlia patch planting. Again—Chris will do all the heavy lifting and I’ll play the supportive, loving, encouraging partner, haha!
A/C Install: We’ve made our first major purchase for the farm since buying our farm truck in 2023 and we’re having A/C mini split units installed in the house. This requires some construction across the front yard for electrical work so that project will happen this week and the install the following.
Gardens
Light tilling, weeding, planting, mulching, fence repair, moving plants, and building new flower beds. I’m establishing some new growing spaces this year, moving some plants around in order to let other growing spaces go, and we’ll be getting our fruit and veggie gardens up and running in about two weeks. As far as flowers go, I’m working on planting out some perennial beds that I’m hoping will require far less upkeep in the years to come. I read somewhere that it takes about seven years for a garden to take on the personality of its gardener. I would say based on our timeline here and my own visions for the gardens, that seven years sounds quite accurate!
Hard Work so We Can Play
Last year we got pretty good at tackling all our chores before and after work and on one day of the weekend so we always have some time to get off the farm and do something fun together. This year will be no different. In fact—last year we found a dairy farm and ice cream shop in Massachusetts that uses the asparagus they grow on their farm to make Hadley Grass ice cream—it’s an asparagus ice cream with almonds and while that may sound quite odd, it’s now hands down one of our favorite ice cream flavors of all time! They only have it available as long as their asparagus lasts…which is just a few weeks in the spring! So…our next adventure? A drive for some one of a kind Hadley Grass ice cream, a true spring delight!
How About You?
What are some things you’re up to in your neck of the woods? Would love to hear about what you’ve got going on, too!!
OMG! When you wrote Season four, I was just amazed. I love following your journey and I live vicariously through it. Your farm is such a wonderful place and you are such a wonderful human. Furthermore, I'm amazed that I have stayed steadfast in following you for so long. I don't always stay interested, but somehow the relationships and other things I found during the Covid years have been the most important to me. I just felt the need to say that this morning as I ponder retirement. Thanks for being you.
I can FEEL what being there is like from those photos. I hope you're making an album (a physical one) to flip through in your senior years (or on frigid winter days!) as you reminisce about the lovely, lovely life you led. :-)