Farm Adventures and Findings (Sunday-part 2)

Our first tomato! I saw it earlier in the day and forgot to take a picture. So I went out after dark and used night mode so that I could share my excitement, then...I washed it, sliced it, added a little s&p, and ate it all by my lonesome.

John and I were having a little Spring fever back in January so we planted 4 tomato plants. We transplanted them outside a couple weeks ago, at the time were about 3-4 ft high. Amazingly, they are all doing well and here's a picture to prove it. This is a first for us to have a ripe tomato so early in the growing season.

There is noting like eating something picked fresh from the garden, no comparison to the food we buy in supermarkets. I am hoping the same goes for the chickens because we have 24 that are going to be in the freezer in a few weeks.

I could not believe my eyes, Quail eggs. Ok, now I want to keep them! I had planned on selling the 3 remaining we had but now that they are producing they can stay. I think the plan is to put them under the Bantams to try and hatch them out.

Over the weekend we rented a sod cutter. We are preparing an area for our pool. Let's just say John is not very impressed with this project and the work of maneuvering the rolls of sod is literally back breaking. We did utilize the sod filling in some low spots of the land. The rolls were so heavy that as we were rolling one piece off the trailer the back end of the 4 wheeler came up off the ground and stayed there. Yikes...we NEED a tractor desperately but, oh yeah John is still shopping for one. We had an above ground pool at our old house for 7 years. It was great and the kids loved it. I had a pool growing up and I always said I'd have one for my children. When we moved here I made it very clear that I'd be getting another. Last year I settled for the blow-up deal but this year I saved some coin and bought it. I shopped around locally and on-line for a month or so and bought the best package I found. John was a bit tweaked as there are a million other things around here we could have used the money on. For those of you that know us know that we are COMPLETE opposites! He is methodical, logical, frugal and I am a bit Willy Nilly fly by the seat of my pants, sometimes irrational (only sometimes), and I can be very impulsive. I am frugal about many things but I am no where's near his level of frugality. Regardless we balance out quite nicely. We do freak each other out on occasions but that keeps life interesting!

Just getting started

Are we almost done yet?

A view through the eyes of a 6 year old.

Leah is quite sneaky. I've learned to scan through my photos on my camera before downloading because she likes to randomly take pictures. I chuckle when I look through them because she takes pictures of things you or I would never even think to.
My handy man hard at work. Can you tell by the look on his face that was not excited?

A bit more ground work and leveling and then we can lay the sand down. My uncle brought us over 7 yards today. A HUGE Thanks to him!

Leah took this picture too. The kids are always catching critters around here. We have two catch and release tanks in the barn, one is for frogs and the other for snakes. Last picture is of a Newt also found in the back pond.