I know winter seems like a strange time of year to do outdoor projects, but remember, I've never claimed to be normal. And with the garden asleep and the animals as dormant as they get, it's about the only time we have to get some much-needed projects finished.

Speaking of finished, my old grapevine pergola was just that. A salvaged piece, it was all that remained after a fire destroyed a lovely old home in our little town, and it had found a new home (scorch marks and all) at my new old home several years ago.

But all good things must come to an end, and the end finally came for my beloved pergola after the years of deterioration finally took their toll. Unfortunately, as the pergola was withering away, my grapevines twining up it were hitting their stride. I feared the inevitable collapse would not only mean the end of the pergola, but also the end of the grapevines. And that meant an intercession was needed.

So, enter my husband, who in one day of hard work, cleared out the old pergola and built me a new one. And just like that, the project was finished and the problem was solved.
​

And I was beat. After all, I did most of the heavy lifting...oh wait, I meant heavy breathing.

All I know is that the little bit of help I gave him caused a lot of huffing and puffing on my part, for the most part.
​

But there were parts that weren't too difficult for me to do, like tightening down screws...
​

Steadying up the frame while smiling at the camera...
​

And taking photos of my husband as he calculated measurements in his head, marked out exact lines, and shot exasperated looks in my direction as I clicked off the pics and chatted incessantly about the cold damp air and forecasted snow.

​

But he still loves me, and I love my new pergola...and him, of course.

And I can't wait to sit out beneath it this summer, watch the grapevine leaves flutter in the breeze, and dream about getting our next project finished. Or more ideally, dream about my husband getting our next project finished.

Oh, I'll help him, of course. I just hope the weather's a bit more comfortable and I'm a bit more in shape.

Huffing and puffing is so unladylike.
​

I love seeing my husband on a tractor.

Especially if he's on the tractor and doing work of some kind. 

​​

Like raking a section of field that our friend Tom plowed for us earlier in the spring.

This area had not been plowed for years, if ever, so we quite possibly were actually breaking new ground.  And if you know anything about breaking new ground for a garden, you know it is hard work. 

Hence the tractor.  I'd rather use our well-worn 1959 ​International Harvester to do all that work than my well-worn 1975 not-getting-any-younger body.

​ 

And speaking of bodies...the one belonging to my husband seems to be shaping up nicely, post-broken leg. 

Pardon my catcall.​

​Sorry, I couldn't help myself.  I do love seeing my husband standing in a newly prepared garden plot. 

But enough standing around, Honey.  There's work to be done...​

​​​

Aahh, that's more like it.  He's sowing kale, which is what he decided needed to be planted in our new garden.  This is after he discovered kale smoothies, and then followed that by discovering and smoothie-ing my small kale patch to smithereens. 

He's a kale addict.  And he needs lots of kale to feed his habit. 

Could be worse.​

He planted the majority of this area with his beloved kale, and then I planted ​the remainder with my beloved "Three Sisters": corn, pumpkins, and pole beans.  In the past I've had great results with this ages-old planting scheme used by the Native Americans and named for how the plants assist one another. 

Although in this case, there wasn't nearly enough assisting going on.

​The first year planting in a new garden is always iffy, and if only we'd known how hot and dry the spring would be, we might have waited until fall to plant this area.

I guess my next-to-nothing Native American ancestry wasn't enough for me to see that coming.

But I can do a mean rain dance...except clearly I forgot to do it this year.  ​ ​

  ​​

The kale grew well, but the corn dried completely up.  I think there are a few beans and pumpkins straggling along, although I doubt we'll harvest much from them.

Oh well.  At least the area has been cultivated, and if all goes as planned, I'll be able to sow our winter greens there later in the summer. 

That's how gardening goes around here, if round one fails, there's always round two!​

Maybe I can get my handsome husband back on the tractor--I'd so enjoy watching him make those rounds again!

​

I'm covered in scratches, my muscles are so exhausted they're quivering, and I'll most likely break out in a poison ivy rash within the week, but I'm happy.

An eyesore in my yard is gone, and I feel like celebrating!  But before I get the party started, I should probably explain what the fuss is all about...

Once upon a time there was a barbed-wire fence.  This fence ran the western length of my yard between these large trees, alongside the swing set and parallel to my house. The fence was so broken-down, patched up, and overgrown with brush that for the past five years I've done my best to avoid looking at it.  I couldn't just get rid of it though, because it was somewhat of a necessary evil:  The fence marked a boundary, dividing our yard from the rental property next door. 

As much as I hated it, I needed it even more.

I do like my privacy.  And there was so much other work to be done to the property that improving this highly-neglected privacy fence was extremely low priority.

But priorities tend to shift, and this past fall I claimed that rental for myself and transformed it into a much-needed studio workshop.  Hence, the much-needed fence became much-less needed.

Yippee!!

With the recent onset of some unseasonably warm winter weather, and with the help of my pole saw, bolt cutters, and my husband's chainsaw, I ripped that ugly fence out all the way down to the far corner of the backyard.

It felt so good.

Here's the corner of the backyard before I started clearing...

Oh boy.  Ugly may not be a strong enough word.

Quick, scroll on down to this...

Okay, this is better.  Still needs a lot of work, but I have to wait until my husband gets off  work before I can clear anymore--he's better with the chainsaw than I am. 

And just to make myself feel better about showing you these awful photos, let me show you this...

This is the opposite side of the backyard, which a few years ago closely resembled the side I just showed you. 

I like this side better.

But once I finish the side I'm working on now, I may change my mind.  It really is amazing what a little elbow grease and a lot of hard work can do. 

I have to remind myself of that every now and then.  But let's get back to the western frontier...

Before I could even think about yanking out the fence, I had to find it.  And that meant clearing out the brush that hid it.  So, armed with my arsenal of take-no-prisoners tools, I headed into battle and within minutes had accumulated a brush pile of epic proportions.  It was massive, and unfortunately, it was also in my way. 

Every once in a while I wish I was good at thinking things through ahead of time.

The pile had to be moved.  Aye-yi-YI!  As if I needed anything else to do...

So here's what I did.  My obsessive-compulsive side flared up, and I decided if I had to move the pile, I might as well do it in an organized fashion. 

I huffed and I puffed, and I managed to move the pile, eventually stacking all the trees so they faced the same direction. 

Ahhh...who knew organizing a brush pile could feel so good?

Good thing I enjoy hard work, because the pile just kept on growing.

As I cleared all this brush, the fence finally became visible, although only slightly so due to the rampant honeysuckle, wild grape, and poison ivy vines that had entangled it.

I managed to cut away the vines, and with the help of my bolt cutters, eventually the fence, which I then rolled into a makeshift ball that we'll eventually roll on over to the recycling center.

Finally, I piled all the rotten boards that I uncovered into a heap of their own.  I'll salvage what I can and burn the rest whenever the wind decides to die down.

But for now, I'm basking in the freedom that freeing up space bestows on those who accomplish it.  And it's tasks like these that make me feel like I've accomplished something, whether it's clearing an overgrown fence or cleaning out a cluttered cabinet--of which I have plenty.  I'm just waiting for a rainy day to come along before I tackle them. 

Or so I keep saying.  But as long as the weather stays nice, I'd rather play outside.

And speaking of playing outside, that celebration I mention earlier comes to mind...and I'm thinking "bonfire". 

I certainly have more than enough fuel for one!

Although I love my newest vegetable garden, after spending most of last season fending off hungry rabbits, curious geese, and one very greedy turkey, it became clear that I needed to replace its temporary fence with a more permanent one--and this one had to be varmint-proof.

 

I love the look of the pallet fence I built around my older garden, and I especially love the cost--a whopping $7! And that was for the screws and a fence post.  The pallets were free, and any boards I used came from our scrap lumber pile.  The fence isn't perfect, but since nothing else around here is either, it fits in just fine.  You can imagine after building that first garden fence so inexpensively, I had no desire to spend a lot of money on this second one.  And thanks to my resourceful Uncle Curt, my dedicated dad, my handy husband, and my sweet son, I didn't have to. 

Since Uncle Curt seems to have an endless supply of pallets (and anything else you could ever think to need), his house was where I headed first.  My dad brought his truck and trailer, and as soon as we pulled in the driveway Curt hopped in his bobcat and headed down to his massive pallet pile.  He wasted no time loading Dad's trailer, or maybe I should say overloading Dad's trailer, with stack after stack of pallets.  The higher the stack grew, the more worried my cautious dad looked.  Or vice versa, since I got the feeling that the panic in Dad's face only spurred that ornery Uncle Curt on.  It was quite comical actually, and only ended when my dad finally reached the breaking point and began wildly waving his arms while nervously shouting, "Enough!".  Curt killed the engine, grinned mischievously, and then innocently asked, "What do you mean?  I can get twice that many more on there!".  Dad shot him a sideways glance, Robert Redford-style, and quietly reached for the strap ropes. 

After a precariously slow and wobbly trek home, we unloaded the pallets by the shed, where they could wait for me until I could find time to put them to use.  That time finally came just before Christmas, when our activities were finally winding down for the year.  One sunny December morning while cooking breakfast, I told my husband that I intended to get that fence built before the sun set in the winter sky.  Ok, maybe I didn't say it quite that poetically, but you get my point.  Later, as I headed outside toward the garden, lost in fence-building thought, I was startled to discover my husband and son busily working away, with two sides of the fence already constructed!

How wonderful!  And thoughtful...and helpful.  I wish all my chores went like that.

Although I adore my family, they do have other demands on their time so there's a fat chance of that happening very often.  But in this particular case, here's how this one did.  (Happen, I mean.):

Geoffrey carried the pallets down one by one and laid them around the perimeter of the garden, and William carried the fence posts down two by two and laid them by the pallets.

Then Geoffrey stood the pallets up, boards running horizontally, and drove a post down through the slot between the boards of every third pallet or so.  The corners got two posts each, because they're special.  And also they require special support to handle pressure from two sides.

For those pallets without a post, he wired them to their neighbor, creating a sturdy line of fence that would protect my plants and even corral livestock if I chose to use the area that way.

The finished fence took only a few hours to build, if that, and it cost me about $20--the bulk of which was spent on the fence posts.  I know that's more than double what I spent on the first fence, but I'm not upset.

I'm thrilled, actually.  For twenty dollars I got my garden protected and ready for spring, I gained a nice addition to my homestead landscape, and I got to spend quality time working with beloved family members.  I'd say I got quite the bargain--a priceless one at that!

Now all I need is a gate...after all, a fence is only as good as its gate!  Or something like that.

One vegetable garden is simply not enough for me anymore.  I realize I sound slightly silly by saying that, but it's true.  I love my potager-style veggie patch, but lately Will and I have had a yearning for an old-fashioned, row-after-row, full-blown Victory Garden-style garden. 

So we started one.  If only it was as easily done as it was said, because it turned out to be quite a chore to get this thing completed.  Thankfully, I've learned to be suspicious when things are too easy around here, so I actually appreciate having to struggle a bit to accomplish a goal.

I bet you really think I sound silly now.   Well I know what I'll do--I'll just jump right into the photos and distract you...

Let's start here.  This is my old garden tiller. 

It's seen better days.  We have to talk it into firing up every time we want to use it, and after it finally takes off it will run for about 3 minutes before coughing itself to a halt.  But after it thinks about things for several more minutes, it'll start back up and do a little work. 

Have you ever known anybody like that?

Well the work I wanted it to do was to break up an area of soil that (to my knowledge) had never been broken before.  This little fact turned out to be key, and really threw a wrench in my plans--the grass roots were so thick, it was almost impossible to break through them! 

Now had I thought ahead back in the fall, I could have smothered the area with old carpet or cardboard boxes and killed the grass while simutaneously creating a perfect haven for earthworms to fertilize the soil over the winter.  But I've never been good at thinking ahead.

So attacking the area with the roto-tiller was my only choice.

But all that did was scratch the surface and reveal my least favorite thing.  Have I ever mentioned how rich in rocks we are?  And how they don't belong in my garden?

Yet somehow they always seem to end up there.  I call them my winter crop because every spring when I go out to check what's made it through the cold weather, I always discover more rocks.  I think freezing temperatures make them multiply.  One day they'll prove that, I'm just ahead of my time.

And by the time I finally gave up trying to break the soil, I was exhausted.

So it was time for Plan B.  Which I didn't initially have, but ended up revealing itself after church the next Sunday.  I was telling our friend Tom my dilemma and how the only way I thought the soil would ever break up was if I used a team of oxen to pull a plow through it.  

To which he responded, "Plow?  I've got an old 1930's plow that I hook onto my skid loader, and once those blades hit the dirt, it doesn't take "No" for an answer." 

And then he followed that with, "Would you like me to bring it over?"

I've never heard more beautiful words...

And true to his word, Tom and his skid loader and his plow arrived the very next day.

Tom wasn't exaggerating about the plow either.  This eighty year old tool dug into the job just like it must have back its younger years.  Sometimes I wonder why they don't make things like they used to.

Because within twenty minutes my soil was broken.  It was the best twenty minutes of my life...but unlike Tom, I am prone to emotionally-fueled exaggeration. 

After that, we quickly got to work.  I coaxed the tiller into running through the soil to break up the  clods of dirt, and then Will and I raked the soil into rows.  Since the area is on a slope, (what isn't around here?) we mounded the soil to prevent runoff from the spring rains.

We then added a few amendments--like cow manure and composted wood chips--and then began to plant all our troubles away...

In rows and rows of things like Dragon Tongue Beans, Blue Basil, Golden Fingerling Potatoes, Giant Zinnias & Marigolds, Burgundy Okra, and Red Cabbage.  And then some.

And I've never seen a more proud Farmer Boy than this one as he walked the newly planted rows, surveying his handiwork and dreaming of his harvest.

And so far things are coming up nicely.  The cabbages are lush and full, the basil is bushy and bold, and all the rest are healthy and happy too.  In fact, we had to put up a temporary fence to hold off all the rabbits who tried to gorge themselves on our beautiful "buffet".  (Wascally wabbits! Arrgh!!)

Eventually we'll expand the area (this is only a 1/3 of what we planned!) and get a real fence up around it all, but everything in its season.  Pretty soon it'll be harvest season, and we'll be so busy we won't know what to do.  But then again, on this homestead, when are we not?! 

It's a wonderful world.

I like to grow marigolds because first of all, I think they're pretty.  But they also are great companion plants in the garden because they help deter pests.  In addition, they have antiseptic properties and can be used medicinally if needed.  The best part about marigolds, though, is that they are edible--at least the petals are.  They don't have a very strong flavor, but I like to toss them in a salad or on top of a casserole to add a unique punch of color. 

As much as I like eating my marigolds, there are some who enjoy them even more than I do...

After about a week, I check the petals to make sure all the moisture has evaporated.  

The final step is to fill up any spare mason jar I can find with these lovely flowers.  I store them with all my other dried herbs and seeds, and I use them as needed throughout the winter. 

And since marigold petals retain their hues even after being dried, they add a nice cozy pop of color to my herb shelf.  When I glance that way on a cold blustery day, I feel a little warmer inside.  Every little bit helps, right??!

At least the chickens seem to agree with me.