The Weekly Digs #152

It feels weird to write about the happenings of the homestead this week when in light of the recent events I feel like the focus should be elsewhere. But here it is anyway. 

Spring is right around the corner. It’s hard to believe I’ll be planting peas in two weeks! We got a major ice storm this week that had us all indoors for several days. Our driveway was like an ice rink and we took several walks down to our mailbox and back (about a quarter mile each way) just to get fresh air and exercise.

My garden was crusted over in ice so there wasn’t much I could do in there. I even tried to go out and dig up some carrots one day for dinner and failed miserably. The broadfork couldn’t cut through in some areas and in others I was able to lift up the ice sheet along with the frozen first two inches of soil.

The carrots are getting few and far between so it was hard to find any without being able to see the little green tops. I gave up and went back inside.

We did a lot of baking and cooking while we were indoors. I made sourdough bread, sourdough english muffins, popeye’s pancakes to use up extra eggs, a few jars of sprouts, kids made cookies, and we freeze dried extra eggs. 

All of that was made in addition to our regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals. It was a lot of cooking and clean up!

I had the forethought to bring in my seed starting soil mix so we were able to get a couple of trays started! Yay for the first indoor seed starting of the year. I did onions and celery in soil blocks. I wanted to make sure I had some back up onions in case my direct sown onions didn’t pan out. 

As I mentioned before, the plan is to use my caterpillar tunnel for seed starting this year. With the cold, I got the seed starting going indoors but hope to move them outside next week before they sprout. 

In lieu of moving the seeds out to the caterpillar tunnel, we finally finished our second scissor door on it. Before we put the door on, it was loose plastic pulled down and held with sand bags.

 Anytime a windstorm would come the plastic would fly open from the wind. It was so frustrating. I’m glad to have it all fixed now and ready for seed starting. 

We still need to figure out some table like set up. I might have Cameron build something for that purpose but his list of projects is so long that maybe it won’t happen until next year. 

I think that is all for this week. Now more than ever, it is a good year to grow a garden.