The Weekly Digs #227

Christmas Preparations

We had some fun this week! We made some homemade Christmas ornaments with the kids earlier in the week. Find out how we made them HERE.  They’re simple but cute! 

Another thing we did this week is get our Christmas tree. Growing up, every year we drove to a tree farm and cut down a Christmas tree. This was in upstate NY, so the trees were beautiful fir and spruce and widely available. 

Fast forward to when Cam and I moved to Arkansas, and there were no Christmas tree farms near us. I was kind of surprised by this! I wasn’t ready to convert to a fake tree, so every year we bought one from a store.

A couple years ago a tree farm opened up next to us, and I was super excited to have all the nostalgia of my childhood and go get a tree. 

They grow virginia pine and scotch pine because that is what grows in our climate. We’ve gone a few times over the years, but occasionally cut down a cedar tree from our land to use as a Christmas tree instead to save a little money. 

This year, we went again to the tree farm and got a cute little tree!

In the Garden

It has been so perfect outside and I am loving it! Being in the garden isn’t work, it’s play! My kids got to do one of their favorite jobs, burning brush in the garden. I had one area where the tomatoes were planted that got out of control with weeds. In that spot, I had the kids burn them all since some had set seeds.

I still need to burn my asparagus which is now brown and dry. I am slowly working to get things cleaned up, cleared out, covered, composted, mulched, and ready for next year. It usually takes me pretty much all winter. 

But it’s so good because I need that outside time! 

I got my workout this week by prepping a garden area for cover crops and planting. I keep having people ask me questions wondering if it is too late to plant cover crops. In some places it definitely is too late. If you have snow on the ground already, or your ground is frozen, it’s too late.

But where we live, it’s fairly warm, the ground is not frozen, and we have no snow. All that said, we are going into our less than 10 hours of daylight time of year when not much grows at all. 

If you get to that point, the cover crops won’t put on a ton of growth. They will need some compost to cover the ground since likely it won’t be fully covered until spring.

Last thing we have been working on is Cam started trenching for the water line that will go into the tunnel. I’m so happy he is working on this! Spring gets way too busy to add irrigation to the list.

Chickens

This week we moved our broiler chickens into the garden. They have about 10 days left until freezer camp. I figured we may as well put some of that fertilizer to good use in the garden.

They are moving down the rows that had the kids’ gardens. It’s another unkempt spot that will be cleaned by animal power.