Square Foot Gardening

Square Foot Gardening

This February we decided to plant our own garden the "Square Foot" way...With the help of my children we planted string beans, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, herbs, wild flowers, radishes, cabbage and spinache.

First we built the boxes and filled them with compost, mulch, etc..(we followed Mel Bartholemew's "Guide to Square Foot Gardening" Book).We planted our seeds. SOme seeds required to be planted indoors while seeds such as the sugar snap peas were sturdy enough to withstand the remaining colder months until they were ready to srpout in the warm spring weather.

Everyone wanted to help!

Next we put our dividers on

More seed planting

In late March the plants began to grow. It is amazing to see the seeds that you planted come to life.

By May our sugar snap peas took over the boxes!

Chicks

We went to a friend's farm. Her name is Ellen. She raises alpacas for their wool. She also has goats, chickens and dogs. Out of all of the animals the children loved the chickens the best. Ellen offered some eggs to take home to incubate. It sounded like so much fun...and she was right!
The embryo's in the eggs don't begin to develope until it reaches a steady warm temperature of 99.5 degrees...a fertilized egg just can't be left out in the cold...
So we put 6 eggs in an incubator.
Every few days we shined a flashlight through the eggs to chart the growth of the chicks. It was fascinating! The gestation period of chicks are 21 days...in 3 weeks we had baby chicks hatching! So cool.

Hatching Chick...it took her all day to work her way out.

Only 3 hatched..which actually is good odds. It is usually 20% of eggs hatch...Sadly 2 of the chicks died :-(
It took all day for them to work themselves out of their eggs. We watched helplessly. We wanted so much to help them get out. But we couldn't. Part of their working themselves out of the eggs enables the fluid to be pressed out of their lungs. The struggle makes them stronger....isn't that a great life lesson right there?
We got more than we bargained for when I decided to incubate chicken eggs. It has become a great learning experience for our whole family!
But we still have Mathilda--the lone surviving chick!

Mathilda

14 years!

Happy Anniversary to my husband!
It has been 14 years and every year is better.
We have grown to love eachother more ...hoping we get to grow old together.
We compliment eachother perfectly (our quirks and all)
We are still learning how God wants us to live out our union.
It is a great journey.

14 Years

Up a Tree

This is what happens when you run from your problems in panic....our cat takes flight from everything it seems...I know that is how I deal with stuff sometimes. I can so relate to her. But running away is often not the greatest solution. Now this cat has another dilemma. She is too afraid to get down. My son was gently coaxing her to get down. She eventually did because she trusted him....coolness