Productive Weekend!

I say yea to productive weekends and this was definitely one. It was sunny and beautiful, not raining or snowing for a change so we got out there and tackled several things. The garden was mine. I will always plan to have a well mulched garden that doesn't require tilling but last year some awful weed made their way through (due to me using hay instead of straw for mulch, hay is full of weed seeds) and I couldn't get rid of them so this year I decided to till the garden. And expand the garden. But first we had to remove all the old mulch and dead growth from last year. Now that alone could take a weekend of raking until my brilliant husband mentioned using the little John Deere with the front blade to scrape the top layer off of the garden. Boy did that work wonderfully. He just scraped everything into a big pile so I can reuse all the old mulch this year. Then it was time to till it up. We borrowed my parents ancient tiller (I believe it was my grandfathers) and Saturday I went to work on the 30 X 50 foot garden. Unfortunately I won't be able to plant the seeds for at least another week due to Mother Nature's crazy ups and downs. We are supposed to get another hard freeze this week, ugh. But for now, the garden is a blank slate, ready to go! Woo hoo!

The grass is growing like crazy and in some areas our little terrier can get lost in it, it's mega tall. So Sean went to work getting the zero turn mower serviced for another year of mowing. It needed new belts and blades sharpened. Plus I needed to take this picture because he's such a cutie.

My birthday is coming up and I found my birthday present a little early. Since it was on sale and the sale ended Saturday I made the decision to make it an early present. Can I mention how much I love farm stores? I mean where can you find garden equipment, animal feed and cute boots all in the same place? I can spend way too much money in those stores. Hence my early birthday present, a heavy duty dump cart. It's like a wheel barrow on steroids. I can use it to clean out the hen house, move manure back to the garden among other things. I'm sure excited to use it. The kids even want a ride in it. It's got a 1,400 pound capasity so the sky's the limit on what I can carry. Plus the handle converts so it can be towed behind the little tractor. How cool it that? 

The chicks spent the day in a little cage within the dog kennel in an effort to keep the minions from eating them. The three cats eat everything in sight, I kid you not. They caught a full grown red headed wood pecker and a snake in the past week. Those small chickens would be dinner in no time. The cage within a cage seemed to work at keeping the chicks alive. They are still inside until this freeze is over this week. Next weekend they are going to the hen house....I hope.

I hope everyone had a lovely and productive weekend.