Box Beds, Baked Breads & Burgling Bees

It is one thing to build something with the exact right supplies, all purchased new for a specific purpose.  It is another thing entirely to build something from scraps that you have scavenged, salvaged, and re-purposed.  Still flying high from the success of my chicken cabana construction project, I decided to build a few economical pallet gardens.  With my existing box gardens almost at capacity and my big garden still a mud pie, I am in desperate need of more workable garden space in which to plant the many seedlings that are hardened off and now ready for the great outdoors.

I have had this box bed project in mind ever since I mentally calculated how much space bi-weekly plantings of peas, spinach, radishes, and lettuce would take.  Lots!  This has left me, and my trusty but rusty green trailer, with plenty of time to undertake the scavenging portion of my endeavour.

My plunder.

Today the construction began.

Liam and I stapled landscape fabric to the bottom of pallets that we found or re-purposed.
This will help stop grass and weeds from popping up in our garden.

We added sides to the box beds using discarded pallet planks that we found being thrown out.
Liam and I removed all the rusty nails and (while we could have done it ourselves)
we delegated cutting them to Papa.  Liam and I drilled them all in.

Seamus and I filled one bed up with triple mix.
We do not currently have enough dirt for the second box bed
so we will have to wait for the delivery of our dump truck load of triple mix to come mid-week.

I covered the completed box garden with plastic to warm up the soil for planting. 

While puttering around outside today we noticed lots of honey bee activity for the first time this spring.  The bees are definitely not ours (sad face) but we figured that we would take advantage of their search for nectar by putting out our empty frames and supers for them to clean up.  Storing these will be easier if they are not all sticky!

Honey bees hard at work cleaning off the excess honey.
Hopefully these bees remember our house as the land of milk and honey
when they decide to swarm later this spring.  

Amidst all of today's chaos - building new garden boxes, minding kids, laundry, grocery shopping, garage re-organization, and livestock care - I managed to sneak inside at multiple intervals to bake the most delicious bread ever.  It was fluffy and flavourful; store bought quality for sure.  Victory!

Around 5 pm, Ian and I ran out of steam.  Thank goodness Ian already had dinner on the BBQ by this point or it would have been a Carp pizza kind of night.  The installation of the hoops above the new box garden and the planting of seedlings in it will just have to wait until tomorrow.  We are exhausted.  Now if only the boys would go to sleep so we can too!