Sunday 16 May 2021

Beautiful & Productive

Today was one of those days that went on and on and on.  Luckily, in addition to long, it was also a beautiful and productive day.  

We recently amalgamated all three boys into one bedroom to foster brotherly bonding.  Unfortunately, this change also yielded an earlier wake up time.  When our mornings start before 6 am, it makes for one heck of a long day.

This morning was a big moment for Liam.  With his 8th birthday only a few weeks away, we have decided that he is old enough to participate in the bee yard.  Today he donned his very own bee suit for the first time to "help" me do the spring hive splits.  He was beyond thrilled and though he got in my way at pretty much every turn and was overly zealous with the smoker, I am sure with a bit more practice he will be a super duper helper.



Liam and Seamus both helped with the barn mucking this afternoon.  We got everyone's beds cleaned out and all fluffed up with clean straw.  In the midst of mucking I noticed that Gus-Gus was behaving weirdly.  Upon closer inspection she was absolutely caked with mud.  I have no idea what happened.  Maybe Pecky Becky cornered her in a mud puddle for some loving or Gus-Gus decided to take up swimming in the pig wallow?  I never dreamed that I would give a turkey a bath, but here we are.  Liam and I bathed Gus in the laundry room sink to rinse some of the huge amount of mud out of her feathers before it dried into cement.   Much to my surprise, Gus was very chill about the whole thing.  She is drying out now in the sunshine and warm breeze and looks slightly less like a drowned rat (turkey).  So weird.


While Ian and Liam went to collect our grocery pick up, I prepared dinner.  We had crispy walleye tacos with wild garlic.  


I served warm rhubarb strawberry crisp for dessert.  This is the first year ever that our rhubarb patch has produced enough to harvest.  I am so pleased.  Thank you again to Liam & Nina and Brody & Kelsey for sharing some rhubarb plants with me a few years ago to help get a patch of my own up and running.




After dinner, Ian watched the boys while I got the most beautiful hour of quiet time.  I took full advantage of it heading back to the chicken coop garden to sow some sweet corn, beans, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, lettuce, spinach and swiss chard.  Sowing seeds with my hands and feet in the soft and deliciously warm dirt is my happy place; there is absolutely nothing I enjoy doing more.  Doing so all alone in the beautiful silence (barn yard sounds don't count as noise since I find them soothing) was a perfect end to this very long, but very good, Sunday.

As usual, we had a busy weekend here on Gael Glen Farm.  The weather was gorgeous, we got a ton accomplished and we are ready to face another work/home school week.  We hope you also had a beautiful and productive weekend.  What did you get up to?

No comments:

Post a Comment