I’d like to tell you that our rhubarb plants are producing enough for our needs – not that anyone “needs” rhubarb – but I wanted to make rhubarb jam and rhubarb pie and put some in the freezer for making rhubarb pies in the middle of winter.  Who doesn’t “need” a taste of spring in the middle of a blizzard?

We brought two rhubarb plants with us when we moved from New Jersey.  Yep…dug them up from our garden, put them in a big bucket of dirt and loaded them into the back of the moving truck.  They survived the move, but the stalks they produce are skinny.  I don’t know if it’s the variety, or maybe they need a hefty dose of fertilizer – but the harvest has been downright puny.  We bought a few more rhubarb crowns at the garden supply store and planted them next to theses expat plants.  They are beginning to come up, but they have a ways to go before I can harvest those stalks – in fact, it will probably be next year, or the year after.  What’s a girl to do?

I went back to Highland Orchards.  I had taken my kids there more than 30 years ago for picking things like blueberries and cherries (did you know that picking cherries requires climbing trees – and throwing out the cherry-stained clothes, but the kids had a great time).  They also have rhubarb for the picking.  It’s only a small patch – I guess rhubarb is not a big “pick-your-own” fruit (actually, it’s a vegetable – which may explain why people are confused about whether to pick it or not).  We were the only ones in the rhubarb patch – pulling stalks to our hearts content.  I pulled the stalks; Chris lopped off the leaves (which are poisonous – and may be another reason why no one else was in a hurry to pick rhubarb).

We came home with about six pounds of beautiful, plump, red rhubarb stalks.  Chris chopped them up – I made the jam, and the pie – and packed enough bags of rhubarb in the freezer to quench that craving in January or February when I need a taste of spring.

We’ve been so busy with the “have-to-do” list that it seems unusual to have a project that was on the “nice-to-do-list.”

We “had-to-do” the garden fence, the tilling and getting the garden planted.  That’s a given.  I can’t live without a vegetable garden so I can play in the dirt and harvest my own tomatoes and green beans.  And we had to work on clearing the brush and briars – because, well – the property looked terrible and the vines were choking the trees (and we’ll be working on that project for a long time to come).  But we didn’t “have-to-do” a post and rail fence adjacent to the driveway pull-out.  It was a “nice-to-do thing;” and it does look nice.  It has the added benefit of protecting the propane tank when people drive off the edge of the driveway – which surprisingly, has happened several times already.

This project was Chris’ idea – and I’m glad it was his idea, because it was a lot of work.  I would have felt bad if it was one of my ideas, and then he had to work so hard at it.  Digging three post holes with a post-hole digger takes strength and determination.  When you are digging on the No Rhyme or Reason Farm – where rocks seem to exist everywhere for no rhyme or reason, it takes strength, determination AND perseverance.  After digging out even more rocks, centering the posts and leveling the rails, he filled the holes with cement, and now we have a lovely little post and rail fence.

But the lovely little post and rail fence was calling out for grape vines to climb the rails, spread out their tendrils and provide us with grapes.  After trips to several nurseries and garden centers, I thought I was going to have to give up on this vision until next spring when the available stock was still alive (or at least the dead looking branches were still pliable so that there was a prayer of a chance that watering them could bring them back to life).  But then a trip to Tractor Supply brought us serendipitously face-to-face with two perfectly healthy grape vines – one red, one white.  We’ve now added Concord Grapes and Niagara Grapes to our farm – and one day, maybe in a couple of years, we’ll see the fruits of Chris’ labors.

We have almost five acres, and yet there seemed to be no place to put a garden.  We thought about the field near the chicken coop, but it is on a slope, it has a BIG black walnut tree (and stuff doesn’t grow well around walnut trees), and it would be in too much shade.  We thought about the front yard, but that just seems weird.  And then we decided on the open space to the right of the garage.  It’s south-facing, has only a slight slope and gets decent sunshine.  We had a fence erected.  The fence is 20 feet by 30 feet by 6 feet high to keep the deer out, with an extra wire “bib” at the bottom to keep the ground hogs and rabbits out.  We’re all set.

Neighbors graciously brought us a front-end loader bucket full of manure from their cows and Chris got busy tilling it in.  And then he hit rocks.  Not just one or two rocks, but apparently the remnants of the foundation from the old barn.  Lots of rocks.  He would till, then stop and use a crowbar, then till again, and stop and use the crowbar.

Finally – it seemed well tilled.  I raked and raked pulling out pieces of broken glass, stones, gravel, metal door latches from the old barn, and a variety of other stuff until it was smooth and beautiful.

After a trip to the local nursery for plants, and with the big bag of seeds I’ve been collecting (seems like I’d add another packet or two every time we entered a Home Depot or Lowe’s) – I took my trowel and got busy.  I dug the first hole – and hit a rock.  Chris had to get out of the crow bar again.  I dug the second hole – and hit a rock.  Chris had to get out the crow bar again.  And so it went, until we finally got everything planted.

So far it seems the plants are thriving and the seeds are popping up – so I have high expectations.

I also have another rock wall – because what else are you going to do with all these rocks.  This rock wall lines the 2^nd ridge line along the property and is an edge to the back slope up to the barn.  I’m sure Disa, Pono and Fiona enjoy the bucolic view from their pasture – down over the stone wall.

Fiona was lonely, so her entourage arrived a few days later.  The truck with a trailer pulled up to the end of the driveway.  After previous experiences trying to get things up the driveway (like the barn), we decided it was best just to unload there.  Chris and Becky opened the trailer doors, lassoed the horses (okay – not really lassoed – more like grabbed their lead lines) and led them up the driveway to the pasture.

There was a lot of running and jumping going on the first night.  They ran from one end of the pasture to the other checking out their new space and grazed on the fresh grass like they better get it while the gettin’ was good.  By morning they had settled down, trotting around the pasture like they own the place.

A pecking order quickly emerged.  Disa, the Norwegian Fjord horse is the largest, and clearly in charge.  Pono, the miniature horse follows Disa every where she goes.  And Fiona seems to run behind saying “wait for me.”

When I wake up in the morning, I don’t even have to get out of bed to see the menagerie.  They congregate in the lower corner of the pasture – in view of the bedroom window, and gaze up at the house to see if there are any signs of life yet.

Chris keeps horse treats in one pocket and goat treats in the other, determined to have them come running as soon as they see him – so far, the horses are getting the idea, but Fiona… well, she needs a little more convincing.

Fiona recently came to live with us.  She isn’t the prettiest goat I’ve ever seen, but she has “attitude” and that counts for a lot.  I don’t even know what kind of goat she is.  She’s mostly gray, has wicked looking horns and so far, she doesn’t want much to do with us.

She’s a bit skittish around people.  She comes close enough to investigate, and maybe grab a quick snack out of Chris’ hand — but not close enough to let us pet her.  She marches along the fence line inspecting her new penned in pasture and then positions herself at the top of the hillside, juts her shoulders forward and seems to proclaim — all this land is mine!

Apparently goats love to eat poison ivy.  And I’d love to get rid of our poison ivy.  So Fiona is welcome here for as long as she has an appetite.

Arianna and I have been having fun playing in the dirt.  She has her own set of garden tools, and while it’s a little early to start digging holes and planting my garden, it’s not too early for a little archaeology around the spring house where we keep finding good things – and not so good things.

First rule is that we have to wear our gloves because there is a LOT of broken glass.  Chips of glass, shards of glass, green glass, brown glass, big pieces and little pieces.  Sometimes, just every once in a while – there is whole glass.  We cheer and run inside and wash it in the sink to get years of caked mud off, scrub it with a brush until it gleams and add it to our growing collection of “neat things we’ve found on the farm” shelf.

Second rule is that we have to wear our gloves because there is a LOT of rusty metal.  Usually it’s just rusty corrugated metal that’s falling apart, but it can have some sharp edges to it.  Sometimes it’s an old car part; once in a while it’s an old door hinge, an old chain or an old tiller blade.  We’re not quite so excited about washing them off as when we find a blue bottle or a cute pitcher.

Third rule is that we have to wear our gloves because there is a LOT of bones.  Okay, I guess there is no real reason to wear gloves except that it’s kind of gross.  Some of the bones are cut as if they were soup bones – so maybe they were tossed to the dog that was tied to the chain.  Other bones look like a cow femur (do cows have femurs?), or hip bones or who knows what bones.  Those, we say “gross” and toss them aside.  Someday I’ll find out they were dinosaur bones and we just threw away the biggest archaeological dig this side of the Mississippi, but I don’t think so.  It’s just gross.

Our property came with a bonus – a huge crop of watercress that grows in our little stream.  I always thought of watercress as something uppity.  Wanamaker’s Tea Room used to serve Watercress Tea Sandwiches.  As a kid, I wasn’t impressed.  What was watercress anyway – and why did I want a salad in my sandwich?  I hadn’t heard of “super foods” back then, and wouldn’t have been any more inclined to eat it even if I had.

But now, it’s a freebee of the farm (kind of like our eggs, if you don’t count the price of the chicken coop, chicken feed, heat lamps, chicken treats, and the like).  So Arianna and I donned our rain boots and set off into the stream with a pair of scissors and a colander.  We snipped just above the root line and brought our cache of watercress into the kitchen where I washed it many, many, multiple times – plucking out the stray strand of grass and other indecipherable green things.

We sampled it.  I expected Arianna to turn up her nose at the peppery after-taste, but she just shrugged her shoulders – kind of the reaction I had to Wanamaker Watercress Sandwiches.

But this batch went into a pot of Watercress soup.  Chicken broth, potatoes, onion, butter (what’s not to like about all of that), and watercress; followed with a dollop of whipped cream on top.  Basically, it ended up being green potato soup with a slight peppery flavor – full of antioxidants, high in Vitamins A and C, fights infections and cancer, good for bone and dental health, digestive health, clears acne and aids in weight loss.  It seems the only thing it doesn’t do – is cure poison ivy.

Last year, when I was making routine trips out to a house that we didn’t even own yet, trying to figure out inspections and measuring for proposed additions, I was delighted to find daffodils blooming randomly throughout the front yard.  These were not ordinary daffodils, but huge, beautiful, double daffodils.

We had made a sizable deposit on the house and had paid for multiple inspections by the time the daffodils bloomed, so I felt somewhat entitled.  I cut a big vase full and took them to my office.  It was meant to be encouragement – or enticement to keep me focused on the nitty-gritty of actually getting this house.  I guess it worked.

This year, we are here to enjoy them.  We’ve beaten back brush, vanquished vines and raked away remnants of years of neglect to uncover even more daffodils.  They have pushed up through the remnants of the snow, developed bulging buds and are opening just in time for Easter.

Our girls were getting spring fever so we finally let them out of the coop so they could smell the flowers.  Letting them out was easy, getting them back in took a little longer.

With clusters of daffodils scattered everywhere, they’ll make the perfect spot to hide Easter eggs for Arianna to find.  Now I just have to figure out how to dye brown eggs.

Happy Easter!

A pretty backdrop for the daffodils.

We try to be “green” with the farm, but within reason.  We watch “Alaska: The Last Frontier” and while I applaud the Kilcher’s for keeping everything they have in a junkyard “just in case” they need it someday, I’m not exactly into keeping a junkyard on this property when we are trying so desperately to clean out.

But there are a few exceptions.  There is an old, rusty metal trough in the backyard.  It had a tree growing inside of it, and several small trees growing around it.  It’s embedded in the ground, and no equipment we have is capable of pulling it out of there.  So we decided to work with it, instead of against it.

It’s about 8 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep; the perfect place to throw a lot of debris.  We have hunks of cement,  a whole lot of rocks, rotting logs, and loose straw that we raked up from when the grass was seeded last fall.  It all went into the trough, – heavy stuff first, topped off with garden soil, and then I dug 40 little holes and planted 40 strawberry plants.  It is now my raised strawberry bed, and I can’t wait to harvest it.

Not far from the rusty trough I found four large, suspicious stones.  At first I thought they were tombstones that had toppled over, but there were no names on them.  They were curious though, each exactly the same size, obviously man-made, with slightly rounded corners.  Chris hoisted them into the cart on the back of his tractor – and we realized exactly what they were – bags of cement that had been tossed in the back yard, got soaked, dried, hardened and then the paper rotted away – four perfect cement stepping stones.  They are just what I was looking for to give access through the muddy bog in the front yard to get to the stream where watercress is growing.

I also found an old coal bucket.  It’s in good shape, if you don’t mind rust, and I think it will make a perfect planter for some petunias this summer.

But not everything is salvageable.  There is no repurposing the original chicken coop.  It is falling apart, probably hobbled together long-ago “Kilcher-style” with farm crates for nesting boxes.  At some point we will tear it down and burn it.  But first we have to saw some of the tree trunks that have seized some large chains and are holding them captive.  Maybe they can be repurposed.  I’ll put those in our junkyard just in case.

Fill it with debris, of course — chunks of cement, old branches, etc.

Perfect stepping stones to navigate the stream.

It’s a little rough now, but just wait till its filled with petunias.

Definitely not something that can be re-purposed, it needs to come down.

But these big chains might go to our junkyard — you never know when you might need something.

We’ve been having a problem at night on the farm. Everything seems fine when we go to bed, but when we wake, things are in disarray.  My garden gnome is knocked over, the suet cage (not just the suet, but the whole cage) is missing, and someone has sprung the clasp on the top of the holder that houses the dried ears of corn for the squirrels.

When things first started to happen, we blamed the deer, so we moved the suet cage higher on the tree, and bolted it in tighter, and put an alligator clamp on it to keep the contents secure. It didn’t matter.  Things continued to go missing.

So we got a trail camera with night vision.

It captured us walking around the farm doing our daily chores – headed to the chicken coop, filling the bird feeder, but rarely would it catch anything unusual. We moved it several times to capture different vantage points, and finally… we got some action.

The deer do roam the farm at night. It’s not unusual to see several at dusk or dawn – maybe five, sometimes eight… but we never see the bucks, except on our night vision camera.  Apparently we have a six-point buck and another buck that we call “Fifty-cents.”  He appears to be just half a buck.  He only has one tall, gangly antler.  While they seem to graze under the birdfeeder, they weren’t climbing the tree to steal the suet.

The suet thief sneaks in at night with his burglar’s mask across his eyes, scopes out the area, climbs the tree and with his incredible dexterity, helps himself. Yes, Rocky Raccoon thought he had a good thing going.  But the suet is for the birds, not Rocky.  Chris moved the suet to a free-standing pole with a hook on the end.  It swings from its chain and the birds don’t seem to mind the new venue.

Rocky, however, isn’t so pleased with the arrangement. He (or she) has taken up pole dancing in an attempt to shimmy up the pole.  But it isn’t working.  The gnome still gets toppled some nights in the melee, but the suet is safe – until Rocky out-smarts us again.