Happy New Year to you! Good bye 2016 - the future has arrived. Time flies when you adopt a puppy, a donkey, and three goats in the same year! I'm excited to see who shows up this year. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a little voice that keeps saying that if I wanted, 2017 could be The Year of The Garden. We've lived in our little farm house through an entire cycle of seasons, we've adjusted to a new rhythm of life that includes early morning stall mucking and hay forking. Maybe now that I'm in the groove, I could focus more of my attention on growing food. Of course, right now, during the dark days of winter when seed catalogs start to sprout up, is when is when my gardening ambitions are always the highest.
To get a jump start on all that garden food, Brandon and I have been working toward completing the green house installation while he is home between semesters. I didn't work so hard that I didn't have time to play with my Christmas gifts though. While Brandon was busy bolting rails to the greenhouse hoops, I introduced the herd to it's newest member- Rufus the sock puppet!
The goats were happy to share their stall with the new Rufus, especially since he doesn't eat much hay.
Hey Rufus, come over here and meet Rufus.
He seemed quite amazed to meet someone with so many similarities. And so handsome too.
The new Rufus gives good nose tickles. I think it's true love!
Light River took a turn wearing the puppet, and I think Dark River was quite concerned that his brother had sprouted a second head.
We got all the rails on the green house affixed in approximately the right places. We hope. It was sort of like working a giant puzzle since we had all the pieces, but weren't always sure how they should fit together. Putting a greenhouse back together again takes much longer than taking one apart.
Then came the fun part - stretching giant sheets of plastic over the hoops while fighting against the near constant wind.
The plastic is several years old already, and got a bit dirty while it waited in the barn. We patched a few holes, and shifted some of the pieces to avoid some of the damaged areas. Hopefully we can get through a few more seasons before the plastic will need to be replaced. That is, if the wind doesn't just rip the whole thing apart!
The dogs and I joined Rufus for a walk to the back of the farm so we could admire the new greenhouse plastic in the sunset. It looks good already, and it's not even full of food!
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