And it’s not April yet! We’re very happy as perhaps Will can get started on building our permanent greenhouse soon. He’s shoveled the snow away from the bean trellises and posts in the House garden that weren’t taken down last fall. With warmer weather, maybe he can use the tractor bucket to lift the frozen T-posts out of the ground if the weather continues. I’m planting our hot peppers now as they generally take a little longer to germinate and then grow to transplant size. I filled a tray with deep four pack inserts then went to my open bag of Pro Mix. Oh oh! It was dried into a hard lump! I tried pouring hot water on it but it just ran off to the sides and didn’t soak in a bit. So I took a stout butcher knife and stabbed it, prying into chunks. Then I put them into my big bread mixing bowl and took that into the kitchen sink. By using the sprayer and hot water, I gradually was able to crumble the dry chunks into smaller chunks, then soak them nicely. By working them with my hands, I soon had nice, fluffy, black planting medium. It was then easy to fill my inserts in the tray with it so I can get down to business.

The week after my son, Bill, took me to get our new stock trailer, he took his family on their annual vacation. Before, they would go to a water park or even a Disney cruise. But because of COVID, they opted for a ice fishing excursion to Lake of the Woods, way up on the Canadian border. The kids are on Spring Break from school and both Bill and Kelly had scheduled that time off work. They rented a nice fish house, located 7 miles offshore and spent two days and evenings fishing. Everyone caught nice saugers (a walleye relative) but Ava caught the biggest one! On their way home, they stopped by the homestead for a short visit which was very nice.

Our grandson, Mason, with one of his nice fish.
Kelly, our daughter-in-law caught her share too.
This was their “home-away-from-home for two days’ fishing; 7 miles out on the ice.

Now we’re back to normal, with me planting seeds and Will over working on his new bulldozer, “Old Rusty.” He and his friend went over and got it started; the first time it had started in five years! So Will was a happy camper when he got home. Today he’s putting antifreeze, oil and hydraulic fluid in it and hopes to get it to lift and angle the blade and move out of the spot it’s been in for these last five years. As it’s a sunny, forties day, at least he won’t get cold.

7 COMMENTS

  2. Thanks for another great update and motivation! Putting in my onion plants this weekend if it doesn’t rain again!

  3. I sure enjoy your journaling and your family is so beautiful! My son wants me to do that but I decided to keep my life more private; but I sure enjoy yours. Glad to hear about Will’s heavy equipment. My husband’s never been much of a ‘maintainer’ of anything. He did the majority of raising himself up since he was 3 and so I reason his ma and pa didn’t maintain him, so he’s not learned how to maintain. His excavator has needed maintenance for all these years and he’s finally getting ’round to it since hydraulic fluid was spurting out of 3 places. Much better now! God bless you and your family, from far north California.

    • Yeah, I get that you’d like to keep your life more private. Sometimes that fact bothers me, doing my blog. But it’s kind of part of my job so blog, I do. Glad your husband’s excavator got fixed up. Will’s still working on Old Rusty.

  4. I was born and raised at Baudette, MN..which is almost on the lake..love reading your blog

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