While we don’t let grass grow under our feet, the past two days has been extra busy as our weather went from way below normal and snow to sixty with sunshine. I can just hear our solar panels creating electricity! In the evenings, Will has been a busy guy. Our seed business is growing, and we desperately needed more shelves to store seeds. After all, I’d been double-stacking some varieties of beans and squash, so it was a real pain in the you-know-what to work with those bins without spilling seeds. So I moved a smaller book shelf that was on the end of our big rack and Will built a new, tall shelf unit with eight shelves, each holding four bins of seeds. Wow is that ever nice! When he got it together, we moved it in place, and I began moving and sorting bins of seeds. That new shelf now holds all beans and the empty old shelves received doubled carrots, squash, and beets. And the shelf didn’t cost a dime. Will used recycled lumber from the big boxes David brought home from work and the free plywood he got a few years ago from a local wood manufacturing plant. Ok, so maybe he did use some screws, but we already had them. What an improvement! Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make life easier.

Will kept busy in the evenings building much needed shelves for our seeds.

Like in our basement pantry. I got rid of some boxes of junk I sorted out and lo and behold, there was plenty of room for more of my canning. And as I was gifted a couple of #10 cans of kidney beans, I’m going to can up some more chili real soon. I use it not only for chili, but I also put cornbread on top and add corn to the chili for a great Tex-Mex casserole.

It’s strange to see green grass and fast-melting bits of snow! So we’ll be making good use of this nice weather.

With the sun out, Will has been cutting nice dry poplar poles from his big pile next to the driveway, and stacking it in the woodshed. So far, he’s got two truck loads inside. I’ll give him a hand tomorrow so we can make real good use of this wonderful dry weather. I also want to get the final mulch on my newest daylily bed before the weather turns nasty again. But hurrah! We’ve got a week of warm sun forecast.

In dry weather, firewood gets stacked in the woodshed for winter.

By the way, the beavers have not built up their dams or stockpiled a ton of brush to eat over winter. So that means a relatively mild winter. (If you can believe beavers.) They haven’t been wrong yet though. — Jackie

8 COMMENTS

  1. Yep busy in Northern Iowa getting anything extra done that we can outside with the ups and downs in the weather this year. I got my seed order from you and already am wishing for spring to get things planted LOL.

    • I hardly think so! It’s amazing how much firewood we use in Northern Minnesota and how much food one uses when you don’t eat out or buy pre=packaged meals.

  3. Oklahoma just had a major ice storm last week, lots of power outages, tree damage, etc. Now we’re back in the mild daytime 70’s/night time 40’s or 50’s we usually see at this time of year. Confused the heck out of our trees as most still had leaves. Next summer isn’t going to be pleasant due to so much loss of tree limbs and trees. And as kathy in MS says, if we don’t get proper cold weather this year the bugs are going to be miserable here, too!

  4. You and Will are beavers, too, getting lots of work done outside while you can. I have a question for you on your shelves. Where do you get the metal folded strip the holds your shelf boards in place? Thanks for sharing your busy life with us.

  5. I like the way your beavers think. Although, we haven’t had a cold winter (for us) in a couple of years and the bugs may carry us off next summer.

    kathy in MS

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