{"id":10360,"date":"2024-04-09T14:51:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=10360"},"modified":"2024-04-09T14:51:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:51:30","slug":"every-day-brings-us-closer-to-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2024\/04\/09\/every-day-brings-us-closer-to-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Every day brings us closer to spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring is a season of firsts. A week ago, our pair of Canadian geese arrived on the partially melted beaver pond. Two days ago, a pair of Trumpeter swans stopped by for the day, amazing us with their presence. And, today, I saw three Robins and a male Red-Winged blackbird. Then, today, our Purple Finches showed up and we saw our first Red-Tailed hawk. (For some reason, probably our mild winter, all of our hawks did not migrate. All winter, we saw occasional Sharp-Shined and Broad-Winged hawks sailing over the marshes.) Now the ice is totally gone from the beaver ponds and the snow is pretty much history. It’s raining today and that will help drive the frost out of the ground. I’m getting antsy to pull the wire cages around my peonies and delphiniums so I can clean out the flower beds.<\/p>\n

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We were excited to see swans on the beaver pond again.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But, for now, I’m busy all day, transplanting a gazillion little tomato plants. I’m putting them into 16 oz, many-times-used Styrofoam coffee cups with a hole punched in the bottom with a sharp pencil. Those go into a 1020 nursery flat with no holes. Then, Will carries them out to our heated greenhouse. I do several packs then lie down to rest my knees. Then, after about 15 minutes, I hit it again. It’s slower than I’d like, but those flats are getting done. I’m growing fewer of each variety this year, to hopefully, save labor. I enjoy giving plants to folks but there’s only so much I can do with sore knees, and I realize that.<\/p>\n

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Here are our little seedling tomatoes inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It won’t be long before the greenhouse looks like this. It’s filling up, day by day!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We’ve been having several folks stop at the farm to get seeds this spring. I’m not the only one who is concerned about the cost and availability of sub-quality food! And I’ve noticed more and more people are starting to ask questions about long-term storage of seeds, which I think is a very good idea. After all, most seed companies at the big box stores are owned by one or two mega-corporations. I don’t like being dependent on greedy companies! I guess I’m just stubborn that way. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring is a season of firsts. A week ago, our pair of Canadian geese arrived on the partially melted beaver pond. Two days ago, a pair of Trumpeter swans stopped by for the day, amazing us with their presence. And, today, I saw three Robins and a male Red-Winged blackbird. Then, today, our Purple Finches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10,12,13,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10364,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10360\/revisions\/10364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}