Busy Bees

I'm trying to catch up on here, we've been so busy lately.  We get going on the homestead with chores for days then we have to go back to the real world of our actual paying jobs and then next thing I know it's a new week.  Last week we did some much needed maintenance on the homestead of trimming up some trees. That was an all week project with a little work on the garden.

We have at least a handful of trees that are in need of some desperate trimming. We got to two of them and the process is still continuing. We still need to take what we trimmed off to a local tree limb drop off site. It's amazing how much better and happier the trees look. 

Besides trimming them up for landscaping reasons we also did it to discourage the deer from hanging out under them. We don't want them getting comfortable on our property close to our garden. The first tree was pretty simple of just cutting limbs down. The second tree was more challenging, it didn't want to let go of its limbs. The second tree is close to our property line and the neighbor came and said hi and told us that in the 20 years he'd lived in his house no one had ever trimmed the tree.  It was definitely in need of a haircut, a complete makeover. There is a pond next to that tree and there were limbs that had fallen into the pond that needed removed too.

Papa Homestead trimming up the bigger branches.

The first of many loads.

The tree is diseased so one of our strategies of cleaning up the tree was just hitting or pulling on branches and they would just break from being so brittle.  Some of the branches were so big and entwined that we had to bring in Colonel Mustard for some help.  Colonel Mustard made the job go by faster and a lot easier, and it might have been a bit fun too.  We still have a few more trees to trim but we had to do some work in the garden so their haircuts will have to wait for now.

Before picture of the second tree.

Colonel Mustard helping out.

Happier tree

After picture, it looks like a tree now.

When we checked out the garden, keep in mind this was two weeks ago our plants were doing really well.  They were doing so well that I came to the realization that we needed to set a lot of them free from their chicken wire cages.  It may sound weird but it stressed me out a bit, like a mama bird letting her baby fly.  I didn't want anything to hurt or even eat them.  I knew it had to be done though so they could grow bigger and spread out.  After checking out all the plants we found a tiny green tomato on one of our plants.  It's so thrilling to see our plants doing so well.  The potatoes are growing so fast that it's a bit of a challenge to keep up with them.  We added the last layer of dirt to them, now we'll just let them be until harvesting time.  

Setting the zucchini free, they're getting so big.

One of our first tomatoes.

When we found the tomatoes our little farmer boy was eager to pick and eat it.  Papa tried to explain to him that we had to wait until it was red not green, he didn't understand that.  I told him that the tomato was just a baby and he wouldn't want to hurt it so not to pick it, he seemed to understand and walked away.  The next day we were in the garden and I was unwrapping the tomatoes and he comes up to me chomping on a green tomato and says "Mama babies taste good".  He just kept repeating it, the things two year olds say.  Well I've got to go now and start the day, more adventures with a toddler.