Pigs, plants, horses, and goats

Rhia is still collecting jars of peanut butter and selling her pigs to raise money for the Ironwood Pig Sanctuary. She really loves pigs-even the seven of her own! Farmer's markets will be coming up and she will be there with all her little pigs. We have still been planting. We put in 9 more citrus trees yesterday, mulched our 48 containers of potatoes, put in more tomato starts, weeded, and worked in the greenhouse. Wow! We are hoping to have a good spring-not too hot too fast. We have trimmed all of the horses except one. Only got to shear one goat but need to get the others done. One doe is starting to sluff off some of her winter coat. We may have to felt the mohair instead of spinning it this year.

Planting and Pony Rides

Look at the sparkler radishes that Sugar harvested. She did it all from start to finish-planting, weeding, watering, harvesting! We have put in another 9 rows-that's 900 more feet of garden. That field will have tomatoes, radishes, carrots, squash, and hopefully melon. We've covered the beds with wood chips, put up some stakes and are hoping to finish it by the weekend. The children donate time to a local farmer friend-pulling weeds in exchange for horticulture education. They have already learned alot. Today we go to help another farmer plant tomatoes-should be fun.
We've given many pony rides lately as Rhia is collecting peanut butter to donate to the pigs at the Ironwood Pig Sanctuary. So far she has collected 46 jars! During the month of March, kids that come to the farm get a free pony ride in exchange for a jar of peanut butter. Mark and Kid Horse went to birthday party last weekend and gave pony rides to lots of kids.
We sold vegetable starts, kid's crafts, Rhia's pigs, etc. at the Queen Creek Farmer's Market last weekend-beautiful weather. We will be looking forward to the market again next month and may even try the Bashas market.
Still haven't gotten the goats sheared-or the Sheepadoodle-hopefully soon as the temperature is increasing.

Lots of spring planting!!!

We have been very busy moving plants out of the greenhouse and into the gardens. Two of the gardens have rotating plants from winter and two more were replanted. We put in a new garden with just tomatoes and onions. We are going to have so many onions available! We now have one last field to plant-so much fun! The potatoes are doing well and we are waiting for another chance to mulch.

In the greenhouse-there is oregano, sweet basil, sage, peppers, marigolds, sunflowers (this is our first attempt with these), cantaloupe, bird house gourds, watermelon, hearts and flowers, lots of aloe vera and additional assorted flowers.

The hens have been busy and we are getting some good brown, white, and blue/green eggs. We have a few young hens that are laying small eggs as well.

It is almost warm enough for us to shear the goats. Then we will be busy washing, carding, and spinning yarn. These are usually winter activities in other places but since it gets so hot, we enjoy this in the summer!