This Month On The Homestead: April 2021

 

homemade pizza!

Well the weather was quite crazy the month of April.  We were blessed with some amazingly beautiful, almost summer-like days, some rainy days that my newly planted garden thoroughly enjoyed, and some downright cold and miserable days.  Perspective is a funny thing though because what I deem the cold and miserable days had daytime temps above freezing.  In the heart of winter we would celebrate those days.  But now that your body (and mind) is just so ready to move on to the warmer spring days anything below the low 50's feels miserable. 

Our freezers and pantry shelves are finally starting to empty as we work our way through the food we preserved last summer and fall.  I seem to have a few bags of frozen peppers left this year.  We put up the same amount we always do but we must not have used them as regularly as we have in years past.  We also have more spaghetti sauce left.  We'll be working to incorporate those in upcoming meals.

In The Garden - As I noted in other posts, this is the first year I actually was able to get cold tolerant veggie seeds in the ground ON TIME!  Usually my sugar snap and snow peas are just getting to full production when the summer heat and humidity stops them right in their tracks.  This year they will reach full production when they are supposed to - in May, so we anticipate devouring many more this year.  The early planting should help the lettuces too since we often get some bolting before we can eat through them.  The chickens, however,  are the happy recipients of bolted lettuce so I guess it all works out.

In The Coop - speaking of chickens, they are doing very well.  We spotted a fisher cat passing back and forth across the back of our property one day in late winter.  I spotted it slinking by and then, because we had snow on the ground, we could see where all it had been.  It had walked very close to the coop so thankfully the girls were inside that day.  For some reason it hasn't been back.  Possibly it was just passing through, we aren't sure.  We're trying to be careful with the Coop Girls until we have more confidence that it isn't coming back at least during the day while they are free ranging.  

Also, my garden fence was halfway down most of April as my husband installed some permanent fencing.  So the Coop Girls were not allowed to even think about going in to the garden.  Oh how they would love to peck at and eat all of the fresh greens.  And oh how I would be upset.  So they were supervised while out and about.

Oliver and Jack - Jack has been doing great.  We've seen no indication that his heart disease is having any effect so, although he will go for another check-up with his cardiologist in August, we feel confident that he is doing fine.  

Oliver is doing well.  He is losing more coordination in his back legs as his spinal issues progress, but he's still a guy on the go.  He takes nice long naps these days with his very favorite spot being the couch ottoman while I'm working on the computer.  I've been giving him some of my roasted Japanese sweet potatoes and he absolutely loves them.  He seems to agree that they are much more tasty then his usual orange variety.  

At Cobble Hill Farm Soap Co. - April was the last month of our "winter" farmers market season.  Although the market was still located indoors we were able to move our booth outside for a few Sundays because the weather was so nice.  Our online sales have still been quite busy which has been wonderful, and Jay has been enjoying spending even more time in his woodshop making some beautiful custom pieces.

What I've Been Reading - I haven't read one book this past month so I have nothing to recommend!  If you've read any good books lately, please let me know in the comments.  I'd love to hear of some to add to my list.

That was April in upstate NY.  Hoping you had a lovely month as well!