Garden bed 2: squared up, turned over, and planted with: kale, turnips, lettuce, radishes, lettuce, carrots, and zucchini.

Garden bed 3: squared up, turned over, and chopped up. I haven’t it planted it yet.

Yard: lawn mowed for the first time. Yearly planning for plantings (trees, fruit, flowers) completed.  I’m starting to see seedlings in Ellen’s (pollinator) garden. The peach, apple, and cherry trees are all full of blossoms. We moved 14 blackberry babies from the main rows to a third row and started them around the main yard fence.

Rabbits/Chickens: Hlao-Roo is eating pellets + hay + grass + willow. We went to get the other rabbits, but they didn’t have more ready to go. We’ll try again in a week or two.

Garden bed 1: dug, chopped, and planted. This is an older bed and just needed an easy turnover and to be squared up. This bed has: kale, turnips, lettuce, radish, lettuce-2, and peas.

To the south of garden bed 1 is garden bed 2. It will get turned over and planted in April week 2. We will continue to dig and plant a bed each week as weather and other tasks permit. We have 5 more easy beds to turn and 4 more difficult beds to do.

Chicken/Rabbit Run: posts are in and framing has started. This will be slow as we are just doing a bit each payday.

To the south of the chicken yard is our second compost area. Right now it’s mostly cardboard, sticks, weed stalks, and some food waste. It will fill in pretty quickly with soil, grass clippings, weeds (from weeding) and rabbit manure/waste.

This week also saw the pool area re-leveled and the pool set up, Ellen’s memory garden weeded, and a shopping trip for organic seeds.

We do all our gardening with hand tools, organically, and with a view to restoring the soil so that we may use this smaller area to grow more so that the majority of our land is left to wildness.

Meet Hlao-Roo.

He’s the newest edition to Idlewild Farm. He’s a 12 week old lion-headed dwarf rabbit. He weighs a mere pound and a half and will only be two pounds at full-size. Right now, he spends the cold nights in the laundry room and the warmer days outside. He’s acclimating after living his whole life indoors.

He’s eating rabbit pellets primarily (He just came home on Saturday) and I’ve introduced a tiny bit of hay. I’ll slowly increase his hay until he has unlimited access. Today he was also given an apple twig. He wasn’t sure about it at first, but I’ve seen him gnawing on it a few times.

Hopefully he’ll be joined by two more rabbits over the the next four weeks. After that, we’ll be ready to bring home the chickens.