Getting Ready For Spring

Now that the Snowpocalypse of last week is over, we are getting ready for spring. That means trimming back all of the damaged plants from the cold and getting our raised beds ready. It also means fixing and/or replacing broken garden pipes. When everything thawed out last week, we had some broken pipes in our garden so we had to shut off our well until we get it all repaired, hopefully, this week sometime.

Getting ready for spring is always an exciting time. Spring brings the promise of new life into our world by way of baby animals and new plants. We love to plant our garden. We also need to plant all of our new orchard trees. We had many planted and right before the storm, we had to dig them up and store them in the greenhouse. It got down to 8° so many of the new trees would have died if we left them out in the storm.

Stop by our David's Garden Seeds® Farm Store for spring seeds for your garden.

Getting Ready For Spring 2/22-2/28/2021

Monday, February 22, 2021 - Getting Ready For Spring

Good Monday morning at 55°. The sun is just coming up and it should be a beautiful day at 76°. One week ago today, we woke up to a blanket of cold snow covering everything. It looked pretty, but it was so cold and our power was out all day and most of the next day as well. Then the rolling blackouts started.

We were fortunate because we have a generator but it was only hooked up to the house, not the business buildings. We still had to keep orders going and it was cold and dark in those buildings. We are happy to report that we got out all of the orders except for a few that are waiting on seeds to get here. Since there was no mail delivery, those seeds are late. Hopefully, they will arrive this week and we will get those packages out to you.

Around the farm, we are grateful to have survived last week and we are ready for spring. Today, we will start the clean up, the repairs, uncoverings, and replanting our orchard. Some of our garden plants made it and others are dead. I think some of our new trees in the greenhouse are dead.

One of our outdoor employees quit today because he is moving to San Angelo. Also, we hired a new indoor employee today who will start tomorrow, just in time for a trip to Salt Grass!

Come by today and see us. Our store will be open from 9am to 5pm today. Tomorrow is another story. Tomorrow, we will be closed between 10am and 2:30pm for a company event. You can plan on visiting at 9am or from 2:30pm until 5pm.

Today was the perfect day as far as the temperature, breeze, and sunshine. It was incredibly beautiful.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Today, was a beautiful, hot summer day at 80° this afternoon. We started out at 44° this morning but it did not stay chilly for long. I finished doing yesterday's orders for most of the day.

This morning, a new lady who lives just down the road started working for us in the production room. At 10:45am, we all left for San Antonio to enjoy a delicious meal at Salt Grass, just like we used to. The only difference was we had to sit at three separate tables. We had fun. There were no birthdays this month so we celebrated Jay, Rock, and I all starting five years ago this month with David's Garden Seeds® full time.

Last week, when the power was out everywhere and it was freezing cold, a two inch water pipe broke in the ceiling of our old business that we still rent in San Antonio at Tezel and Mainland. It destroyed the entire space including flooring and ceiling tiles. If we had still had our business there, we would have lost everything. Our lease is up at the end of April so we have been paying around $3200 a month for nothing since last August. The landlord would not let us out of the lease and he would not try to rent it. Now he wants us to pay for the damages. We live an hour away. The two inch pipe brings water to the entire building. So how are we responsible?

Nacho finished putting roofs over several of the decks around the business. He also did a lot more work on the pool deck roof and he built me a backyard flowerbed.

The chickens and guineas are enjoying the warmer weather and the later time they have to play outside instead of being put to bed at 6pm.

The stores around the area are still not restocked from the storm, although we finally found a few loaves of wheat bread today, but still no white bread and no whipped cream or meat. It is crazy. When I can get out to a grocery store, once they are restocked, I am going to buy a bunch of food. We have not really stocked up in quite a while. Don't get me wrong...We were fine during the storm with plenty of food and water, but you always feel better if you have a little extra for emergencies or to help others.

This afternoon, I went through the hoop houses, looking to see what lived and what died. I did not make it to the greenhouse but a lot of veggies and fruits that I thought would die actually are still alive! We are ready for spring planting after seeing this gorgeous day.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Today was a hot day after a cool morning. It went up to 82°. I was busy all day long with so much going on. Nacho and his crew finished the pool deck roof as well as the roof over the loading dock and the roof and railings over the bridge between the production building and the seed building. Nacho also built a new raised flowerbed in my backyard so I can plant flowers back there.

We took the plastic down in the nesting box areas in both the guinea coop and the chicken coop because it got so hot.

Phil and Stephen worked out in the back 40 on plants and trees, getting them ready for spring. I have not explored back there to see exactly what was done. Now that I am by myself in the store, I leave for short amounts of time to tend to other things quickly, but I don't get to go off and accomplish anything anymore.

I spent most of the day trying to restock the store. I think it will take me several weeks. We are adding new products daily to our inventory so I have to add those to the website and then try to find room in the store for them. I am also having to move things around because many packs of seeds are out of alphabetical order or have been skipped altogether in the store.

Magical Goat's Milk

The mason jar with something white...

And now for a lovely story...

We hired a new lady who started with us this week. Today, she brought some goat's milk for me to try because I told her I was thinking of getting some goats and I had never tasted goat's milk. She brought it in a mason jar and left it in the employee refrigerator. I thanked her and later in the day, I went over to the employee breakroom, saw a mason jar in the fridge with white in it. It looked like milk to me. I took it home, poured a small amount in a cup and tasted it. This was the sweetest, most wonderful milk I had ever tasted. I got excited about getting goats.

I washed the jar and returned it to Dalaina just as she was leaving for the day. I told her this was the sweetest, most magical milk and that it would be wonderful in baked goods. She had a strange look on her face but thanked me for the jar.

At 5pm, another employee, Caleb came up to me on the walkway between the store and the breakroom wanting to know where his mason jar of French vanilla creamer was. What?

Yes, I thought that French vanilla coffee creamer was the goat's milk. I had great fun telling everyone about my crazy mistake. I found the actual jar of goat's milk that was hidden in a Walmart bag in the fridge. It was nice, better tasting than cow's milk, but not as good as that French vanilla creamer! Both parties got their correct mason jars back and I bought Caleb a bottle of French vanilla creamer to use here at work.

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Some dead greens in our garden after last week's snow storm. The whole bed needs to be pulled up so we can get ready for spring.

This morning, the high temperature of 65° was reached. It dropped down in the 50s and now it is 62° at 4:45pm. Everything was wet at 6am and it was drizzling. It stayed chilly all day long.

I had one customer just after 9am. I restocked the store some more today. Our insurance lady came by for some papers for us to sign and she collected a check.

We had no workmen out here fixing or adding anything. Our outdoor guys planted about 50 of our new trees in the orchard, getting ready for spring. They will, hopefully, plant the rest tomorrow but it is supposed to rain.

Friday, February 26, 2021

Phil and Stephen are out in the field planting our orchard trees today.

Good, chilly Friday morning. It is 53° and drizzling again with overcast skies and no pretty sunrise this morning. One of the dogs peed in the house in the night so I had to clean that up with my new spot cleaner. It really works great, much better than all of the previous spot cleaners I have had.

I opened the store and filled Etsy orders. David called me into his office. Last week, when filling Amazon orders, I messed up on one so I had to send out the correct seeds with a note of apology. I sent our regular red Moon & Stars watermelon but he ordered a new product, yellow Moon & Stars. So I do make mistakes and I admit it and correct them with an apology.

The rain has picked up speed. So much for getting ready for spring. It feels like I need to get my heavy coat out again. It is chilly.

Some of our team members still have no water in their homes from last week's snowstorm and others have running water but no hot water. They are having a difficult time finding pipes and parts because so many area residential pipes burst during the freeze. One of our team members has six breaks in her water lines and still no water at all. God really blessed us by protecting our water pipes and by providing the generator that kept our electricity on last week to our home. We had one water line break but it was out in the back forty, from the well to water the field. Everyone lost electricity and very few had generators.

It is now 60° at 3:30pm and tomorrow it is supposed to be 81° so it looks like the weather is once again ready for spring. It is still overcast.

The David's Garden Seeds® Farm Store will be open tomorrow from 10am until 2pm and the weather will be beautiful so come on out to the country and pick up your spring seeds as well as some delicious farm fresh eggs from our country chickens!

Saturday, February 27, 2021

It was 65° Fahrenheit this morning when I woke up. I tried to get some things done around the house before opening the store. I had planned on getting all of my social media done while the store was open. Since it was raining, I did not expect to have any customers. Instead, we had the most customers we have ever had in the store since it opened last June.

People are getting ready for spring, buying their spring seeds from us, and coming an hour or more to our store to do so. Some had been to our store in San Antonio in other years and others heard about us from our area gardening guru, Bob Webster, who is a great guy! A lady from New Braunfels said she writes a gardening newsletter and was going to write about her visit to our store today. That is exciting. She is a master gardener. After she and her two daughters shopped, David took them on a tour of the farm. We had customers throughout the entire four hours. Thank you to everyone who came out to visit us!

After the store closed, I went out to visit the birds. I asked Matthew to pick up some game bird feed for the guineas. I read online that guineas need more protein than chickens do. Since we got the guineas and chickens together on the same day, I have always fed them all the same thing. Now that the guineas are in their own coop and will soon free range during the day, I wanted to give them their own food. They seemed to love the new feed.

So I am working on next week's social media posts this evening. Svengoolie showed a strange movie called Devil Doll. It was weird.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Good morning and Happy Sunday. We are not going into San Antonio for church today as David is having some stomach issues. But that is okay because our church shows their service online so we won't miss a thing. It is 70° and overcast so there was no pretty sunrise to show.

So far, I have made coffee but now I have to go make a nice Sunday breakfast. Sausage and eggs sound good to me. What did you have?

For lunch, we had the most delicious grilled pork chops with mashed potatoes and broccoli. We cleaned the guinea coop and let the guineas out to free range for the first time since we moved them to their own coop. The first thing the male did was go to the chicken coop and slam himself into the wall, trying to get in. Of course, our neighbor's guineas were here like they always are and they chased him all around. I wish they would go home and stay home. I am hoping that our guineas will go back into their coop as it gets dark so they will be protected. I have their cage door open so they can get in easily.

We then cleaned out the chicken coop. We scraped and emptied nesting boxes and refilled them. We raked up some of the hay on the floor but I was too tired and hungry to continue. My arm muscles are shaking and aching right now. Too much work at once...The sky is still overcast but it is not supposed to rain. We ran out of hay so we used shaved wood. This week we need to get more hay. Once I was done, I showered as I was filthy plus sweaty. It is warm out there. I added a lot of chicken manure and shavings to the compost pile to get ready for spring. Soon the whole pile will be combined with soil in the raised beds for easy spring planting.

I just finished printing all of our weekend orders so far so it will be easier to pull them tomorrow. David and I have doctor appointments tomorrow morning so I won't be participating in pulling orders tomorrow morning.

Return from Getting Ready For Spring to Farm And Business Life

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