Making a Homestead: Walkway Work, Fruit Trees, & More!

             Hey folks! Things have been interesting this week. We pretty much got the first half of the walkway area finished. We still need to clean some things up (read: find a new home for the yucca plants we dug up and get rid of the godforsaken hostas). John got some flowers and herbs planted in what is finished, as well as thinned out and replanted some of the irises. However, I've not taken any pictures of it because we've been getting deluges of rain and it's been super muddy. Not very pretty yet. We have a huge mole problem too and it actually rained so much one evening that there was a geyser coming out of one of the mole hills! No joke!

             It was insanely windy last Saturday. I was sitting on the couch nursing Little Bit when I heard a noise outside. I looked out the window and saw one of the electric poles bend like 20 degrees and the power lines shaking like crazy. The pole went back up, but I kept looking out and thinking, “Has that power line always hung down that far?” because you can only see part of it from the living room. Anyways, I finally went outside when Ripley got done eating and sure enough, a giant limb had fallen on the line.

             The top left picture is of the initial limb that fell and messed up the pole. The top right is from about 4 hours later when even more limbs fell, blocking the driveaway. :/ The bottom two I was trying to get a better picture of the pole and how far over it was leaning. It's right in front of the chicken coop, if you're having a hard time finding it. It's not even the one I saw from the living room window! So yah, John is going to try and fix the pole this week because the power guys came out and said it's our problem since it has the meter box on it, I guess? The things you learn when you're an adult and have to be responsible. Ha ha I think it's a bunch of crap, personally, that they don't fix it. They at least tied another temporary cable to it so it wouldn't fall any more.

             Needless to say, we had a lot of clean up to do Sunday afternoon. Very glad we have a chainsaw! (I still need to have John show me how to use it. I've finally come around to the idea. Lol) As you can see in the picture, we replenished our wood pile in a major way! Speaking of which, we really need to find a place to move that too. It's always nice enough for a fire the day after it rains...which means, of course, all of the wood is wet. :/

             We were very excited when we found some decently priced fruit trees at Walmart, of all places. There were only two pear trees left that weren't in good shape, sadly, but we were able to get three apple and two peach trees. I can't remember exactly what varieties all of them are, but I know we have at least one pink lady and one gala. I can't wait! Yum!

I was trying to tempt them with chickweed as a treat. They weren't having it. lol

             What would a homesteading update be without a picture of cute baby chicks?! You probably can't tell from the photo, but they have grown quite a bit this week. It always amazes me at just how quickly they grow! I knew they were kind of bigger birds going into this, but I was especially surprised by how big the Black Australorps and Buff Orpingtons had gotten! (The Buffs are pretty obvious. The Australorp is the one in the back with the all black head. One of them, anyways. ;) )

             What's been going on in your neck of the woods? Have you had any nasty weather? What spring preparations are you working on?