It has to end soon

The Rain that is. We have been getting April showers now in the end on May. I have managed to get most of the garden planted. It takes more time then I'd like and I've had to spread planting between rain days. So far I have 10 - 25 ft rows of potatoes - a solid purple variety and Yukon gold; 6 - 10 ft rows snow peas - plan to  blanch and freeze for stir fry; 6- 10 ft rows of green beans - plan to can these; 4 10 ft rows of red Swiss chard. At the south end of the garden is for squashes: 6 hills of cucumbers, three pie pumpkins, three hills blue Hubbard squash, three yellow early summer squash. And as a added bonus I planted giant sunflower seeds around each hill of squash. Maybe I can get the cucumbers to climb the sunflower stems, if not it will at least give a cool vertical element to the squash section.

One of the rare sunny days I got to garden. Louis the barn cat  helped.

I ordered 50 strawberry plants however they arrived early April when we still had feet of snow on the ground. In a panic I put them in pots in my house, then in May worked on hardening them off.
They did well up to the hardening off stage when most died. Grr, I planted what was left alive on May 17th, I think there are currently only four living plants. I've since learned I could have refrigerated the strawberry crowns for a couple weeks in April to keep them dormant. Lesson learned, that and don't order strawberries from a catalog  who's shipping dates range during our 'winter'.

Now the dwarf blueberries plants I ordered did much better. I got three of these last year, I potted them and let them be outside all summer then brought them inside with my other house plants over winter. Sadly all of last years varieties failed to leaf out this spring. Triming the edge branches proved greenish stems that were dead and brown inside. Sad. This year I planted them in the ground next to a small heirloom lilac we transplanted from my grandparents homestead. Hopefully they will survive and not get plowed under next winter when we push snow.

North Sky variety front, Top Hat variety last two

Butcher Time!

Finally the giant snow bank in front of the pig pen melted and we could get the tractor back to their pen. Now if the stars had alined we would have done the butchering a couple weeks earlier. But work schedules, weather and naughty bunny rabbits had other plans. The first scheduled day we had rain (not a big deal) but the 40+ mph wind gusts stopped us. The next scheduled day we discovered the freezer cord I'd carefully kept away from the bunny cage slipped and they ate through most of the wires, why they are not dead from the live wires we don't know. We spent that day fixing the cord and cleaning the stinky freezer then waiting for said freezer to get cold again. 

 Finally May 21st we took care of those pesky pigs. The day was very very wet rain, fog, mud. Plus we used the hose to keep everything clean making more wet mess. Surprisingly my brother had the day off from his oil field job (too wet) and volunteered to help us. What a blessing having another set of hands was. 

Richard sticking the pig, my brother in the yellow helping.

Everything went very smoothly. It was a long day but we got both pigs down and wrapped in packages in the freezer by just after 7 pm.  245 pounds of wrapped pork - Yum. We left the hams whole and I need to find a place to cure them and the bacon. 

needless to say we don't save the pig feet

Yummy pork!

 

That is all I've got for now. Here is to the rain letting up and my garden growing.