The weather forecast was for rain all weekend. I figured I had better get the 50 bags of soil out of the back of the pickup before they absorb any more water! I loaded them all up last week alone and they were not that heavy when I put them in there. I was able to get the four new blueberry bins filled and ready for plants. I had to refill our regular bins. Every couple of years they each need a bag of soil to top them off again. I added one new bin to our herb area and think we can get another 3-4 bins squeezed in there. I am not sure we will fill them all with herbs but we can put in low growing veggies. I was also able to fill in a new six footer bin we purchased last year for strawberries.

We had two more new bins in the berry area. One is a new asparagus bin. I cut the bottom of the bin out, it was rusted out, to allow the plants to dig down further into the ground if they want. This bin we are not going to over plant with any strawberries. The strawberries tried to choke out our asparagus in the first bin we planted. The asparagus is still alive but we were just able to keep the plants alive last year. We did not get any asparagus from it. The plan is to just plant a straight asparagus only bin. Once the asparagus is well established I might look into some type of flower that is compatible that will just grow on the surface and is a low to the ground and a late bloomer.

The six foot bin was for more strawberries. I had planted some in the garden area in with the squash as we had more plants than space. So I transplanted them to the new bin and I expect them to fill in the entire bin by the end of the summer. They are pretty aggressive. We did get a lot of strawberries last year! I really need to build a little arbor around them so I can hang bird netting from it and it will be much easier to move out of the way when picking.

After fifty bags I was ready to be done! I am not as young as I used to be and I can feel it these days. For some reason my knee started to bother me. I think I was crouching down in the gravel and forgot I was old. The rain held off on Friday until I got back from town.

I needed to protect the wild rose bushes in the driveway and was going to buy 8 foot T-posts and some horse fencing. But by the time I priced it I was going to need $400 worth of fencing and posts to circle three wild rose bushes. We have to protect the rose bushes from the alpaca. They love eating rose bushes. They will eat rose bushes before anything else. I ended up buying four 16’ cow panels at $33/each instead. I set them up in a square like shape and they are standing up by themselves currently. I had to turn them upside down so the large openings were on the ground. This lets the quail and pheasants crawl through the fence to hide and eat from the quail block. I will probably toss in some old trimmed tree limbs into the enclosure to create a hiding spot. We have been working on creating more habitat for the quail all over the farm and it is paying off. We have a native population of about 150-200 quail now.

I was able to get eight bags of Sackcrete mixed by hand and poured into the hole I dug by the concrete weir. When you back the water up by the pump, the water was leaking out of the dirt berm. I am hopeful this will stop that. If not then we will line the pond with a liner to allow us to fill it up with water for irrigation. I cannot move the irrigation pump alone, it is just too heavy. I need to get the pump out of the way so I can pull the wooden supports out and then jump down into the concrete weir and dig out all of the mud! I have not cleaned it out for a long time and it has about a foot of mud built up in it. All of that has to come out so I don’t have to fight mud and grit on the sprinkler end of the irrigation. I went to town again as I needed a figure 8 Clevis so that I can pull the new plow. I want to plow those two fields I sprayed. I of course could not find the one I know I own somewhere. It was raining by the time I got back from town.

On Sunday the Gingerman helped me move the old irrigation pump and I was able to pull the boards off the weir. I am going to have to get some all thread and drill through the boards to pull them all back together. I had sandwiched eight 2×4 together in two bunches to make a platform for the pump. They are starting to come apart. After that we went over to the Gingerman’s place so that I could crawl into an old water tank. I needed to install a plug so that we can get the tank ready for our fire suppression truck. We just need to get the tank up on the truck, clean it out and get everything hooked up. We have most of the pieces already.

Overall it rained over 0.27” this weekend as of publication time.