More Garden Prep

We had quite a lovely day on the farm last Monday. Afternoon, really, but in our world that counts as a day.

The dorking chickens still aren’t too sure about their new home. They don’t wander too far from the chicken tractor.

Mommy and Winnie did not come to the farm, because Mommy is making a lovely dress for Winnie (teaching herself to sew as she goes along) so they stayed home to work on that.

Ellie and Evie helped Uncle split and stack firewood.

Daddy and Evie set up the posts that will mark the ends of the rows.

We thought about moving the flag pole out of the garden, but it was too heavy and cemented in too deep. We still want to get it out of there, because it is in the way of wheelbarrow. We are setting up a deep bed system, which means we need to move a ton of compostable material into the garden.

The first step is putting paper and cardboard down in the rows, with the help of our friendly neighborhood paper girls.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

Evelyn has the habit of automatically reading anything she sees in print. She was very disturbed to read a headline saying that 3500 people had died in the Israel-Gaza war, a headline by now several weeks old. She had not been aware of that war, because we do not follow the news for that exact reason. We had a long talk about it as we laid out the papers preparing to cover them with loads of bedding from the chick brooder and chicken coop.

There is not much we can do about the violence in Palestine, or the Ukraine, or really anywhere else, even right down the street. We can only pray, offer sacrifices, give alms, and fulfill the duties of our state in life. This is not quietism, but an act of profound trust. It is a way of saying that we trust that God is in control, and if He wants us to be involved in a more direct way He will call us to it. If He does not, it is because He has more important, though likely less glamorous, work for us to do elsewhere.

Even if that work is just preparing to grow vegetables.