Saturday, April 2, 2011

Spring Projects on the Urban Homestead

The urban homesteading blogosphere is atwitter with everyone's plans for Spring and various upcoming projects on their dockets.  What are we going to be working on here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes Homestead in the next few weeks?
  1. Shoveling snow.  Yeah, this sucks.  Even though it's near 50 degrees today, we're under a Winter Storm Warning here in Eastern North Dakota for Saturday night through Monday morning.  We're supposed to get 6-9 inches of snow, but I'm really hoping that this storm will skirt us like the last one did a few weeks ago (see Major Winter Storm on the Way), or maybe just dump rain instead of snow.
  2. Finish the compost bin I started in the fall.  It's a 3-bin system (like the one here) and has a ton of space for yard waste.  I quickly realized last summer that my new yard was WAY too big for one small compost bin and needed additional space to make compost.  I'll continue to use the one large plastic compost bin for kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable waste from the garden, and anything else that attracts pests since it's more secure than the open 3-bin system.  
  3. Build a fence around the blueberry and strawberry patch in the backyard.  These are all within the backyard, inside the fence, and have taken a beating from the puppy tornado this winter.  Between her eating the blueberry bushes, crashing into them and breaking them, and peeing on the strawberries, I think it's for the best that this area is cordoned off from Little Miss Puppy Carnival of Destruction. It won't be a serious fence, probably just made of scrap wood or lilac shoots, it just needs to be a visual deterrent to keep her out of the area.
  4. Build another raised bed for the garden.  I have wood for at least one, but maybe two additional raised beds for the garden. 
  5. Splitting and hauling some firewood to the homestead.  Alycia's Dad's friend has some trees cut down on his farmland and I need to provide some of the manpower to split and haul it.  The plan is to have a wood burning stove installed here before next winter (for aesthetics and auxiliary heating), so we need to start curing and stockpiling some wood. 
  6. Making some soil blocks and starting seedlings.  I started this too early last year and a few things got leggy and fell over.  We'll either start them later this year, or put some things (tomatoes, eggplant, squash, melons) in the old nursery six-pack containers that I have stored in the garage so they have more room to establish their root systems. 
  7. Get a haircut.  OK this isn't difficult, but I always like to put one or two easy things on any to-do list.  Plus I think Alycia will start to physically or verbally abuse me if I don't get a haircut this week.  
That's a few of the larger items on my to-do list.  What about you?  What items are on your list?

2 comments:

Hot Belly Mama said...

I have so much to do this Spring, it's over-whelming. Is there ever a time when the garden takes care of itself?

El Gaucho said...

Wouldn't that be great? Or would it take away from the magic of gardening?