This is whinier than I usually get on my blog so I thought I'd put it here.

We're doing a lot, no doubt, and it's a big expansion from last year. The meat birds, 22 new layers, and a large garden. The cows are on hold for the moment and I think that was a good call on our part. We have to clear the cow shed of our crap and learn a bit about cows first and get electric fencing set up. So maybe late summer. But right now it feels like it would be good if we waited till next year on the cows.

My flower beds and the stone walls around them are so overgrown...what a mess. I just walked out there and the little round stone-bordered bed that I painstakingly cleared of raspberry canes and weeds a month ago - overgrown already. I was going to plant there! Oh well. I didn't plant many flowers at all, and the one bed by the house looks bare and awful. I would have done better to let weeds grow there, I think.

I did just plant a sunflower house in the corner of the garden the other day, and four rows of bean plants, and everything in the garden is fairly well weeded, although weeds are poking through the straw mulch - I need more mulch. Lettuces need thinning, chard needs thinning, radishes need thinning. A few corn plants need replanting (my dog has been traipsing through the garden!) and it's about time to plant the beans and squash part of the 3 Sisters garden. I need to put some temporary fencing around at least parts of the garden to keep the dog from damaging more. Before her, it was the chickens getting in there and throwing straw on the small plants that was driving me mad.

We finally got the broilers on pasture today...after a fiasco yesterday that I don't even want to type out! They're fine and happy in their electric netting pasture now. The layers are in the big coop; we had to enclose part of it that was holding wood.

The lawn is in desperate need of mowing but dh had to fix the mower (3rd time this season!) first. Finally fixed it and he and Jake will mow a couple of acres tomorrow while I work.

I'm rambling, I know. I just am overwhelmed - feels like I'm running a marathon, thought I was almost done and could coast a bit, but it turns out I only started. I *love* gardening. I love filling the feeders and waterers, getting the eggs, making sure everyone's shut in for the night. I don't love feeling like I'm always behind, feeling like everything is going awfully, feeling like I can never catch up. I feel spread too thin and like everything is going wrong...

Here's my list for this week...this feels light in comparison to the past 6 weeks but honestly, I am so burnt out that it makes me want to cry:

*Get hose situation taken care of - we need to buy a diverter and get a new hose sprayer, so we can have water at the garden/meat birds as well as at the front of the house (we have 200' of hose running to the garden straight from the well pump out of the basement because digging trenches and burying PVC isn't going to happen for a while)
*Buy 2 bales of straw and mulch garden and potato patch (weeds are starting to come up)
*Buy 2 bales shavings, get the layers in the entire coop (they're in a circle of cardboard right now)
*Secure the back wall of the new layers' coop, make a door for them to go out to pasture, and install fencing to divide off part of the big hens' pasture for them (this is probably a full day or two of work)
*Buy the proper fence wire and redo the electric fence charger (it's up temporarily, ok for now but needs replaced)
*Install temporary fencing around the corners of the garden where the dog runs through (more step ins, recycled turkey wire or something)
*Weed, weed, weed
*Weed and thin salad bowl lettuce asap
*Plant beans, squash
*Till cucumber bed and plant them
*Start oregano, basil and cilantro in flats on the porch

Then Matt is working on cleaning the garage out and organizing the tools. The porch needs a cleanout. We are getting a truckload of wood that will need to be cut. 10 acres need bushhogging, but first he has to do the 1000-hr maintenance on the tractor (a full day at least, if all goes well - he's never done it). And I am working full time! Did I mention that! Ack!!!

Don't get me wrong. Things are great and I'm living my dream. Just somehow, it was not quite this hectic in my dream.

:hug: I understand. I really do.

I had a bit of breakdown today about the rebuild on clutter in the house. I worked SO hard just 6 months ago to clear it out and it's back. I just wanted to be in the garden because I'm so far behind and I couldn't trip over one more thing. I cleared, in record time, a record amnt of junk. Liberating, but with a price. I vamped while I did it and feel like crap. I'll need to apologize for jumping on my broom. Sigh.

I'm living my life as I want too...just wish it was someone else's life today. kinda.

Thanks...yeah I am getting really amped up because Jake's speech therapist is coming TO THE HOUSE tomorrow and the house is a wreck. And I'm too exhausted to bust it out like I usually do.

Here's the (photo) story of yesterday's failed attempt to transfer the meaties. We got them out there today and they are fine...but OMG, yesterday was hectic.

Tale of the Broilers - a set on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenware/sets/72157605797539870/)

Those are some wet chickens....I would've cracked. :hatch:

:rub:

That learning curve. Oof. I suppose that's what makes it so sweet when it *does* work. i'd like to bite off so much more right now. This "thing" tho, is probably more of a test in patience and balance thn anything else.

I hear stories from "professional" farmers (born and bred on the earth) and I get a little light-headed. Planting and harvesting hundreds or thousands of acres, the women taking 3 squares to the fields while holding down their farmesteads and livestock. Yet they make (take) time to get to quilting club every.single.week to laugh and play. I don't think they realize just how much admiration I have for them.

I'm rambling and avoiding the finishing touches on the sweeping declutter today.

:hug: friend.

I'm in awe, too. Many farmers here in Vermont taught school, or worked off the farm, as well as farming. It's incredible. And think, all with hand tools and horses, no tractors. No machines. Washing everything by hand. I do know they were dirtier, LOL! But still.

Glad you got to declutter. I did a bit, and will go upstairs and put away clothes in the morning and make it look nice (we'll be looking at his toys and such for programming his device). Their clothes are winter and summer combined right now and need a good going-through. It will feel good to get that done.

It sounds overwhelming to me :hug:

I have a few projects that need finishing (goat house and treehouse) and then the rest of the summer is for weeding the gardens. It is such a mess here that I don't think I even know where to start to be honest.

Where did you get the electric fencing? The place we bought goats had some that they could move around and I think I like the idea.

It sounds overwhelming to me :hug:

I have a few projects that need finishing (goat house and treehouse) and then the rest of the summer is for weeding the gardens. It is such a mess here that I don't think I even know where to start to be honest.

Where did you get the electric fencing? The place we bought goats had some that they could move around and I think I like the idea.

I got it from Electric Fencing, Ear Tags, Sheep Supplies, Clippers and Shearers, Netting, and more! - Premier1Supplies (http://www.premier1supplies.com) but they are sold out of the poultry type now.

Other resources: High Tensile Electric Cattle Horse Sheep Deer Goat Poultry Garden Fence Chargers (http://www.maxflex.com) and Electric Fence, High Tensile Fencing Supplies, Gates, Grazing, Cattle, Horse, Goat, Deer, Poultry, Garden (http://www.kencove.com)

I like the green but Premier1 was the only place with anything in stock and theirs is white so, LOL - white it was. It's not bad though, and good to have a visual I think. At least it isn't orange!

The other brands have "semi-rigid vertical stays" every 3 inches, which makes sense to me now that I see how floppy ours is. Still, ours works fine. It's just that the higher the fencing is, the more support it needs. Ours just has twine for the verticals and it is a bit floppy but still shocking enough.

We got our inspiration from this farm; they use lots of electric netting: Jericho Settlers' Farm (http://www.jerichosettlersfarm.com/) (check out the photos and the pages for each type of animal and you'll see what I mean, how they rotate/manage pastures)

Updating: I am feeling a lot less overwhelmed suddenly! We really did get a lot done in the past week or so, and I think trying to juggle that and my jobs was just stressing me out. I got a good chunk of work done for my jobs, and although our ride-on mower is still out of commission until a part arrives (I love that dh keeps piecing this old thing together!), he went and did around the house with the push mower and weedwhacked and I feel a lot better. I should have time between now and next week to try to get the flower beds planted and looking better.

That's fantastic. What is it about tidy grass that soothes the senses? I certainly don't know, but do I always feel so much better the moment the grass is cut.