Sometimes it takes a village. Tim has been having back problems (just diagnosed as a herniated disk) and my family came on Friday and Saturday and we had good ole work days on the farm. We had previously had a bad storm and Tim and I had cut and raked large amounts of tree branches into piles. My sister and her kids helped us carry all the branches to a burn pile and clean up all the tiny pieces of limbs left. The burn pile was a firey success. 🙂 Tim baby sat it with the hose on the ready and we cleaned up the ashes with the tractor.
On Saturday, my parents, sister and her kids and Tim and I did a little bit of everything:
- mowing about 2 acres of grass and down the fence line – that’s 2 whole sides of our property
- weed eating over 1 acre – around the house and backyard, barn, trees, bushes, mailbox, power poles, well house, around stored trailers behind the barn. Anything the mower couldn’t reach.
- sorting thru plants still in pots and picking ones for planting, keeping, or trash.
- replacing plants in the rows – some planting holes needed more soil and gravel which had to be hauled over and all of them needed individual hand watering
- shoveling a large pile of gravel back into the tractor and cleaning the area – sounds simple, but the gravel was on a tarp that tore with almost every movement!
- cleaning small area to start planting of miniclover between the rows, and planting said miniclover – it’s a test spot before the rest of the miniclover is planted
- lunch and ice cream with the family – it was one of those old timey situations where all the lunch fixings were brought to a table outside and 5 adults, 3 kids, and 2 dogs chowed down. After lunch, we worked some more and had ice cream before calling it a day.
- cleaning up all hand tools, big tools, and carport – this is one of the things you might not think would take much time. But it does. With many hands working comes many tools being used – and they all have to go back in their place.
- Cleaning the dirt from the floors in the house, dishes, taking out trash – and don’t forget about cleaning the inside of the house! It may seem like a small detail, but it’s part of a work day on the farm!
We are beyond thankful for the helping volunteers. We’re glad we could be an outlet for their outside-work itches. 🙂
