Any farmer has that Irish saying always on their mind when the seed goes in.  The fields aren’t being worked yet, but we are working on our spring garden. 

But first of all, and speaking of the Irish, St. Patrick’s Day was a few days ago.  We had an Irish dinner of ‘taters, cabbage and beef.  The Homeschool Cafe put together a Carnival full of blarney.  Go check it out! 

Back to the green stuff in the ground. We’re slowly turning green around here, but the solid green is still evergreen and ‘n the clover.  4 leaf cloversKeep looking.  You’ll see that 4 leaf clover. 
There they are…and so many!4 leaf clovers

Now that we have such great fertilizer this year, also known as chicken poo, we’re trying some new things.

I’ve been working on some innovations over the years.  (Innovations can mean it doesn’t always work?)  I thought laying newspapers down as a weed block was a great idea a few years back.  It mostly worked, except for the Wind.  We had a few days worth of newspapers flying around the neighborhood for a while.  I got over it and it certainly gave our neighbor something to talk about. 
My mother and I heard the Lasagna Gardening lady a couple of years back at our annual January Herb Garden conference treat.  I don’t remember her mentioning chicken excrement as part of the picture, but I know she was very flexible, as any good gardener should be.

I decided that we’d move our veggie garden a little closer to the house.  Less mowing in the yard and more of an eye on our free rangers and whether they’re getting into the people food more than I’d like. 
They are certainly enjoying my compost, their manure and our old newspapers.  It layers like this: chicken house winter flooring, newspapers that weren’t worth spring garden and roostersreading in the first place and then my lovely ripened compost.  Add plenty of water whenever you think about it and feel like messing with the hose.  Toss out the peach pits and peanut shells that keep floating to the top of the compost.

I put cauliflower and onion sets in, along with peas, mesclun lettuce, and radish seeds.  It was a struggle, as my hens came over to see what treats I had.  I was pushing seeds in, while warding off the girls.  One of the most persistent got a couple of my onions.  Should have warned my parents, as they’re getting the eggs the next day or so and that egg might be extraordinary. 
I covered it with a white, floaty thing that should ward off the pigs chickens and send them back to the grass and Creeping Charlie.
We shall see how this turns out.