Oh, the weather outside is... bipolar

Seriously. It's 45 degrees one day, 75 the next. I guess I shouldn't complain though; it could be 45 every day.

Anyway! We've had a busy week so far. Sarah and I planted four apple trees, two peach trees, and four blueberry bushes on Sunday. The next day she went to the doctor for her prenatal check-up and they told her to chill out with the physical work. Personally, I think it makes for a good story later on when she can say she helped plant six trees while almost nine months pregnant, right?

...

I've finally set up the rabbit cages how I want them in one room of the barn, and the chickens are roaming free now. I did have a tiny incident with three chickens being eaten by something that crawled in through a hole in a wall, but I still have 18 chickens, and a more secure coop wall. Hopefully those little birds last through the winter and start laying in the spring.

The chickens at 5 weeks old, basking in the sunlight

I also did some really detailed planning of the garden plot. We have a 250' x 120' fenced pasture that we're going to section off into one large 220' x 100' plot, with a path going around three sides. Within that inner plot will be sectioned off into four 110' x 50' plots. Here, let me just show you my sketch:

The bottom right corner will start out as a pig pen, while the top right corner will be cover crop. Both left sides will be garden, and then each year I'll rotate everything counterclockwise. So this gives me enough time to build the inner fences, plan companion crops based on what we want to grow, build compost bins on each side (the little boxes with "CP" in them), get pigs, build the pig house, and anything else that needs to be done there. Four months should be plenty of time to do all of that, right?

Which brings me back to Sarah being nine months pregnant! The doctor says they may induce her this weekend if all goes well, so for the first time since we moved her, the newest addition won't be a farm animal!

Needless to say, I'm quite excited.