MARCH 2022

MARCH Everyone was getting comfortable with our new home. The sun was warming up the soil and it was time to start in on early spring tasks. Tim was reading up about chickens and I was evaluating the landscape.

I started pruning and feeding the apple trees (Jeremiah said he never had gotten an edible apple from those trees in 17 years – the apples were nothing but small, hard, tasteless rocks). After getting back the soil tests, I found the trees needed boron and other minerals. So, I started them on an aggressive feeding program. The trees had not been pruned in a while, so I cleared out 1/3 of the branches on each tree to give them a better start in the spring.

Then it was time to define the garden space. I marked off the FIRST-YEAR space and Tim helped by scraping off the sod with the tractor. We then went to our neighbor’s petting zoo to fill the 8 x 16 flat trailer with manure

I hand-dug the garden and covered it with the manure, lining the edges with bricks found in the woods. And Tim took another 2 trips to St. Louis with the cargo trailer, while I studied for real estate and master gardening.

I want to pauses a minute to help clarify the massive amount of work it took on his part to orchestrate the move. We had VERY heavy stuff to move, as well as implements. We had only one tractor, and a Brutus to do the heavy lifting. Taking the tractor back and forth across the country was not reasonable. He therefore had to figure out the order of what got loaded and when it got loaded. Remember the tractor left on December 2, yet Tim still had to finish emptying the barn, the 4-car garage, the 2-car garage, and the shed, and get all the tractor implements and other equipment to VA.

All-in-all, it was quite a feat, and yes, we are both a bit crazy for making this move.