Every year, we discover an/other new plant(s) on our property. Some years, they are noxious, and poisonous weeds. But sometimes, they are productive plants. Then, there are always the plants and things that come back year after year, no matter what we do. Such as Blackberries. The fact that the winter temps hardly dipped below freezing this year, the blackberries are growing faster than we can dig them up. We will need to get a backhoe to get these beauties! We have almost acre of berry coverage. Ugh! This is a view of about a third of the blackberries. I don't know if
you can tell, based on Lucky, but these bushes are up to six feet tall
in some areas. Ugh again!
We found an interesting blooming tree in our field that we had not noticed until this year. It's an Apple tree! We assume that Lucky (the horse) planted and nourished that tree in a pile of horse apples. hahaha I think we have another young apple tree out there. We will see if Lucky lets it live.
We also discovered an ash tree that has survived the horse in the field. Most times, the young trees don't survive because Lucky loves to chew on the bark, push on the tree as a scratching post, eat the leaves, etc. To see these trees growing quite tall out there is an unusual find! We also have holly trees and some types of sticker bush trees that Lucky avoids and we try to pull them out at least once a year.
Today was a beautiful spring day. Not too hot and not too cool. Gentle breeze and the garden is loving it. This is a photo of my favorite shade tree. It's a maple tree. I guess I just never realized just how much pollen this tree produces! Wheeee! All those yellow buds are enough to cause me to sneeze. 
Late last fall, we threw out some ground cover seed where we pasture the chickens and the other discovery today was a bunch of oats! Oh boy, are the chickens gonna love this new plant.
That pretty much brings you up to speed on the findings for the season.
Garden is great. Strawberries, Blueberries, Peach, Cherry and Apple Trees (that we planted last year) survived the winter. Garlic survived. Onions did not. I had to replant from seed and they are so tiny that I opted to purchase a handful of onion bulbs for this year. Red and Blue potatoes have good growth. Yukon and White potatoes are planted, but not out of the ground yet. Spinach is doing quite well. Lettuce has just started. Peas are late. Got a late start and I think something ate most of the seeds out of the soil. I planted some more, in the green house to try to get more for replanting. Planted first row of carrots and dill. Starting basil and parsley in the green house. Got another garden area ready for planting corn in a month. Will plant more carrots, plus beans at that same time. We have our gardening thumbs on.
No chicks this year. We are going to wait until next spring to get some more. We have eaten the old hens and they were very flavorful! The Wellsummers and the Orloffs are producing very well this spring. The wet sloggy winter cut down on the production. We ended up adding pro-biotics to their water for a few weeks to get them to feeling better.
We do have request for a couple of turkey chicks at the farm store this year. I decided we would try to raise a couple of turkeys for the holidays. So that will be our "adventure" for this year.
