This is a series I started last month to keep track of the progress on the farm. Every month, I will show our progress on the farm. let's get right into it!

Month 1 HERE

Time!!!!

Don't you fee that time is going faster lately? I don't know if it's because I spend a good amount of time outside, especially during the day, but I really feel sometimes that I am running after my days.

One solution I have found yesterday, is to go to sleep at 8pm and wake up at 1am, to have 5 extra hours of work! It allows me to record, write my posts for hive, do my workout and still find the time during the day to do all the farm work and take care of the kids.

This picture was taken one morning, when I was trying to make time lapses for Tiktok. I might do an entire post about Tiktok very soon to show its madness. I only use it as a tool to showase my work.

You see, I make time lapses, and use my music in the background.

Anyway, let's get back to the subject of our post! It's the second edition of "This Month On the Farm" and I cannot believe that my post was already a month ago.

We were of course getting ready for the arrival of the dogs, which has been a bit delayed due to 2 consecutives lockdown in Spain and France, long story short we are still waiting for the company we are using to get back to us about that, we are of course staying as patient as we can in that situation.

In the meantime, I am getting the fence ready, the chicken are getting accustomed to their new environment and are rapidly getting weight, there were more planting, some blooming, also aphids, and an egg hunt ^^.

When our new feathery friends arrived, they were pretty much panicked, and now in hindsight, a little bit underfed. I cannot imagine the stress that they went through, and they were preparing themselves for a certain death. Little did they know that we would have them chilling in a Chicken 5 star hotel.

The rooster did not sing the first week, he was actually very shy, and kind of cute, sounding more like a moaning chicken, and a little bit sad. We decided to give them so space, let them used to us, we are very loud, our kids too, and that eventually they will approach us on their own terms, which they did. More on this later...

After double fencing the surrounding of the chicken coop, I wanted to transplant some of last month's sprouts. Because it's still freezing at times, I don't feel comfortable planting them yet, so they will be transplanted in bigger pots, waiting the last freezing days to pass.

While writing this today, we still had temperature below 0 at night, that is of course to be avoided at all cost!

New seeds

I also sowed some brand new seeds received from Holland. Red Cabbages, Tomatoes and strawberries. We will see how efficient they are. I recently learnt that the moon can affect your seedlings. Always better to sow on a "descending moon".

garlic transplanted to bigger pot

After spending most of the first week inside their coop, the chickens eventually adventured themselves outside, hunting for worms in the grass, and very quickly became my best buddies, especially when I am holding the bag of corn 😁.

Every morning, the rooster start his vocalizes around 6am, and I have to admit that he becomes more and more confident in his abilities, I am thrilled that he adapted this quickly to its new environment.

Lettuce

And cabbages

Very little tomatoes for now

Berries

When we arrived last year, it was right in the middle of summer, and most of the berries were gone, probably eaten or even fell on the ground. I was ecstatic when noticing early signs of nature regenerating itself so early, and these pictures are already 2-3 weeks old, it's amazing how quickly the entire flora came back to life so suddenly...

Vines

I've been cutting these vines for nearly a month, I do it bit by bit, and I still have other trees with the same issue to take care of. Honestly I don't have enough time during the day to spend 2 hours on 1 tree, so I do 20 minutes daily and this fig tree is almost free of vines now.

I managed to catch @lionmom in action, during a short break. She hasn't been able to do much farm work with her current work, but I know that lawnmowing is almost an exercise of meditation, it does feel good to cut that grass. The same way as having a haircut (I mean I dunno I have long hair now).

Right now, the flowers have been already replaced by the green and brown foliage, and we can still hear the bees buzzing all around us when sitting on a chair around the table. It's such a nice spot to work, I know my wife had few meetings here, I also love the trees surrounding the table, in circle.

I've started planting posts all around the house, to make a fence. At first, It will probably not be the fence of the century, but what matters is that it's closed, and that the dogs get used to their new surroundings. They will also need to mark their territory, we can always widen the fence at a later stage. These posts are vine posts (vignes), that a neighbour offered us (and we gladly accepted), with a hammer you can get it deep enough 😊, the fence won't move. We don't need to burn the ends of the post, as it's oak tree and won't rot.

Watermelon seeds

I finally had my watermelons seeds showing their faces, I got a little bit worried as they only sprouted after a week, and they are currently looking strong. I am just waiting for the last few days of frost, to plant them into the ground, I already cleared a spot for them.

Cherry Tree

This tree has an effect on me, I tried to explain it in a previous post, probably in a confusing way. I said at the time, that it was the type of tree where you "wanna be buried", and by this I mean that it's a beautiful spot to spent eternity

It's obviously looking even better when blooming, imagine the amount of cherries this guy (or girl?) will produce!!

Chickens Feeling relaxed

Now, the homies aren't even worried about the kids, and are getting strong, healthy, and growing. We haven't had our first egg yet, but I can tell that Angela and Noodle are wanting to. Tomorrow, I might clean their coop, and think of a better way to give them as much privacy as they need.

Angela even used the perching stick we set up, that eventually fell off 😔 I want to have a ladder, we will probably make on soon.

Egg Hunt

We did a little treasure hunt with the kids for Easter, nothing fancy ^^. Our son Neo was very involved, it was his idea in the first place to organize a hunt, come to think of it, he was the one that found all the eggs also...

In my most recent post, I was talking about my ongoing battle with the mighty aphids, and that I am quite used to them, and know how to deal with them, to a certain extent. @amberyooper advised to use neem oil in the comments, thanks buddy!

It also explained why the growth of the beans felt somehow slowed down lately, I am pretty sure these aphids are at least 34,99% responsible for the stunt. Only time will tell, if I managed to control the progression. I might go nuclear and get some ladybugs larvae.

I am forgetting tons of things that I wanted to talk about, but it's quite late now, so I am gonna leave you with that sunset time lapse I did on Tiktok, it's a nice break from the constant madness, they can have a little moment of clarity with a nice sunset, and then go back to whatever weird corner of the internet they came from!

Have a beautiful day, that's what happened on the farm this month!

Cheeers!

Ed