Floods and Feathers

It has been raining and raining and raining... for the past few days, we have seen nothing but rain! Today, the rain stopped (for good, I hope) and we were able to get out and inspect the creek. Wow! It has overflowed its banks and looks like a small river! Gabe and I just had to play a game of Pooh Sticks, since the creek is flowing so nicely :) If you don't know the game, all you need is a bridge over a swift-moving creek and a couple of sticks... first stick to the other side wins!

Before the rain started on Sunday, the kids helped me get our fall garden built! Since the soil is not very fertile here, we have decided to make a raised bed... as you can see, the chickens helped scratch up the old grass :)

Noah generously offered to clean the grass out of the garden area :) He is all about playing in the dirt with shovels! As you can see from the next picture, the soil we uncovered is not ideal for a garden- it is mostly sand with a little clay thrown in. Hmmmm... I need some manure.

This is as far as we got! I dug down a little after Noah was done skimming off the grass, and we overlapped strips of weed barrier on the bottom. When the sun comes back out, I will fill up my garden plot with nice dark soil and start transplanting our seedlings! So far, we have broccoli, lentil, corn, and wheat. :)

Gabe found a little feathery friend on the porch this morning! For those of you who don't know already, we call Gabe the "chicken whisperer" because of his magical way of handling even our most nervous of chickens. He also has an amazing, almost hypnotic effect on the local wildlife! Not a day goes by that he doesn't show up at the front door with some new critter in his dirty little hands :)

I'll let you know if we identify this cute little guy :) Leave a comment if you happen to know!