It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, lounging in the shade, enjoying the peaceful sounds of the countryside and wondering how I’ll ever survive another long winter lol.

I can’t even tell you how very nice it is to be eating the food we’re growing fresh again, even if it is only the parsley and chives I’m harvesting for our soup later…

Hey, it’s a start!

It’s also one of those things (first fruits) that mostly other homesteader types can probably relate to. 🙃

Kind of like how our cornish cross arrive in two days and I’m so excited! If you raise your own food then you probably understand when I say it’s rewarding as heck to both help fatten up and watch the meat birds grow, knowing they’ll be filling up our freezer and our dinner plates again soon.

Having the level of control over what we feed them and how we raise them is such a blessing.

As I weeded the wildflower beds I was kept company by a few of the quail, who have taken up residence with the pheasant through a small hole in the fence we patched up but left them in there…

They seem perfectly content together and they’ll all end up on the menu someday, no matter where they live.

After I somewhat meticulously weeded the garden beds, I came in and made breakfast and then made some hand made oatmeal and goats milk soap using dried roses, rose essential oil and some of the dried lilacs I’d collected from our very own lilac bushes.

I’d love to grow our own roses but I don’t know if I can keep them alive here in my zone. I’ll have to find out.

The hubs installed a small microwave for me in my food prep room so I used it to melt the soap base and it was soo much faster and easier than the double boiler on the stove, so yeah. It’s been a rewarding day already. 🙂

The weather has been just lovely, making it comfortable to actually be out there, which is a nice change. Usually the weekends are some sort of karmic punishment for us not being out more and appreciating the great weather nature gives us during the week days.

So in a sort of act of penance just in case the universe is keeping score, I humbly weeded just about everything in sight. I still need to go back over it by hand now but I got it all, for the most part.

Well, the smaller beds at least. Those I’ll go back over by hand but the larger ones I just hoe what I can and leave the rest to be hopefully pushed out as the veggies grow in…

Some of the lettuce is close to being edible…

Just in time, too, because we’re getting loads of baby tomatoes starting to grow.

It’s funny because today is a near perfect day with nothing but blue skies in every direction and literally just one or two puffy clouds for as far as the eye can see…

I don’t know what else to say about that except I’m happy to see the sun and I hope it’s here to stay, along with that crystal blue sky. It’s much, much prettier this way. If I have to be stuck at home at least let me have that, right? 😄