We picked more blackberries yesterday afternoon, walking about a mile and getting only a few scratches. This time it was just Rachel and I, and we hunted through the edges of our neighbor’s cow pasture as curious calves watched us pick.

As spring has unfurled, it’s been wonderful to see different species appear and surprise us. We’ve come across honeysuckle and wild roses, persimmon saplings, pitcher plants, blueberries of various species, sumac, mimosa, creeping cucumber and lots of lovely asters.

We also have chickens now, and my one-year-old daughter loves them. I take her out almost every day to the henhouse to bring the chickens treats. She loves to watch them run around and fight over kitchen scraps. I’m no longer composting in a pile; instead, I’m letting the chickens eat our kitchen waste and turn it into the sandy ground. Later I’ll go back and sift the soil and put it on my garden beds in lieu of “normal” compost.

In the gardens we have a lot of beauty coming in, though the cabbage moths are a serious problem. I think the ecosystem here is short on delicious food for insects so all the bugs are happy I planted a big garden for them. Fortunately, nothing has really attacked our potatoes so we’re hauling in those now. Yesterday we more than filled a five-gallon bucket from one row, giving us 37lbs of mostly red potatoes, along with a few Yukon Golds I dug to see how they were developing. If my estimates are correct, we should get over 300lbs total when we harvest the rest of the spuds in a month or so.

Later today I’ll post a new garden tour video so you can see how things look. I should also go wandering through the woods and share some of the amazing nature we’re finding. Stay tuned.