May was finally here!

May certainly was a sign of things to come. We had temps in the high 80s, beautiful weather for being outside, but it was only May. Nearly everyone had planted their gardens early, so sales at Farmers Market of tomato and pepper starts were slow. We sold enough to break even when it was all said and done. We did better than some others, because we'd had a nice greenhouse to get everything going in, and the plants were huge and hearty! We'd also done a good job of hardening the plants off, so they were all set to go in someone's garden. Our best success seemed to be the "patio plants", the ones we'd planted in big pots and could be left there all summer long. They were also our most expensive, because of the buckets, soil and time we'd put into them.

The lady I was next to at Farmers Market had gotten a slow start on her plants, she'd started when everyone normally started, and they looked small and spindly. I'm sure her plants would've grown just as well as mine did, but they looked sad. I felt bad for her, and we did some talking, sharing, and a little trading. I had some varieties she wanted to try, and she had some I wanted to try. It helped that we both got our seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and I brought my catalog with me, so when someone would ask about a variety, we could both knowledgeably share the info, and some pictures. I didn't try to compete with her, I figured if mine didn't sell, they'd just go in the garden, if hers didn't sell she'd wasted a LOT of time and money, and she'd come from quite a ways away. In the end I think I gave up on the Farmers Market before she did, but we were both disappointed that year, spring had just come too early.

I was hoping for a lot of produce to sell later that summer, whatever we decided not to use or preserve ourselves. I know the other gal, through our discussions, was hoping for the same. I did get to visit some with a few of the other vendors, one with honey bees who lived not too far from me (good to know) and another who sold herb starts, duck and chicken eggs. Selling eggs at Farmers Market was something I was also considering, but her sales were very slow...maybe a dozen eggs each market day (once a week), that really didn't seem like it was worth it.

By the end of May we were hitting 90s nearly every day. The kids were now out of school, Jason was too busy to work on the house because of his job, and it seemed we spent all our time running hoses all over the property.

The peas wilted and hadn't really done much, we might've gotten a handful off the vines. The lettuce had finally bolted, and the spinach never did anything. The beans never came up, but the squash, corn, okra, sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, onions & potatoes seemed to be going nuts. We were really hoping for good things out of the garden!

The boys helped me run drip lines around the tomato and pepper plants, and we ran hoses and sprinklers to the garden so we could turn the water on and walk away for awhile. We also got some fruit trees planted, some were new and only a couple feet tall, and some we'd dug up from our old place, and they were maybe 4 feet tall. Shannon brought home some blackberry briars and one paw paw tree. She had ordered a LOT of trees through FFA from the Missouri Conservation Dept...but her teacher had lost the order forms and by the time she got to class, all that was left was what she got. She was TICKED off. I don't blame her. Kids who hadn't ordered anything took it all. She said she'd never order though FFA again, we'd just do our own order next time. So we ran hoses all over the yard for the fruit trees, too. Thankfully we had two water hydrants in, one off the end of the cabin, another out in the middle of what would become our front yard.

The horses were happy, the chickens and ducks were now big enough to be outdoors all the time, and they enjoyed free-ranging around the yard. Their favorite place in the afternoons were under the big cedar, which we call the Wayward Pine. It was nice and cool under there. the down side is that was very close to the neighbors' back yard (wooded lot) and we had a hard time keeping them close to the house. It was time to get a fence up along the property line.

Keeping the garden watered and weeded seemed to be the hardest jobs. Getting the kids to HELP weed the garden was a battle every day. They wanted to stay indoors where it was cool and play video games all day long. Nothing was getting done on the house, because Jason was never home to work on it. Summer was here and we were all getting frustrated.