It's Almost Gardening Time

 The neighbor that loaned us his gopher traps was kind enough to buy a trap kit for us.  Tom has been trapping the gophers all week.  Harry eats as many as he can.  Yuck.

Here's the website for the traps.  They really do work, but you have to be diligent about checking and resetting the traps.

http://www.cinchtraps.com/

After setting the traps for a few days, you tend to forget exactly where you set them and end up wasting time resetting a trap in the hole of a gopher that has already been trapped.  So, Tom borrowed this contraption for another neighbor to drag the fields with.  The idea is to knock down all the mounds so that it's easier to see where the gophers are currently active. 

Our fields look nice and smooth after Tom drug this thing on them, but we will soon see new gopher mounds popping up. 

On another note, the growing season is almost upon us.  A couple of asparagus have already popped up in the garden and it's time to start planning the garden.  Actually, it's past time to plan the garden and I should be getting some things in the ground, but I want to get the other half of it covered with feed sacks and mulch before I start planting.  I'm waiting on Tom to get more wood chipped.

In the meantime, I had Jordan and Tom make this for me.

 

When we moved out here, there was this huge, obsolete satellite dish on a pole in the back yard.  A couple of years ago, Tom took it off of the pole and it's been laying out back ever since.  I had this idea to turn it into a gazebo for the garden area.  Jordan went and got and prepared the poles for me and he and Tom set it up.  The idea is for it to provide some shade for me while I'm out in the garden cleaning the newly picked veggies before bringing them into the house.

We set up the old farm sink under the gazebo and next to the water faucet.  I set up that old cattle panel on the edge of it and will use it as a bean trellis, which should help with the shade and also make the beans easier to pick.  It's not much to look at, but hopefully having the vines growing on it will make it more attractive.  I also planted a trumpet vine by one of the poles, but it's just a little twig at the moment.  I know Jordan wanted to paint this before it got set up, but Tom and I rushed it.

Since I try something new in the garden every year, this year I'm not making mounded rows like I've done previously.  Everything is just flat.  I'm planning to section it off differently, too, but haven't come up with a definite plan, yet.