Hello!

My goodness, I've been away from this space for longer than expected. I'm sure you all understand sometimes work and life just gets busy and there's not much time for anything else. My new job is going really well, but I am still working at my old job to help wind things up, so that is where much of my time and energy is focused right now. There is lots going on here on the homestead as well, so I thought I'd give you guys a quick update to show that we aren't just being lazy over here! ;)

We finished planting the vineyard! I say "we" but actually it was 99% David and 1% me. He worked really hard on this space, from cutting down trees and cleaning up the mess, to installing the support for the vines and finally getting them all planted. It took us several months from start to finish (check out more on that here) and we are both thrilled that the vines are in! PS - The blue tubes you see are grow tubes which act as a mini-greenhouse to get the vines growing.

The garden is coming along very well! We have so much planted, I can't even remember it all. Again, by "we" I mean mostly David haha. This year we went a bit crazy with starting tomato seeds that we saved from our tomatoes last year and had over 100 seedlings going under grow lights in the garage at one point. I ended up selling some plants to a coworker and we planted the majority of them in our garden. We didn't have enough space for them all in the garden beds, so many of them are in pots and other repurposed containers (like buckets).

Our main bee hive is doing incredibly well, but our split not so much. It's having a hard time getting up and going, and we are trying to figure out what's wrong and help it along as much as we can. But we are hopeful that we will be able to harvest a good amount of honey this year!

The animals are doing well and we actually gained a new guinea friend recently. One of our neighbor's guineas starting hanging around a couple weeks ago and now he won't leave. He's pretty entertaining, so we don't mind the extra company.

All the plants around the house are springing back to life and it is amazing to see the transformation. After the horrible winter, I just can't get enough of all the green out here!

I hope I can post again soon, but in the meantime, I just want to thank each of you who has checked in and sent sweet messages and emails to me letting me know I'm missed. It means so much that you would think of me and take time out of your day to say hello!

We have a busy weekend planned, but hopefully we can get some relaxation in to recharge before the new week starts. I hope we can get in at least a little hammock time :)

~Tammy