It has been a long time since I have written.

I can't believe it has been over a year since I have written on my blog. Shame on me. Lots of additions have been made since last year. We now have three alpaca males that were rescues. They were only a yr old when we got them and now they are two years old. I have their baby fleeces as well as this years sheering. I am looking forward to spinning up their fiber. I think I am now an alpaca yarn snob. These are the three boys, Roberto is the red one, Cristo on the right and Edwardo is in the center.

Yes 2010's winter was a rough one, we even had 6" of snow but this years winter was even worst. What the grasshoppers didn't kill the 2 weeks of below freezing did.

Yep the grasshoppers killed off my wonderful veggie garden last year except for my two kinds of cucumbers. I had a great crop of cukes last year and many jars of bread and butter pickles to boot. Also the pepper plants survived but did not produce much until later in the summer/fall once the grasshoppers started to die off.

Even though I didn't have much of a garden last year I did get all the garden boxes built and filled with soil and compost. They are now planted with all kinds of veggies. Back in Feb. I planted my onions and in early April the green beans. I am hoping they will produce before the hoppers come out and do them in. In spite of the gale force winds I did plant my tomatoes and peppers a few weeks ago. Two out of five tomato plants managed to stand up to the wind, heat, and then cold. I did plant three others along side the deck on the east side of the house and have two others in large planters getting ready to be placed in the back yard now that the wind has let up. Today I replaced the tomatoes that died with new ones plus I have 4 more added to the garden. Got the eggplant plants in today too. Saturday we planted some seed like those cucumbers I planted last year along with corn and carrots. I finally go my zucchini seeds and so I will plant those and some summer squash seeds later today. There was some rain on Monday and I am glad I got those seeds in when I did.

I am hoping for a good garden this year because the last two or so were so bad. Last year at this time we were getting rain but it seemed to come to an end before May ended. We haven't really seen any beneficial rain since last May. Our garden is now on a drip system but without rain I do not know how long I can keep watering. Once I get the plants more established I will mulch and then cut back on the amount of water. When you are on a well you need to be careful. Plans are in the works for setting up those rain barrels and putting gutters up along the studio and the house.

As the end of every growing season it is good to reflect over that season and plan to make it better. So the year before last I decided that growing in rows and fighting burmuda grass was not what I wanted to do any more so I changed that by putting weed cloth down on the paths soon to be covered with bark mulch and using garden boxes to grow in. If I had not had a biblical invasion of grasshoppers last year I may have gone about my gardening with out needing the assistance of two Indian Runner Ducks. They just arrived today with hopes that once they are grown they will keep my garden free of bugs. If they can eat all the grasshoppers they may end up being to fat to waddle about. LOL.

I will get some pictures of the new garden and the new pest patrol posted over the next few days.