Tuesday To Do 2/16/16

Last week's inside chores:  Declutter calendar.  Call the car dealership  and oil change.  Make breakfast burritos and put in freezer.  Bake bread and cookies.  Baby chick care, and prepare for baby duck hatching. Seed potatoes cut and ready.  Mail Valentine Day cards to the family in Indiana.

Last week's outside chores:  Clean out the chicken coop/duck coop.  Order bees.  Pritchard nipples, bottles, iodine, and extra colostrum.  Car Tire.

This week's inside chores: 
Time to start thinking about some spring cleaning.  With some nice sunny days coming up, time to wash and hang out curtains to let the sun sanitize them.  Wish it would iron them too.  Actually, I enjoy ironing.  Baby chicks are going to be moved outside to the garden coop with a heat lamp.  The duckling needs to be moved to the bigger inside brooder. Continue cleaning and decluttering schedule.  This week's "chore" is coupon organization.  I have already discussed that is not my thing anymore, so I will do any catchup on the calendar that time allows.  Not a lot on the agenda for the inside this week.  Just the basics.

This week's outside chores:
I cleaned out the potato bed and spread the wood ash (finally).  I need to clean out the asparagus bed and restraw it, as well as clean out the other two raised beds.  I did purchase some onion sets to plant.  Oh, and I have my eye on a package of strawberry plants that I want.  Since the ducks refuse to live in their pond home, I will just make that a berry patch until I figure something else out.  I also need to remove all the black plastic we laid down in the garden to try and kill some of the torpedo grass; but really, does it ever die??  I am going to spend the next couple of years focusing on using cover crops to strangle it out. I also need to reinforce the bottom of the garden fence since I have found Rocky, Vinny and Gandy in the garden with the chickens.  All rabbit holes will have to filled in and timbers laid around the perimeter.  I have a few trays going in the greenhouse so those are added to the daily chores.  I do want to order my soil and send off a seed order to Baker's Heirloom for just a few things.  We did purchase three wonderful wooden 3x3 double-paned windows for $5 a piece.  These are almost too nice for cold frames, but that's what they are for.  Bruce will be working on these for me (after he heals a bit from a chainsaw-ladder accident).  I found more broken glass washing up around the barn, one of the caveats of living in a valley and having old buildings around, and that will have to be cleaned up.