A lot of happenings part 2

This is Nutella's baby, also Jr.'s offspring.
She's so cute and I just LOVE her color.
It's like chocolate color.  Maybe she will
produce chocolate milk when she gets
older.  hahaha

The last post was getting a little too long so I decided to just start a new post.

With at least one section in the back all fenced,
we were able to bring all of our cows to our
property.  It was so nice to finally be able to
have the cows here with us!  But because right
now we don't have enough grass for them to graze
we have to supplement with hay.

Now that we had the back section of our property fenced and
our cows here with us we decided to work on a different project
and finish the rest of the fencing later.

We purchased this Lifetime Adventure playset online recently.
We are thoroughly happy with it so far, and so are the kids.
The playset is made of metal and hard plastic, very study and
heavy duty.  We didn't want to have the ones made with wood
because we feel like the wood kind is more high maintenance. 
The wood rots and deteriorates and the colors fade and you have
 to re-treat the wood every couple
of years.  

I don't get paid to "review" this but we are so happy with it I
just want to share my 2 cents with everyone.  This playset took
hubby and I about 8-10 hours total to assemble.  But it's so
worth it!  The kids LOVE this thing they play on it all the time!
It's rated for up to 8 kids playing on it at a time and up to 1200
lbs.  The swings are rated for up to 135 lbs.  This is a playset
I would highly recommend!

Recently there's a bird who actually built a nest
and laid eggs in the middle of our gravel driveway.
Out of all the places she could have built her
nest she picked our driveway... so for weeks
we had been trying very hard to not run her and her eggs
over when drove on the driveway.

Here's mama bird trying to protect her eggs.
We would go out there everyday to check on
the eggs and it's been kind of cool.

But....sadly...after about 2 weeks or so...all the
eggs started disappearing...we believe they were
eaten by snakes.  So sad.

So excited we finally got to harvest our grapes!

We have a decent amount of grapes we were
able to harvest.  We also harvested a few blueberries
a few weeks ago.  And our lime tree is flourishing!

While they might not be super big, they were
actually pretty sweet!

Though the baby birds didn't survive or even got
the chance to hatch, we discovered other surprises
on our property.  A family of ducks were at our pond.
We are pretty sure all 11 ducklings were all born
probably around our pond somewhere.

Here you can see the daddy and momma

ducks walking around with their little

ducklings in tow.  So cute!

The Plant killer

So I've been wanting to get into gardening for quite some time.  But I was afraid to do so because I am a plant killer!  I murder plants...not intentionally, of course.  I wasn't born with a green thumb, ok?  So don't judge.  But last year I was given a couple of fruit trees/plants by various friends.  I was determined to NOT kill them this time.  And guess what?  Hard work paid off!  Look at all the fruit trees/plants they're all bearing fruits!  It's so exciting.  I never knew this gardening thing could be so exciting!  Everyday I go outside to check on the plants and see that the fruits are growing bigger every single day.  I never knew it could be so rewarding and satisfying.  Now I can't wait for them to grow big and get ripe so I can pick them and see what the fruits taste like!

So a friend of mine told me about Permaculture gardening a little while ago.  I've been looking into it.  It sounds so interesting.  Permaculture by definition is: "the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient:"  So there's a lot of companion planting involved.  Basically you pair up plants that will give each other the nutrients and nitrogen that they need to thrive.  Also they serve us natural "pest control" and "weed control" for each other.  There are just so much to learn about this whole permaculture and companion planting thing.  I think I'm just barely scraping the surface as of now.  Couple of years after planting, your garden should be self-sustaining.  There will be very minimal maintenance involved.  I really love this idea!  I'm not quite to the point where I'm ready to do a full permaculture gardening yet.  Life is busy and everything costs money.  So we will just work on one project at a time.  

If you have any good tips or advice on permaculture gardening, do share!  

Grape vines are looking awesome!

Look at all the "baby grapes".  I can't wait for
you to get bigger and ripe so I can eat you!

Check out this blueberry bush!  It might not
be super big right now.  But there's quite a few
blueberries popping up.  We actually have 2 blueberry
bushes.  From what I've learned if you want to plant
blueberry bushes you need to have at least 2
so they can cross pollinate because blueberry
bushes don't self pollinate.

Can you spot the ripe one?

We pruned this lime tree a few weeks ago and
planted it in our garden area.  I will be working
on the companion plants to help it grow even better.

Lime tree might not look much, but there are
limes coming up everywhere.