The rain the weatherman predicted never came, but Friday dawned bright and beautiful and warm just like he said it would. A perfect day for planting my snow peas and for a couple of before pictures in the garden.

This is our squash garden, waiting oh so patiently. My husband picked up several used cattle panels, bent them at the ends and used PVC to support them in the middle. We’re going to stake down the ends as well. I’m going to plant my salad garden under the panels. By the time the squash is large enough to shade out the lettuce, it will be about time for my lettuce and spinach to bolt, anyway.

For the peas and tomatoes, we’re making a hedge-type support system with used cattle panels. Using my trusty warren how, I ran a nice furrow along the base of the fencing to drop the peas in. I’d like two more by tomato planting time, but for now the “make do” side of me is thinking about planting the tomatoes down the center of the row. By the time they are big enough to need the support, the peas should be dying back, anyway.

I actually felt sort of sad turning under so much of my clover already, but was happy to see it  had a nice dense root system, doing the main job we were looking for in a cover crop this year: pushing out the weeds.

Bear saw I was working in the garden and came down to chat.

“Can I help?” he asked.

Warmed my soul. The children were disappointed in the morning when I told them they couldn’t plant their sections until I had a way of marking off their squares, but they seemed to get over it as soon as they had the day and the sunshine to themselves.

But a voluntary helper? Makes me feel like we’ve done something right in this outdoour country lifestyle we’ve chosen.

“Don’t forget to leave some peas for me!” He interjected as I poured out the last of the package in my hand.

“Sweetheart, I still have two more packages. I should have enough for a fall planting and still have plenty for you guys.”

He smiled. He really likes gardening, and it always surprises me how hard he is willing to work. He can throw a temper tantrum over picking up a few legos, but out here he will work until his muscles are sore. I don’t know if it is the sun or the soil or the warm spring air, but it just feels right. Like this is how we are meant to live and how children are meant to be raised.

Hard work, free time and the great outdoors. For a fleeting moment, I feel just a twinge of the excitement I had when we moved here.

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Visit Smockity Frocks for more frugal gardening and Linda’s Lunacy for more Saturday on the Farm posts and to share your own!

This Saturday, I’m going back to school — to bee school! I think I’m looking forward to it. We have been wanting to start a hive for a few years and at one point even looked into a program here that connects people who want a hive but can’t on their property with people who would like a hive on their property but do not wish to manage it. But now we are starting two hives.

For real.

On our property.

The hives are sitting in my garage and I’m supposed to pick up the bees at the beginning of April.

Why was it just this week that I stopped thinking about honey and started thinking about bees? All 20,000 of them? IN MY CAR?!

So yeah. I’m going to a class all about the honeybee and I’m taking my oldest daughter. Hopefully between the two of us we’ll acquire enough knowledge to at least get the bees out of their little packages and into our hives.

Stay tuned for updates on this exciting little journey. And while you are waiting, take a few moments to check out the Carnival of Homeschooling, Wish List edition, posted over at Life Nurturing Education. She always has the most beautiful artwork to illustrate her carnivals.

The day broke bright. And warm. The sun and fresh air called to my children and I found myself drinking in the morning air as I told them to feed and water the poultry. And again as I called them to breakfast. And again as I called them to start school. And again as I called them back to school after putting the baby down for his nap.

School is of little use on a day perfect for running, so I decided to put their running to use.

“It’s time to teach Faithful what she’s for,” I told them. “It’s time to teach her to herd the ducks and geese.”

Every morning until planting, the waterfowl must be taken to the garden to pick over the weeds and spread their nitrogen-rich manure. Every evening, they must be returned to their pen to protect them from all that lurks in the dark.

Last fall, herding was a simple task. I opened the gate and they followed me wherever I went. Now, after a season of captivity, they celebrated their freedom. Quacking, honking, flapping . . . wings beat the air, and the geese left the ground for their first flight of the year. They made it about ten yards, but it was all too much for the children who began chasing them, stretching their wings, shouting their appreciation of freedom in the fresh country air.

“They flew, Mommy! They really flew!” Bug shouted to me, eyes shining.

Finally, they wore themselves out. Geese and ducks and children returned to me, out of breath from the pure expression of joy. I smiled, told the children where to walk and we slowly pushed the birds toward the garden.

Released from their chore, the children went back to the hill to tackle it with their bikes. I remembered my camera.

I also remembered how difficult it is to take pictures of the geese, for every time I kneel down, they run toward me, head lowered, honking  and peeping in an excited greeting.

“It has been awhile, hasn’t it?” I asked Turkey as he walked up to the fence. “I’m sorry, guys. But it’s been a long winter.”

For a moment, I could almost see Tiggy standing there beside me, hugging his sippee cup under one arm, pointing at the geese.

“Chickie chickie!”

And in that same moment, I realized I had been avoiding the poultry. Every day, three times a day, I sent the children down in pairs to do a chore I almost always did before. A chore I almost always did with Tiggy at my side.

“Chickie chickie!”

I smiled as the tears burned and my heart sang with a feeling of love so intense it overwhelmed any other emotion. How many times have I felt that for him before? When I first felt him kick, held him in the hospital, watched him sleep. When I nursed him, sang to him, held his little hand. When he kissed me, rubbed his baby brother’s head, giggled his little boy giggle.

But before there was a forehead to kiss, a wisp of hair to stroke, a Tiggy to hold. Now, I just had this moment. So I sat there in the damp grass at the edge of the garden, watching the geese, listening to the excited squealing of the children and missing my little boy.

Have I told you about my wood burning stove, yet? I don’t think I have. Perhaps I should someday…oh wait. That’s right. My husband deleted all photographic evidence I had for that post because he thought it a bit incriminating against the ignorant, er innocent.

For now, suffice it to say I have one. A big monster of a beast in my front room, heating my home.

Don’t you love our fancy humidifier?

Anyway, when you have a fire burning continuously in your front room, you can’t help but play in it. At first, this produces a considerable amount of smoke, but you learn. And once you learn, you move on.

Thus I decided to  bake bread. Like a pioneer woman. Not like The Pioneer Woman, mind you. People eat her stuff and share her recipes and buy her cookbook. No, like a pioneer woman.

Minus the buffalo chips.

So I bought a bread pan that wasn’t glass and got started. Oh how I love baking bread. It’s so tactile. Touching the milk on the stove to see if it is heated enough but not too much. Feeling when the goo turns to dough signaling it is time to turn it out on the counter to knead. And kneading it until it is all soft and warm and elastic. If only my husband didn’t compare every loaf to Wonder Bread, I might be inclined to make this a lot more.

Pondering, I thought maybe (just maybe) cooking with wood might be similar. Not that I’d get to touch it, but you definitely get to fiddle more than setting your oven at 350 and a timer for 50 minutes.

And next to the stove is such a nice place to leave it to rise.

Doesn’t it look nice? It’s 17 degrees outside and my bread is rising contentedly.

OK, it just might have been prettier and more rounded if I didn’t have children that can reach through the bars. But I’m keeping the kids and not worrying so much about swatted bread.

It’s not like they didn’t just finish beating it to a pulp, anyway. What’s one more swipe?

So this brings us to the baking part, full of happy memory-building family memories. But no Hanley family memory is complete without the part where it all falls apart. This one didn’t fail us. I didn’t even get it in the stove before it came through for us. See, I’m doing this baking in the clean out ash pan in the back.

And my brand-new, bought-just-for-this bread pan was a hair too big to fit. It’s so close, in fact, that I’m contemplating fixing my problem with a pair of vice grips. That didn’t seem like such a good thing to try just then, however.

Really, at this point I should have just turned on the oven and baked my bread. But that seemed like defeat.

The flattened black brick I was almost certain I would retrieve from the stove didn’t. Just fresh baked bread wafting its heavenly scent as it is pulled from the oven seemed like defeat. So I turned the dough out onto foil, wrapped it and shoved it through the little door.

What I pulled out later wasn’t pretty. But it wasn’t a blackened brick, either.

In fact, we actually ate the whole thing. And it wasn’t bad. I liked the flavor. Hearty. Reminded me a little of sour dough. The texture was all off, but that’s because I flattened it in my re-panning effort. It gave me hope.

This could really work.

And if it ever does, I’ll be back with a recipe and tips that are hopefully more useful than “Don’t buy a bread pan that is too large for the hole you plan to stick it through.”

Though that is perhaps a good life lesson, too.

Training a puppy is about like training a child. They have their own idea about what they should be doing and you don’t always know what you’re doing to begin with.

And so it is with Faithful, my daughter’s English shepherd. Mouse has decided that if hauling wood is to be an ongoing chore around here, having a dog that will pull a wagon would be of great use. We owned a Malamute once. She loved pulling. I mean, that dog came alive when strapped to anything. Including a leash and a pregnant woman, but that is a whole ‘nuther story.

Anyway, that is as close to training a dog for pulling as we’ve come so we’re sort of making this up as we go along.

So first Mouse puts on a harness and hooks her to the leash that is tied to the wagon full of wood.

"Why am I tied up over here when there's a chicken over there? Don't you think he's a little far from the hen house? Well, I think so and that's all that really matters, isn't it?"

She finally gets her attention and is ready to begin training. Except one little problem.

"Hey! What am I doing up here if the treats are back there?"

She doesn’t really expect the puppy to pull that much weight. She just wants her to get used to the sound of the wagon behind her and learn that “Mush!” means “Go!” But the rope she rigged up to pull with puts her behind the puppy. And the puppy knows where the treats are.

A little rethinking and they’re off!

"You got more of those treat things, right? 'Cause I can do this all day..."

So much more fun than just loading up the wagon and hauling it yourself. Someday it may even be less work, too.

I also think this little guy could be trouble some day.

"You talkin' to me?"

Sitting on the porch with the children, we watched the combine work the corn field across the road. They love the roar of the heavy machinery and Bear literally danced with anticipation as the combine approached the grain truck. He jumped and squealed and clapped as they pulled alongside one another and we got to watch the grain pour into the back of the truck.

“This is what it’s all about,” I thought to myself. The season was coming to a close. A season of work, of worry, of challenges. This year’s crop had to face a late freeze that took out the majority of the beet crop, flooding that put counties under water, grasshoppers that left farmers in four Nebraska counties eligible for federal aid and mold and fungus issues as fields slowly dried after the flooding.

Mr. B. had stopped by the week before to chat. Standing in the drive, he affirmed that his crop had escaped the worst Nebraska’s finicky weather had to offer this year and he was pleased with the dry spell that was reducing the moisture content of his corn and readying it for harvest.

“Another weekend of this and it should be around 18%,” he said with an appreciative glance over his field. I knew he was talking about the moisture content, deduced that 18% was worthy of something but unsure exactly what that meant. But since the harvesters were out less than a week later, it must have marked the end of the season.

Now the fields stand empty. Strands of electric fencing have been erected around some of the harvested fields where cattle have been turned out to glean. We cannot see them from our property, but I love listening to them lowing in the fields late at night. Our ducks and geese have discovered the fallen corn and spend their days waddling up and down the rows, cleaning up the spillage.

And I think of my own garden. My own disappointing garden. I’d had high hopes for it, but they seemed destined to be shattered from the start. We got started late, so most of my plans were never planted let alone realized. This left a frighteningly large portion of the garden open to weeds who were more then happy to fill in the vacuum. Then my goslings, who were supposed to be my assistants in the garden, escaped their pen and ate a quarter of my corn. Without decent fencing, I was forced to take them off the garden until the plants matured.

But I jumped the gun on that. Or didn’t realize just how big they were getting and how small my heritage corn was. Now, the corn could have easily withstood the occasional nip to the leaves. But the geese seemed to favor the developing tassles on the corn itself and before I even realized what was happening, they rendered my entire planting incapable of pollinating.

Hail took out my tomatoes and peppers. Weeds overwhelmed my cucumbers, squash and melons. Not to mention me. When we finally gave up on the garden for the season, it had yielded three pounds of green beans, three cucumbers and two pie pumpkins. All wonderfully delicious, but a depressing harvest from a 3,000 square foot garden that was supposed to keep us in garden fresh veggies throughout the growing season and perhaps even overwhelm us with its bounty.

As it was, we got way more out of the unexpected fruits the property offered without our labor and finances. Lilac jelly, black locust blossom fritters and syrup, clover jelly, dandelion syrup, and sharab el toot. We even discovered an elderberry bush, sampled some berries and determined it worthy of propogating next year. Of course, once I add my gardening skills to that poor bush, it will likely go the way of my garden, but one can dream.

Looking over the fence at my tattered rows of strawberries, my cold frame of arugula and the rows that never were, I wonder for a moment what next year will bring. But here’s the strange thing about gardening: No matter how bad this year was, there is always next year.

No matter how disappointing every year has been, there is always next year.

Experience is not much of a teacher when it comes to gardening.

Next year’s weeds have not yet sprouted. Next year’s storms not yet brewed. Next year’s heat not yet driven me inside to lemonade and a fan. Instead, I have a calendar full of optimism where seeds are planted in succession and my harvest comes in just a little faster than I can bring it all in.

Whether I’m an incurable optimist or merely suffer that bizarre form of amnesia common to many gardeners I cannot tell. But next year will be better.

It certainly couldn’t be much worse.