Coop Tour and Planting Berries

Today was Bend's Second Annual Coop Tour.  We were stop number fourteen in a list of 35 options.  We estimate that we had between 80 and 100 people come through from 10am-4pm.  It was fun but exhausting.

The funniest thing was that although this was billed as a Coop Tour, many of our guests got sidetracked with the goats and pigs.  We had to keep showing people where the actual coop was.

There were lots of people to talk with...many interested in having their own chickens.  We sold a dozen eggs (much less than I thought we would).  The kids had a lemonade and cookie stand, but they sold very few items (they weren't outside promoting it much either).  We did make lots of great contacts and hopefully will be able to grow some of our client base through this experience.

The berry garden.

Around noon, the mail delivered a bunch of our plants.  We found time in between talking with guests to plant the entire berry garden (minus the raspberries that are still hardening off).  The total plants came to 12 Everbearing Darrow Blackberries, 3 Patriot Blueberries, and 25 each of Ozark, All Star, Quinalt, and Robinson Strawberries.  Oh, and we planted two rhubarb.  Many of these plants will not produce anything this year, but we see them as an investment for the future.  We planted them in a small plot next to the cold frame.  This is an area that we can easily care for all year round.

We do need to build a fence around this garden...quickly.  Not only do the big goats think that these plants look interesting to nibble on, the geese would like to sample them too.  They aren't really going to eat the plants, but they could do enough damage by dislodging them from their rows.  I am hoping that we can put up a small fence tomorrow.  I will sleep better knowing that nobody can just wander into the garden.

In addition to the berry garden, we raked another section of the big garden and I planted a few rows of beets.  We received all of the onions and potatoes today as well, so we would like to get them in the ground in the next few days.  J is going to do some work on the pivot tomorrow too.  There is something called an "end back" that his dad has on the pivot to keep from flooding the end of the line.  Unfortunately, it's not letting enough water out on the garden.  So J is going to replace these things with the normal sprinkler heads.  That should help with the water in the big garden.

I begged J to leave the baby goats with momma tonight so that I could sleep in tomorrow.  We'll see.  It never seems to work out in my favor.  Something or someone will wake me.