Potatoes Are Peeking

Voila!  A little less than two weeks after we planted our Yellow Finn potatoes, we have little potato plants peeking through the soil.  I am so excited about our first try at growing these.  I knew some of the stuff growing in there were weeds but I was afraid to pull anything until I was sure they weren't potatoes.  But now I know that a potato seedling looks like this:

I guess I might as well give you an update of some other happenin's around the Farm.   I need to do another post about the quilt for those of you who are following along.  I've got all the strips sewn together and the next steps are to square up the quilt top and then attach the two borders and the binding.  And then we're done!

I want to thank all of you again for your concern about our poor hen-pecked Henrietta.  She is recouping nicely in her hen condo in the basement.  We still have not determined how to re-integrate her, so I need to work on that.  Her neck is healing up nicely but I want to make sure that she is fully healed before we give the other girls access to her.  On that same note, I now convinced that we have a feather picker in our midst.  Giving them additional protein and a Flock Block to keep them from getting bored isn't fixing the problem.  This weekend, I'm going to clean out the coop and inspect everyone for mites and lice.  I suspect we may have a problem there and that's what is causing the feather loss.  And I need to spend a longer time watching them to see if I can determine who the feather picker culprit is. 

Our Early Girl tomato plants have doubled in size since we planted them on the 27th.  We've got Beefsteak and Roma teenagers growing in the basement, so I'm hoping to have tomatoes all summer long.

This old girl is a work horse.  She deserves a new
 coat of paint and a grill.

J. and I are thinking about getting a newer, bigger tractor for our 40 acres.  We've got an old Ford Industrial 4400 with a backhoe and loader but the thing is huge!  We really need something a little more compact that we could use for projects here as well.  When we bought our John Deere, we really should have bought one with a loader and mine doesn't even have the connector box or joystick to add one.  It is a GREAT mowing tractor, though.

There are 3 auctions today that all have some really nice tractors that would work perfectly:  a John Deere 790 (27 hp), a Kubota L4330 (45 hp) and a Kubota MX5100 (50 hp).  All have loaders on them.   If you have one of these tractors and can make a recommendation for or against any of them, I'd really appreciate it.  Now we're trying to figure out how the two of us can be at all 3 auctions at once.

It's a rainy day here, so no outside work for us.  What are your plans for this weekend?

This post is linked to this week's Country Garden Showcase, Tuesday Garden Party and Garden Life hops.