Cherry blossoms hold such hope! The wild ones are blooming as well in the woods. There are clothes drying on the line. It feels like spring.
And, one of the geese has started to lay (which is good). She built a beautiful nest and layed a lovely egg - right in the goat stall (which is bad). Now what am I supposed to do??? Hmmm, must think...
Today's work - process invoices then take a puppy break. Life is hard.
We took a walk in the woods after a morning of boring. There are new things to discover each day. I found a vast amount of crested iris just coming out of the ground and wild geraniums are carpeting the forest floor. Blooms should follow soon. It will be a year ago this weekend when we had our second nasty freeze and lost the greenhouse to gale force winds. The blueberries have started to bloom, so are the strawberries. The sweet cherry has a few blossoms open and the apples and pie cherries aren't far behind. It's easy to see why the freeze was so damaging last year.
I'm keeping all fingers crossed that the weather remains mild and spring-like.
I'm busy as a you-know-what. This time of year there is so much to do around the farm. For the last two weeks we've been planting - peas, lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes. Radish seedlings and peas are starting to pop out of the ground. Inside we've started tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and cauliflower. There are onions and more onions (scallions and keepers) to put in the ground. There is also a flat of lettuce starts waiting on me. I'm waiting impatiently on the arrival of our potato order which was shipped last week. Charlie will have to plant those. I have a letter from my doctor excusing me from heavy work...
The hens are upping their egg production and I've started a collection to put in the incubator. Normally I store them in the cool garage until I have enough, but yesterday's temperatures were around 80 degrees so the eggs are in the house where it's a tiny bit cooler. The ducks have been moulting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one of them will go broody. I'm hoping that the geese will do the same. If not, I'll load up the incubator after the chicks hatch. We didn't order any chicks this year. The money situation is rather tight at the moment and my eggs are free.
Ah, and money - it is tight. We have a company to run. And if you haven't heard, there is a recession going on. And we are an area that some consider a luxury. Thank god, not everyone considers their landscape and natural resources a luxury, but still... Our expansion funding didn't come through (at least not yet...) and we had four expected clients (that would be loads of money...) decide to not sign contracts at this time (so really, no need to expand, really). One client has cut back so much that it is basically non-existent. It's not good to be tied to the real estate market at the moment. We had to make some really tough decisions in the last couple of weeks. We stopped our expansion and had to lay off a few employees. Hopefully, we will be able to hire them back soon. We've decided to use one as a contract employee. And after talking to our accountant Charlie decided to not move into the new office space in downtown Asheville, but convert space here at home to office space.
It does make more sense. The garage is big enough for office space down and a studio/loft up top. And money spent on it only increases the value of property we already own. Most of our work is done on-site and on-line. There really is no need for expensive rental property. I'm also excited because we are going to go back to doing some residential work - just design, no installation. That's easy, creative and enjoyable. You draw what fits in someone's budget and meets their needs; they pay you (half up front, of course) and you're done. I'm hopeful that we'll be back to turning a profit soon. Oh, and the dogs are excited that they get to go to work everyday. Anyone for a frisbee break? I'm going to go plant lettuce.
It was almost 80 degrees today. I really have a bunch of things I want to write about, but I'm over the top busy. So enjoy Moonpie and Tank as they enjoy spring.
