Alas, our injured blue jay died peacefully in his new bird-cage digs. This did not come as a surprise, given his injuries, but I did wake up thinking about digging some worms to feed to him but I found that he had actually closed his eyes forever. Although we were not particularly sentimentally attached, we gave him a bit of a burial (underneath a shovel full of earth) rather than just flinging his body into the woods. R.I.P.

The pace never slackens here. We have continued to harvest the strawberries and have found them to be quite tasty but perhaps not as overwhelming in numbers as last year but it is still too early to tell. So far, after three picking sessions, we have brought in between 6-7 pounds, the last of which was 4+ pounds, which is just enough to still enjoy fresh berries (at every meal!) without freezing or cooking into jams. The other early harvesting so far consists of spinach and radishes. Dave poses here with a possible wedding bouquet of radishes – what do you think, Kate?!? We enjoyed another light rain shower today after lots of work in the fields so it was rather ideal to have our new plantings watered in for us. I planted 216 ivy starts ( 6 trays of 36) in the front beds in the last two days and they really appreciated the rain.

We are seeing both pear and cherry fruits for the first time on our young trees. The new orchard is so young that we have been advised to snip off any young fruits and have done this on the apples, nectarines and peaches but it is fun to see first time fruiting on the cherries and pears! We know it won’t amount to a crop, by any means, but it is so fun to see the “fruits of our labor”!

The robin babies have flown the coop without the slightest indication of a farewell. One day they were there with lots of personality and the next day, the nest is empty, with not so much as a fare-thee well! Still no sign of baby barn swallows. The adults are a constant in the nest, so I still have high hopes for little ones to appear but the late cold front may have compromised their eggs. I’ll keep you posted!

I took a moment yesterday to add to my work apparel and finally bought myself some steel toed, waterproof boots, like Dave has. This is the ladies version from Red Wing Shoes, a company from Minnesota that sells all kinds of work boots. They have a very small store front here in town and it was fun to go in and get such special attention there. The gentleman who helped me said that it was very unusual to have had his second female customer in one day since I think they see mostly male buyers. The other gal works for Grant’s Farm with the Clydesdales and apparently that parent company decided to require steel toed boots for all employees. I guess I’m in good company! I will now be able to dig more efficiently with a more stable foundation on the sole of this boot when using a shovel, as well as to protect my toes from all the adversity that sharp blades on the farm can present. It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of distance between my ankles and any of the ever present snakes on site here too. Best of all, these are water proof, which means a lot to us since we work in all conditions possible. Here are my new boots! I’m sure the tan line at my ankles will be quite impressive in my Mother of the Bride Dress!