The first mowing of the year is always the hardest on our farm.  The stump locations are long forgotten, and this year our chipping experiment left branches strewn around in unlikely spots.  Adding to the mess, Lucy's firewood fetish results in hunks of wood hidden here and there in the high grass where she dragged them, chewed for a while, then wandered off to do doggie things.  Basically, there's a lot of picking up to be done before we can safely run the mower over our "lawn."

Luckily, the grass comes into production at different times on different parts of the farm.  The north side of the garden always starts growing first since it gets the best winter sun, and I've mowed that area twice already.  In contrast, the south side of the yard is shaded by the hill and only started growing a week or two again.  I'd been ignoring that area, but by Monday morning the weeds were clearly getting out of control, so Mark and I tag-teamed it --- I picked up debris while he pushed the mower.  Our farm suddenly looks almost manicured!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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