It's time to get our pumpkin patch ready. Well, they should have been planted a while ago but we are a bit behind schedule (but better late than never!). We will be planting large, medium, and small varieties of decorative pumpkins. We covered the field with woven ground cover that already had holes in them spaced for pumpkins, melons, and other similar vegetables which we purchased from farmer friends of ours who are moving to a different ground cover system. It took us a good hour to lay out all the ground cover and move all the sandbags. Ron finished planting them this past weekend and we cannot wait to see them grow!

We are officially farmers! Our first plants have come up and we couldn't be happier. Keep growing, little ones!

                    We are so excited! Our first planting has finally happened. Everyone helped out as we planted a 1/4 acre of corn. It took some trial and error to get used to our seeder. Ron discovered that if you filled it up too much it was likely to drop multiple seeds in one spot. Originally, we had two seeders hooked together so we could plant two rows at a time, but sadly one seeder was dropping too many seeds and it was just too cumbersome to use. I didn't realize how big a 1/4 acre was until we had to plant all the seeds! Our goal is to plant 1 acre of corn this summer. Fingers crossed they grow big and strong.

                    One of the biggest projects Ron has been working on is installing our electric fence. We decided to go with a three dimensional, electric fence to keep our deer friends (and hopefully other animals) out. This involves two sets of fences with multiple wires set at different heights, which will confuse the deer since they have poor depth perception. Our outer fence has one electric wire that runs about 3 feet high. Our inner fence wires are set at 18 inches and  42 inches high. The two fences are three feet a part. We have two gates, and a switch run from the panel in the shed to the panel that houses the meter and main disconnect. The thought here was that since the meter is set where we normally park, we would always remember to shut off the fence before opening the gate. So far, so good. The other gate is on the opposite side of the field. Both gates are about 22 feet wide.             It took Ron a good month setting all the posts, running the wires, and burying

                     Well, it is finally here (sorry I couldn't help myself). Our well is being drilled! The drillers hit water at 120 feet and we have well over 16 gallons per minute. We couldn't have asked for more.     The pump is 70 feet down the well, and a 1 1/4" line runs into our shed where we have the controller and pressure tank installed. There is no storage tank with our system. The controller maintains a  constant pressure set at 60 psi using a small pressure tank connected to the main line. There is a faucet inside the shed, a frost-free hydrant outside the shed, and a hookup for our future irrigation system. Since we have so much water, we bumped up the size of our pump to a model rated at 2HP. After the well was drilled, we dug the 40 or so foot trench from the well to the shed . Besides the drillers' truck getting stuck on our property, the process went smoothly overall and we are so excited to start planting now that we have water.

This month we also got electricity!  Since we don't have any permanent structures, we had to mount the electric meter on an outdoor panel cemented in the ground. Also, to meet code requirements, the meter panel had to include a main shut off installed at the same location. This different from how residential electricity is set up because the outdoor meters are typically installed close enough to the main panel inside the house so you don't need a separate disconnect. While we didn't appreciate the added cost and inconvenience, it worked out in the end. We dug a trench from the pole to our meter location, and then continued the trench to the shed where we chose to install a 200 amp panel. We have more than enough power available now for the well pump and controller, electric fence, and anything else we need to run. Now that we have electricity, we will be able to complete our electric fence installation.