Working as a family, we have some big goals for the backyard this year. This week we put in a lot of work with the help of the kids. Keri worked on treating the new bee boxes with linseed oil in preparation for paint. The kids helped oil the garden box wood and cut it. The kids and I also sifted through several large containers, removing the styrofoam we used for drainage in the old system and keeping the dirt for the new garden box. We trimmed up some branches that were hanging low to our new fence and the house. We used the branches and the raked leaves to fill the bottom half of the box using a hugelkultur method, dumping all the sifted dirt on top to fill completely. Neal and Keri spent a couple evenings assembling the hive boxes and frames. Then Keri painted one new hive box using up the rest of the yellow from last years hive painting job and painted the second new set of boxes lilac.
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| A bit of snow dusting our garden bed--the first in a very, very long time! |
