Homestead

Good Morning from The Half-Acre Homestead. Friday is finally here. The temperature is just below freezing this morning, but it should be the last time time for at least a week according to the long range forecast. Colleen and I will be going to school in two vehicles again this morning. It’s an early release day for the kids but the teachers have to stick around for meetings. The teacher assistants are only required to stay long enough to get their required hours logged. Colleen inadvertently put in a couple of extra hours when she was making up her snow day time so to make her time card right she can leave right after lunch. I’m expected to stay until 3:00 or 3:30. The administration has not told the staff what today’s meetings will cover yet so I have no idea what I’m walking into this afternoon. I’m just sitting on pins and needles of excited anticipation.

Yesterday wound up being a very easy day at school even with my meeting. Two of my three classes took a quiz. Most of my energy was devoted to keeping my 3rd period class on task. Colleen headed home with the last bell of the day and I used my time in the meeting to grade the quizzes. I got one class finished and made a nice dent in the second class’s quizzes. I’ll finish the second class up this morning. Since classes are short today and we’re heading into a weekend I’m not exactly sure what I will do today, but I sure don’t want to start any new material. I am of the mind that I will use today for review. Today is also Colleen’s last day of covering her special assignment. The new teacher is suppose to report so Colleen will show her the ropes.

Colleen hightailed it out of school as soon as she could yesterday. The afternoon was a little chilly but there was more than enough sunshine. I guess everything on Colleen’s car worked okay because she didn’t mention anything about it after it spent Wednesday in the shop, so that was a good thing. When Colleen got home she noticed that her crocuses were starting to pop out of the ground. She made sure to show me her first signs of spring as soon as I got home. There were plenty of leftovers in the refrigerator so she was off the hook for dinner. There wasn’t any laundry that needed doing so my darling wife took the afternoon off and relaxed. She did put some of the peat pots with our seed starts out in the second floor porch. The starts came back in the house at sunset because things were cooling off quickly outside. The house even held the day’s heat well do there wasn’t a need for a fire in the fireplace either.

There wasn’t much of the afternoon left by the time I got home. I grabbed a cigar and headed out to the back porch and spent some time with Alex. I was out there long enough to finish my cigar and then headed back into the house. Colleen had eaten dinner earlier so I ate my dinner on the fly in front of the computer. I’m pretty excited because I figured out how to add way for folks to subscribe to our website. If you subscribe you will get an email every time something new gets added. I also added another tab for what we deem as useful internet links. I guess from the prospective of the website, yesterday afternoon was very productive. I still have so much to learn on how to manage the site because I just do not want it to turn into a dumping ground for junk. So far I’m pretty proud of what we have accomplished. Of course, with the extra time devoted to the website I’ve neglected editing my book.

Despite the forecast of rain for this weekend our to-do list is still growing. Colleen has all the usual baking on the books and there is our weekly market run. Fishing seems to be out of the question but if the rain breaks there is lots of stuff that needs doing outside particularly in the gardens. The pea starts are to the point where they need to go into the ground and I would love to get the first planting of radishes done too. There’s lots of other incidental stuff to do as well. A rose bush on the back porch is starting to push buds which reminded me that I need to prune the pear tree soon. Last year was the first year the tree bore fruit and we’re excited about the prospect again this year. And lest I forget, there is a chicken pen to be finished.

It’s that time of the morning again so Colleen and I are wrapping things up so we can be on our way. We’re really hoping for a quick and easy day at school again today. For some reason we’re both a little more tired than usual this morning. We’ll make it though, we always do. Have a great Friday everyone! The weekend is getting ready to start. Between now and Mother’s Day our school days will be full and our weekends will be very busy. The days are getting longer and our weather is warming up. If rain decides to stop, we’ll be elbow deep in garden soil. We do so love the spring up here on our hill. Before we know it the trees will have leaves and we should even have chickens in our coup. No matter how busy we get there is always one thing that remains the same and that is up here on our little hill all is right on the homestead.

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