The Kittens Have Been Found

I was feeding the barn cats yesterday evening and saw something run into the straw bales. I figured it must have been a kitten as the cats did not try to chase it.

I had to go home to get a flash light to investigate. When I got back, hubby was there to help find out if that was a kitten.

Sure enough, it was a little grey kitten. He's a cutie. Later in the evening, the queen called out the rest of her kittens, and all four are doing well.

Now the fun starts, taming them so they are friendly. Taming is not hard since they are still small. It only takes time for them to get used to us.

The Kittens

Our barn cat had kittens in March. She decided to have them under the ram's hay feeder. It's a safe place for them when they are small, but will become dangerous when they start to walk around as the ram could easily stomp them without meaning to.

The kittens will be a month old tonight, and I am happy to say that the queen has moved them to a new location. I am happy to know that I will not have to worry about the ram stomping a kitten.

Now we do not know where they are, but we will pray that they are safe.

What I do know is that in a week or two, they will be old enough to start following her around. This means that we will be able to see them once again.

Still Working on Those Strawberries

The strawberry patch is now planted. Although we still have a lot of plants that need planted, I am saying that the patch is complete.

Obviously, we could till a extension to the old strawberry patch to plant the remainder of the plants, but most of the plants that are left are small and might not make it anyway. We are thinking of planting them somewhere else in a cluster. If they take off, we can tranplant them. If they die, it's not going to hurt anything.

Other than planting the small plants that are left, I have to lay straw down to keep the weeds away. That is going to be the project for this evening. Then it will be water and wait for the berries!

The Strawberry Patch

This week we have been preparing the strawberry patch for the June harvest. The preperation should be easy. At least that was what I thought when I set out to do the work.

After several minutes of weeding, which is the first step in preparing the patch, it became apparent that there where too many strawberry plant runners, and no defined rows.

We now have five times the amount of plants as we did last year!

Which resulted in us having to dig the plants, till the patch, and replant.

We are now on day four of replanting. With half of the plants planted, the patch is almost full with only a row left to do.

It is apparent that we will need a larger strawberry patch this year. We are hoping this means more strawberries! If anything, it means that I will be more alert to pinching runners this year. We do not need to repeat this process next year. Plus, new plants will need to establish themselves, which is easier to do if they are not using there energy on producing runners.

The next step after the replanting, will be putting straw down between the rows and around the plants to keep the weeds away. After that, it's water and wait!

Come June when we are eating the berries, this hard work will pay off!