So, as I’ve mentioned before, the 2.5 acres my friends and I are living on used to boast some lovely veggie gardens and a host of farm animals, but beyond some blackberry, blueberry and raspberry bushes, some potted tomatoes and a small container garden of herbs, that farm that once was died off a few years ago. Our goal: to revive it – making it better (and prettier) than ever!

We’re waiting until September (when everyone’s back from summer holidays) to really set out some serious farming plans and get cracking on the work involved, so in the meantime, I thought I’d get my hands dirty by tackling what’s already in need of some TLC – the gasping raspberry bushes that have been getting choked by some seriously overgrown weeds.

I put in a couple hours of weeding on the weekend and have been putting in about an hour each day since then and I’ve still got a long way to go. Those are some serious weeds!  But the fun part (the part that always motivates me with these kinds of projects) is seeing the difference my sweat and itchy arms are making. I’m seeing progress!

My hope is to get all the weeds out and then to lay bark mulch down around the base of the plants to help protect them and retain the moisture they need on these hot summer days (a raspberry plant care trick I learned from my community gardening days in Ottawa).

I was planning on doing some sluething on craigslist for some free/ cheap bark mulch, but yesterday something even better happened. Lesley and Brian (some friends of Julie’s) came by with a truckbed full of free firewood to give us and Brian asked if we ever needed bark chips. Perfect! He’s going to bring a free load by when he’s accumulated a good solid pile.

Can’t wait to get the job done and take some photos of our soon-to-be happy, healthy raspberry patch with the neat and orderly bark chip pathways! Gosh, this kind of stuff sure makes me happy.