Month: February 2023

Our old tractor a 1950 Ferguson TE20 decided to call it quits. The starter failed and we were unable to secure a replacement.

So we decided to replace ” Christine” with something a bit newer. We acquired a 1952 Ford 8N. It’s been redone for us and although we are still waiting for the rebuild carb, to wire in the front and real lights and to replace some minor wiring that’s 70 years old it’s good to go.

The benefit to going to this particular tractor is that parts are readily available at pretty reasonable cost considering they made hundreds of thousands and many are still in active service.

That’s about it for now. Soon we will be starting to get ready to plant more Lavender.

We had a good plan for spring but them. We decided to change it.

We have deicide to expand our Phenomenal field and also to add a second type of lavender, Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote Superior super Blue’ a sweetly fragrant, uniformly compact plant and blooms with darkly colored lavender-blue flower spikes in late spring.

We were lucky to be able to have our order filled after our supplier’s cut off date. We hope this will add a bit of variety to our field.

We also wanted to add something different to our Nursery end of things. We will still do lilac and Staghorn Sumac but we will add some specialty ornamental grasses to see how that goes. We need to utilize our unheated greenhouse space more and grass grows quickly.

The types we will grow are Melinis Savannah, Setaria Max, Juncus Spiralis, Jade Princess Millet, Muhly Grass Ruby and the one that I personally want to grow Black Broom corn.

Black Broom Corn looks like corn but has a large seed head that can be used in flower arranging or as a plant to block out a view or as a windbreak.

That’s about it for now, With luck the snow will melt the river won’t run too high and our trees will have a bit more of an undisturbed stange spring and summer.