The past few weekends at the farm have been chock-a-block with demanding activities, so we made this Sunday a lazy one. Well, that was the plan…

Let me backtrack. Last weekend we had run out of time to plant some strawberries we’d brought down, so we left them on the kitchen windowsill. When we returned this weekend they were… not looking so hot. Sorry strawberries! So come Sunday morning, weary of Saturday’s heavy labour, we decided to casually check on our sad little lettuces and give them some equally glum strawberry companions.

Out near the garden clumps of snowflake flowers had shot up through the shaggy grass. It lifts the spirits to see these happy little white bells nodding over the winter landscape. It’s as if their presence is heralding the approaching spring. But they weren’t the only bulbs that had sprouted. We were in for a delightful surprise…

Garlic! This was unexpected. Surely we had pushed those wee cloves into the soil only a couple of weeks ago, right? In truth it had been over a month. Time seems to pass quickly on the farm, probably because we only visit on weekends. Nature does not delay just because we are absent!

After fawning over the baby garlic shoots, we pulled back the cloche to see how our lettuce and spinach were holding up against the heavy winter frosts. Two out of the four lettuce varieties we’d planted had perished – twelve plants total. A couple held tenacious, barely alive, but we put them out of their misery also. The two surviving varieties seem relatively frost-tolerant.

Our spinach, on the other hand, seemed to be rather enjoying the cold. The growth wasn’t prolific, as is to be expected in the midst of winter, but the little guys had established nicely. We tucked in the sad strawberry plants and gave them a good drink.

There was nothing else to do in the garden and now that we were out and about we naturally sought to get our blood pumping again. The plan for a lazy Sunday was slowly crumbling. We wanted a rest from the chainsaw and splitting axe, so exerted little effort by tidying up some of the odds and ends that were lying about the place. Like this:

And these:

We’re keeping all the timber we find since it’s an invaluable resource on a farm. We haul it all to the barn for now, where it’s sheltered. It was the perfect opportunity to use our new cart we had finished constructing the day before. We love it. It’s sturdy, it fits way more than a wheelbarrow, and most of all it’s infused with the satisfaction of being handmade, however amateur it might be.

So, after that, do you know what we did? Here’s a hint: We told ourselves there would be no chainsawing or wood splitting today. Today was a rest day.

Yep. So we spent the afternoon doing exactly that. We had a new log holder which made the job easier. It holds the logs level and at waist-height for easy cutting.

Char’s on the path to becoming an ace log splitter and I’m feeling more confident wielding the tool of death.

Our cart made hauling the firewood between where it was split and where it was stacked a breeze.

As the sun was going down and the chainsaw’s fuel ran dry, we succumbed to exhaustion and called it a day.

We actually made a pretty big dent in the wood pile. Perhaps only a third to go.

What a lazy Sunday it was.