We're so happy to finally have the fence done. It looks wonderful. 
The gate is totally custom, and includes a sliding door "peephole" so I can look out and make sure I'm not opening the gate right into a pedestrian or bicyclist.
While we were working, I noticed this iris blooming in the front yard. Since were were moving demo materials to the truck right over it, I went ahead and picked it.
Back at the farm, here's the "wall o peas" in row 8. When these peas set up, we'll have tons more. I expect we even may have to freeze some, although so far we've been able to eat them as fast as they come. You can just see the Big Jim peppers in the foreground of this picture.
Of the three kinds of peas we planted, I liked the Maestro for big peas and the Pasos (shown here) for petite peas. The Burpeanna Early were disappointing. They were actually later than the Maestro, which ripened first even though the Earlys were planted 2 weeks earlier. Also, the Earlys didn't have as good flavor, and tended to go starchy fast. We won't plant those next year.
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What We're Eating
We're frantically eating up the lettuce. Rick and I have been having big salads every day, but I still ended up feeding some to the chickens. And when we're not eating lettuce, we're eating peas! Lots and lots of peas. We eat a lot just right out of the garden. They make an excellent snack with beer. But while we were tied up on the homefront with the fence project, Rick and Catherine were very kind and brought us some shelled peas. I promised to make pot pies for them, but then couldn't figure out how to make them "farm grade." I wanted something that could be brought to the farm and eaten easily. So I made pot pie pinwheels.
These are just puff pastry, spread with rondele cheese, sprinkled with raw shelled peas, a little sliced turkey, and grated cheeses, then rolled up and baked. They were gobbled right up.
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On "farm TV" the chickens play their favorite game: "I'm the tallest chicken!" Our chickens are such fun, and so useful in the garden ecosystem. However, I don't think they can ever be totally free range. I let one get out accidentally, and I wasn't all that worried, thinking that she would go back in the pen eventually. She had found a nice hiding place under the pen, nestled in the straw. But Rick and I decided to go ahead and catch her. We did, and right after that, we heard/felt a huge swoop of wings. It seems our hawk had seen her, and was making a bombing run at her last known location. If Rick and I hadn't caught her right then, she'd have been hawk dinner! So... they will have to "free" range in their tractor.
Despite the cold, the tomatoes are setting fruit. This is a bad spring for tomatoes, but I'm hoping we get some warm weather soon.
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Weather Note
It's still unseasonably cold. Daytime highs have only been 65, and it's still getting in the high 40s at night. The ground has warmed up some, however. It's raining all this week. I'm just glad we got the fence done with little rain interruption.
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The lettuce I recently transplanted it doing really well. In a normal year, it would already be too hot for lettuce, but this year it's thriving. We cut a couple low hanging branches on the sycamore so row 2 gets a little more light, which will help the peppers you can see here planted among the lettuce.
This pepper is blooming! This is a Quadrato d'Asti Giallo (nicknamed "Quads"). It's a large, square yellow bell pepper, and one the GRUB folks said did well here. This is just a little farther up row 2 from the lettuce seen above.
Last Sunday, Rene and Cindy came over to the farm, and Cindy decorated the Fairy House. She's also making a lovely sign for it. Notice the tiny borage flower in the window, the garland over the door, and the box of harvest out front.
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