Friday, June 26, 2009

Jam

The guys went strawberry picking with me this morning. One pie and five batches of jam later (37 half-pint jars) I am way past ready for bed.

Didn't do schoolwork today, or clean house, or hoe the garden, or haul manure, or do the grocery shopping. So much still on the to-do list. But at least we aren't bereft of jam for the PBJs!

Tomorrow the dump truck arrives with the load of topsoil that will fill in the messy spot left from the spot the pool vacated 14 months ago. Some of that dirt will go into my raised beds. I really wanted to get a good pile of manure under the topsoil, but we don't have to move all that dirt into its proper place tomorrow already. That's something we can pick away at over the next week or two, and then sow the grass seed.

2 comments:

  1. Where did you get your topsoil? And, if you don't mind answering...What is the going rate for topsoil?

    Thanks!

    Sara K.

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  2. I called several different places in our area. I don't know if they deliver as far as your place. The rates for a truckload ran $16-23 per yard, depending on which company and how much and quality of the soil. I went with Monsen in M Falls because they were the closest and the cheapest and seemed to be the most helpful on the phone.

    I was expecting soil to be a lot more. When my friend Jane built a raised bed garden and she mentioned something about the costs (in terms of how much they were hoping to save by gardening instead of grocery shopping), I extrapolated from that and figured it was going to cost us over $1000 in soil to cover the spot where the pool used to be and put some dirt in our raised beds. And when I was hunting for something else on craigslist, I once found "free" topsoil with a $70/yd delivery fee, I thought that sounded consistent. So I was very pleased when I found that Monsen charged a LOT less than I had feared. (I guess that's one of those "let the buyer beware" on craigslist.)

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