Yearly Archive: 2017

Greeting friends! Its been awhile since I posted. I hope your winter is going well and for those of you in USDA zones 7 and 8a, I imagine your peony soldiers are showing growth above ground level. As Becky had posted earlier, yours truly had sinuses surgery about 10-days ago. For those of you who have had this done, I now know that the recovery is a bear. Thank you for those who have kept me (and Becky) in your thoughts and prayers as this has not been a pleasant experience. Thankfully Becky has been great taking care of me. Although it appears as of late that she needs to run to the local organic grocery store and is very willing to help out at church activities? Not sure what that is all about? I keep saying this too shall pass (recovery that is) and in a few weeks my sinuses will be better than before! Two milestones were achieved within a week whereby I could smell and taste again! My, my I forgot how good organic fried eggs taste! Can’t wait to smell the peonies this spring!

Life on the peony farm has a new member to the fertilizer production team. Meet ‘Patriot’ who was born a few days ago. He is a long legged Dexter and his mom is ‘Daisy’. This is ‘Elvis Lee’s’ first offspring and he is so proud! You can see Elvis Lee lumbering towards us in the upper left corner of this picture. Always the protective dad which is paramount to the success and safety of our herd. Patriot is a ‘red Dexter’ like his father. Red is one of the most sought after colors within the Dexter’s so its father like son. Daisy by the way, is a dunn Dexter. We have high hopes for many red colored offspring from Elvis Lee. Our former herd sire (bull) Buford, gave us a few red’s and dunn’s, but most of his offspring were black in color. All of the fertilizer production team members are doing great this winter, but they and the peonies are anxious for spring!

The peonies are blooming on our 2017 website! Hi gardening friends, Becky here. We just launched our new 2017 website moments ago. Enjoy your visit whether you are a returning customer or new peony enthusiast. Keith will be back on the blog in a couple of weeks as I had the pleasure of accompanying him to another one-day surgery procedure. Nothing too spectacular other than opening up his sinuses that have plagued him over the last few winters. Say a prayer for me as I attend to his needs, well for him too! Thanks again for stopping by and enjoy our 2017 website for some amazing peonies and especially our intersectional/Itoh hybrid peonies!

The peonies updates are finally done on our end and off to our very capable webmaster to do his thing! Hard to believe that seven weeks of photography during the bloom season, cropping a few hundred of the almost 3,000 photos taken, editing and proofing are now down to a CD. This time of year is fun to go through all the photos and try and pick the ones that look nice for the website. This year we kept our web designers homepage as is after all the positive feedback we received last year. We asked her for an easy to navigate page and wow did she do her magic. Yes it costs a lot of money to retain her, but she has been designing our site since we first started. She is an national award winning designer and can’t thank her enough! Our webmaster will update us on the 2017 launch date when more facts are available. We can’t wait to show off some of our peonies to you!

And who thought only peonies had fun in the winter snow! Almost four inches of snow fell today and the fertilizer production team had fun both inside the barn and in the loafing area. We still can’t believe these crazy adult cows who love to sleep and stay outside when its snowing. All the young ones though prefer to stay in the barn. Bessie aka ‘crooked horn’ the black cow on the left, is ever so watchful of her calf born this fall on the right. She makes sure her calf stays almost in the barn instead of coming to meet Becky when she took these pictures. Our matriarch cow Daisy, just Daisy for her, doesn’t like going in the barn and would rather stay out in the snow. If only the peonies were awake to thank the fertilizer production teams for hanging in there during a snowstorm until they wake up in the spring!

For us up here in the north country, the peonies are sound asleep! That doesn’t mean we have been though. We are assuming early February, 2017 for our new launch. Of course that may change so will update as more facts are available. Though the ground is fairly white with snow outside, we sure could use some more! Happy New Year gardening friends! We wish you a healthy and peaceful 2017. Oh and Happy New Year to all the peonies too.