I tried writing this morning but nothing worked, I guess everyone gets on first thing in the morning.  So I went out side and was going to work on weeding the hoster bed but I saw the raspberries were starting to leaf out so decided to turn my attention to them.  There are three rows and I got one done this morning.  Each plant needs to be pruned.  I cut out any dead cane, tie up those that have grown over the winter and cut them off at 6 foot.  If I don’t cut them they hang over the fence and take root in the ground on the other side and those don’t bear fruit.  I have enough plants so don’t want to waste their energy on new roots.  Norman enlarged the aspagrus bed by about 30 inches sowhen we go into town this week I can get some more roots and we need to get more horse manure for them.    2007 leaft us with quite a farm.  We had all the fruit trees in, the ornamental trees and bushes in, all the berries in and a vegatable garden behind the house.  Norman had put in all the floors and the downstairs kitchen and a deck in the back outside the kitchen door.  He had even built a tool shed to store the gardening tools.  This shed had a wood shed on one side and a green house on the other.  The only thing that needed more space was his work room.  He needed room to store his tools,  and to do his sawing that would not make so much dust in my part of the cellar.  So he started this barn.  Instead of using the plywood as he had for the tool shed he got a truck load of rough cut lumber from the local lumber mill in Spencer.  It was a nice hard oak.  He used the presure treated wood from Lowes to make the frame.  He used the pole barn design and put in a loft.  The land here is all sloped so decided to have a sunken floor on the back corner so if we ever wanted to have chicken we could fence that part off for a chicken coop, with a yard out back.  He put in fiber glass windows on both sides just under the edge of the roof and two windows inside so there would be enought light inside.  The barn came out great.  Here is the loft and as you can see we had a family move in.  There were so many voles and moles here that we were glad to see some wild cats come and we fed them.  There are not too many wild animals around but in 2oo7 I had a family of grey foxes that I fed and they got quite tame.  I did  not try to pat them as they do carry rabbes and I sneeze if I am near any animal so we just enjoyed watching them.   We ended up with three males and one female cat.  There were three other cats that came around once in a while to eat but never if we were out or could see them.  We used to fed them on the front porch so we could watch them but found we could not leave the dry food out at night because the raccoons and oppossums come every night and ate it all and left a big mess on the deck.  They also fought with each other and chased the catsif they were around so we had to take the food in as soon as it got dark.  That didn’t bother the cats, they still came around and hung around most of the time.  Before the summer was out the female had a litter.  She did not like having me near her young so she carried them off into the woods and something got them.  She was hurt so came back here to be fed.  She still would not let me near her and I didn’t really try.  These are the cats in 2009, mother, old yella and two babies.  mother had them in the box and let them stay.  The babies were not as wild as the adults.   Shortly after this picture mother took off and never came back again.  One of the males, we called Wiskey because he was black and white got quite mean and one day bit me in the leg and scratched me quite badly so we chased him off and he never came back.  Yella did not make it through the next winter.  He was very chewed up in fights and just too old I guess.  The large tiger is still here, the babies we had put down.  We now have the barn cleaned up and aired out, it got smelling awful bad with the cats in there.   More tomorrow on our wild animals and how be beat them.  Have a good day