A Busy Two Days: Updates from the Gardens

Today and yesterday were the top above-ground seed planting days for this month according to the Farmer’s Almanac moon-planting calendar.

Since we are following the Magi at the FA this year as an experiment, we took two days off homeschooling and worked outside instead. Despite the hard freeze a few weeks ago, we didn’t get too much damage and there are blueberries growing on our bushes again.

Almost with planting lots of tomato transplants, some cover crops, more pumpkins and a few moringa trees, we also managed to mulch all the bare rows in the Grocery Row Garden, build a new lean-to rabbit enclosure off the side of the barn, move a pile of sand to create a new garden area, mulch the yam beds, plant some cannas and elephant ears for biomass chop and drop, rake homegrown hay and mulch the smaller garden area, and put wood chip mulch on all the paths there, plus move the cows to a new pasture area and harvest the old manure for compost. We also cut down some rotten and leaning trees, and some that were just casting too much shade on grassy areas. Those areas will be sown to a wide cover-crop mix including millet, bahia, fescue, brassicas, sunn hemp, buckwheat and sunflowers. Later we’ll let the cows, goats and chickens graze through and build organic matter, Gabe Brown-style.

With all the children working we can get a TON done in a couple of days. Heck, I even managed to finish editing and posting a new video.

On the down side, we had dogs kill about 7 of our chickens in the night, yanking them out of our PVC chicken tractor. The chicken tractor thing is obviously flawed out here. Even with our secure wire around the bottom they got in. Pretty sure it was the neighbor’s dogs, since we found feathers and a couple of carcasses on the road leading back to their home.

Oh well – we press on. Deus vult.

The non-dead chickens are laying like crazy right now so we’re getting enough eggs to give away some to neighbors.

The cows are doing great on single-line electric fence, happily moving from place to place and letting us pet them as they eat. We’ll need to figure out how to set up a milking station soon.

Also, I have updated my reading list here on the blog. Since getting rid of my smartphone, I am getting a lot more book reading done. You’ll see that list on the sidebar.

Tomorrow we’re sending our two dairy goats to a neighboring farm to have a meetup with a handsome young Kiko buck. These girls need to start paying their keep in meat and milk.

Catch you all next week.

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