Carrot Harvest

We picked all of our carrots today.  We had really good germination and growth rates.  Our total harvested weight was 30-40 pounds with the tops. 

Summer carrot harvest

 I surprised Debbie by coming to the house with the entire bunch on my shoulder.  As we were processing them outside, Debbie couldn't resist the urge to make vegetable soup for dinner.  It smells so good in the house right now.  Fresh garlic, onions, zucchini, squash, carrots, green beans, and canned tomatoes from last year.

We also had some more zucchini and squash to pick.  We will cut some of the squash and zucchini up and freeze for the winter.  We also like to shred the zucchini and freeze it that way for making zucchini bread all winter long.

Zucchini and squash harvest

Now I will wait 3 weeks and plant 256 more carrots for a fall harvest.  The fall ones have been a lot sweeter carrot for us. 

Zucchini, Squash, and Beans - Oh My

It has been 1 week since our first bean harvest.  Our first week of harvesting beans has netted us 35 pints of beans.  And that was during a week where the temperature was regularly above 90 and hit 98 several times.  The high temps meant harvesting beans at dusk and once with a headlamp after the sun went down.  The cool thing about beans is that if you continue to harvest them religiously every 2-3 days, you will be rewarded with more beans.

We've been getting 4-5 large zucchinis every 2-3 days as well.  And now that the crooked neck squash is coming in as well, I think we'll be having some veggie only meals.  Our peppers look great and are just coming into harvest with 1 or 2 ready to pick.  Also our cucumbers have produced several fruits.  Too bad there aren't any tomatoes ready yet so Debbie can make a tomato and cucumber salad (for herself).  But I'm not going to cry about the tomatoes not being ready yet because in a few weeks it will be crazy in the garden.

Besides the beans, the onions are all out of the ground now and drying in the barn.  I have a 36" barn fan set on low to keep the dry air moving around them.

The garlic is done drying and ready for storage.  Debbie tasted it raw last night and couldn't believe how much stronger it was than the stuff she was buying at the store.  In order to plant 256 heads in the fall, we will only have about 4-5 heads for eating this year.  But then in 2 years from now, I should have enough to grow 1/2 acre.

Tomorrow I will pick about 75% of the carrots.  The rest aren't quite ready yet.  I've picked 2 test carrots and they were beautiful.  8-9 inches long, 1 inch in diameter, and very sweet.

Garlic Harvest

The garlic was ready to harvest today.  We only planted 36 heads of Purple Italian this year.  We will use about 10 heads to make spaghetti sauce and use for cooking, then I will plant the rest for next year.  That should give me around 250 heads next year.

Garlic harvest and ready to be cured

 I tied them into 6 bundles of 6 heads with a long piece of binders twine.  I put a loop at the end of the twine and hang them from nails in the barn.  They will hang there for 3-4 weeks before they are ready.  To tell if they are ready, you cut the stem off of one and squeeze it to see if there is any liquid in it.  If there is, then they aren't ready yet.

The onions are also getting ready to harvest.  There were 12-18 that were ready today, so I pulled them and set them out to start curing.  Tomorrow I will put them on wire racks and hang them in the barn for about 30 days to cure for storage.  With how fast they grew this year, I'm tempted to plant again since we have 3-4 months of growing season left.

And one final surprise, our first mature pepper is ready.  That was kind of surprising considering that the plants aren't that big yet and they've only been in the ground for a month.  Being on so early, I'll wait until they turn yellow, orange, or red before harvesting.  They are a lot sweeter when they aren't green.

First mature pepper

The Garden is Growing

The garden is in full bloom.  We harvested the first zucchini today, about 7 inches long.  The garlic is almost ready to harvest.  Onions are bulbing up really nice.  Beans have the first flowers coming on.  Peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers all have fruit that should be ready in 2-3 weeks.  Here are some pictures of the garden.

Full Garden in the late afternoon

Peppers in the front two boxes, garlic & onions on the left, onions/lettuce/spinach in the center box

Beans in the front two boxes, carrots in the back, cucumbers and winter squash on the right

Winter squash climbing the trellis. Save space by growing vertically

Two 10x1 foot boxes for the tomatoes, zucchini in the foreground, crooked neck squash in the center

Buying Bulk Garlic

I've been trying to find suppliers to buy bulk garlic.  I never thought it would be so hard to order 600 pounds of garlic (125 pounds of 5 different varieties).  So far, every supplier I've contacted already has their bulbs reserved.  The sad part is I actually scaled down from 1 acre of planting to 1/2 acre in hopes of being able to procure enough to be able to sell some and keep enough to plant 1 acre next year.

My plan for the garlic crop is to plant 25 rows 220 feet long, which comes out to approximately 1/2 acre.  Each row is actually a 12 inch wide raised bed that I will plant 2 rows of garlic in, spaced 8 inches apart.  The garlic will be spaced 4 inches apart in each row.  That will give me 1320 plants per bed, for a total of 33,000 heads of garlic.  This would give me approximately 4,000 pounds of garlic for next year, allowing me to sell 3,000 pounds and keep 1,000 pounds to plant.

Now I just have to hope to find a supplier to make this a reality.

Full-time Farming

I've been thinking about it on and off for months, but recently I can't stop thinking about full-time farming.  I'm not really interested in animals, at least not with my regular full time job, but would really like to grow vegetables.  Actually, not vegetables, just one vegetable, garlic.  After doing a lot of research into costs, yields, market prices, and markets, I think in this area I can expect a net income of $4/pound with a yield of 7000 - 10,000 pounds per acre.  The cost for the seed for 1 acre is around $2500 - $5000.  After adding in the cost of diesel, a used set of disc harrows, and hay for mulch, my expected profit is around $23,000 - $32,500/acre.  There are other costs yet to figure in, like transportation to/from the farm, etc., but there is still a lot of profit to be made.

I'm looking at 7 acres of land about 20 miles from here.  The goal would be to work up to 2 acre plots of garlic with a 2 year rotation before planting any one field again and planting nitrogen rich cover crops in the off years.  With a potential profit of $50,000 - $60,000 a year from 2 acres, I could soon be down the path of becoming a full-time farmer.  I would also like to put in some berry plants to add some additional income or even put some of the profits into a small orchard.

The beef farmer down the road sells to a couple of large restaurants in Pittsburgh, so I am going to talk with him about potentially getting my garlic into the same restaurants and thus cutting each of our shipping costs since we could ship in the same truck.  Besides selling to restaurants, we would sell at a couple of the farmers markets in the area and since our homestead is along a highway, we would put up a sign and sell out of the barn.

I am working on the business plan and financial breakdown for the first 3 years of operation.  If it all works out and I can grow garlic while still working my regular job for another couple of years, we could have our house + farm paid off in 2 years.  Then there is no reason not to be a full time farmer.

Salad Harvest

Now we are in full salad harvest mode.  Leaf lettuce, spinach salads everyday with radishes thrown in once in a while.  The lettuce has been loving the last week of 60 degree temps and drizzly days.  The taste is so much better than the previous week when it was in the 80s and 90s.  Although we found that by mixing the bitter lettuce leaves with the creamy, mild spinach, that they can balance each other out quite well.  Much better than throwing away baskets of lettuce because it is too bitter.

We seem to get about 4 weeks of quality lettuce from our plants before the seed stalk really takes over.   Once that happens, I pull the plants, add some compost topping and plant some new seeds, except for the heat of summer.

The onions, which I didn't think would make it through all the hard freezes, are the biggest I've ever seen grown in a square foot garden and are bigger than the commercial vegetable farmer's down the road.  His are the same size as my second crop, which I planted in mid-April.  I'm hoping to get some nice baseball sized onions, possibly a few bigger.  The plants are higher than my hip with a couple reaching for my chest.

The beans that made it through the frost really taking off with the healthiest plants being calf high already.  The 7 cucumbers look really good so far.  Hopefully they won't die off in July like the preceding years.  Zucchini and squash are huge already.

Planting is Done

Memorial Day came, which is normally when I would plant the majority of the garden.  Most of it was already in this year, so I just had to plant the tomatoes and peppers.  Unfortunately a  late frost and a long night killed off my pepper and tomato plants that I had started, so I had to buy plants.  We put in 20 tomato plants and 32 pepper plants on Saturday.

It was almost 90 degrees when we put the plants in and we had a wedding to attend in the afternoon, so the rush was on to build boxes for the tomatoes, get them set, fill them with dirt, and finally do some planting.  We got all the plants in the ground in about an hour and gave them a quick drink while we went to the wedding.  Fortunately it would up raining the next day and today, so everything is looking really good.

The garlic went to seed already, which was kind of a surprise for me, as did some of the onions.  My onions, which I didn't think was going to make it through the April freezes, is waist high and looking better than the commercial farmer's onions down the road.  All the plants look exceptionally good this year, especially considering that it isn't even June yet.

There is still a lot of work to do.  I have to get the cattle fencing for the tomatoes cut into 10 foot lengths and put into place.  This year I am putting a fence on both sides of the 1 foot wide box to make sure there is lots of support.  I also need to put the cages around the 32 peppers.  Last year I didn't cage the habaneros but I think they would have benefited from it.  I need to replant about 30% of the carrots that didn't germinate.  That happened last year too, but the replanting worked out great.  Finally I need to finish putting down the walkways between the boxes.  The plastic is down, mainly to control the weeds, I just have to cut the boards and nail/screw them.

It looks like it might be the best year yet for the garden.  Hopefully I can keep learning and maybe one day make some money at it.

Spring Planting

With the abundance of warm weather and rain we've been getting, I decided that last Friday was the perfect time to get everything planted, except the tomatoes and peppers.  So I started cleaning out boxes, pulling weeds and getting everything prepped.  It took five loads of dirt to fill four boxes + two long boxes.  With all the boxes ready, I decided I would start by putting up my trellis for the cucumbers and winter squash.

Trellis

My cucumbers are planted in the top skinny box in the picture, the winter squash are in the closest box.  I have 5 cucumbers in a 1'x10' box and 3 butternut squash in the other 1'x10' box.  As you may know, cucumbers and winter squash grow on vines and will grow to take over a large part of a garden.  A lot of people plant them on hills.  Rather than take up all of that room, I use cattle fencing, which is 16 feet long and 5 feet high as a trellis for the vines to grow on.  You can buy trellis material made for gardening, I just happened to have a lot of this cattle fencing around the property when we moved in and decided it would be perfect (and it has been).  After working with it for a couple of years, I would actually recommend it at this point.  It is easy to work with, just one piece, you can cut the bottom off and use the pieces sticking out to put into the ground, and it is extremely sturdy.  I use 1/2" steel round bar driven into the ground to hold the trellis up.  Again, there was a lot of lying around in a scrap pile on the property when we moved in.  If I didn't have that, I would use metal rebar, approximately 4 feet long with 12 inches driven into the ground.  That will ensure that your trellis doesn't fall down during high wind or heavy weight of the vegetables.

With the cucumbers and winter squash planted, I move on to the summer squash and zucchini.  These you plant 1 per box because they take up a lot of room.  I put 4 seeds in the center of each box.  Once they germinate and poke through, I will keep the two strongest vines.  This is a little different than I have done in past years, keeping just one plant per box, so we'll see how it turns out.

Finally I put the beans in.  I put 9 plants per square foot and plant two full boxes of beans, one yellow wax and one green.  That is a total of 144 plants of each type.  Last year our harvest was around 180 pints of beans, which we froze or ate fresh.  My goal each year is 150 pints.  That allows us to eat beans 3 days per week for an entire year.  I prefer bush beans instead of pole beans for the square foot garden.  And although the packages say that you'll only get so many beans and then they are done with bush beans, I've never seen that to be true.  We will usually start harvesting in July and continue until the frost hits in late October.  I will have to remember next year that I can buy the beans by the ounce at the local hardware store rather than by the package.

After all the planting was done, it was time for weeding and checking the progress of the other plants.  The garlic and onions all look great; we can't wait until we get to harvest them.  I had planted some spinach and lettuce back in March, then we had quite a few hard freezes.  Two of the plants survived, so I predict will be enjoying the first salad by the end of the week.  They love the cool evenings and rainy days we've been getting.  The radishes look awesome and my wife can't wait to harvest the first square.  I plant one square every week, then after 21-25 days of growing, I will harvest the radishes.  Every week after that, I harvest 16 radishes and plant 16 more.  This continues until roughly the middle of July or whenever it gets too hot for the radishes, then I'll start again around the beginning of September.

Radishes planted 2 weeks ago, radishes planted 1 week ago, lettuce, spinach, and some left over onions

 I'll do the same thing with leaf lettuce, spinach and head lettuce, although you don't harvest the entire square, so at some point you end up with an abundance of lettuce & spinach.  With head lettuce, spreading out plantings allows you to not have multiple heads of lettuce ready to harvest at one time.

Now it's time to get the walkways finished before July and we spend every day harvesting and/or canning.

Carrots

The weather went from having a hard freeze to 80 degrees in 2 days.  That put everything into high-gear.  Today I built another 4x4 box to go on top of another, making it 12 inches deep.  This is where my carrots will grow.  Unfortunately I got a late start on it.

I set out around 7:45 PM to build the box and plant the carrots, however upon arriving in the garden, I noticed that not only have the plants really taken of with the warm days and rainy nights, so have the weeds.  So I started by weeding my lettuce, spinach and radishes.  Once that was done I went over to the onions and garlic.  Then I weeded the box where the carrots would go, even though these weeds would soon be covered with 6-7 inches of dirt.

Having all that done, I cut my boards, nailed the box together and got it to the garden, just as the sun was going below the treetops.  I figured I had 30 minutes until it got dark.  With my double box in place, I fired up the tractor and started hauling soil from my compost bins.  One and a half buckets in the loader and the box was full.  With daylight quickly fading, I measured out the square feet, drove some 8 penny nails in the box and ran to get the seeds & twine.  Wrapping the twine around the nails marks off each square foot.

Double high carrot box

I marked out my 16 holes per square foot and I could no longer see to tell if my seeds were hitting the holes.  So I got a flashlight, and planted 256 carrots under the full moon with a flash light.  Had it been beans or corn I was planting, there would have been no need for the flashlight, but with the tiny carrot seeds, I really didn't have a choice.  Other than being eaten by mosquitos, it was a really nice, cool evening to be planting.  And being able to finish under the moonlight was cool.

Happy Garlic, Sad Onions

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  Mostly trying to finish the drywall in the additions so that there is time in the spring to get everything else done.  On top of that I received a gift of firewood, approximately 5 years worth of firewood that is on the ground.  So between drywall and hauling firewood, I have been trying to make progress on the spring planting.

The warm March weather gave way to very cold April weather with several hard freezes.  The garlic loved it and is still thriving, however the onions took a beating.  I had to replant about 1 dozen.  The rest of them appear like they will make it.  Out of the 12 that I pulled, most of them had really good roots, so they might have come back.  Oh well.  I planted another 26 onions in a different box as backup.  You can see the onions in the front, so of it looks pretty rough, so we'll see what happens over the next couple weeks.

Happy garlic, sad onions

I started putting down the decking boards as walkways in the garden.  The decking boards are from the old deck we tore off last year.  Rather than just burn them, I decided to reuse them in the garden.  You can see the picture here working down the first row.  The tomato boxes are on the right, which is why they are only 1 foot wide (and if you look you can see the tire swing in the background).

Recycled walkways

I planted my hot peppers last night.  I have to buy heat pads, the one I have isn't working.  I'm hoping they will be weaned and ready to go in the ground in 6 weeks.  We'll find out soon enough.  If not, they can go in later or in containers.  If they are in containers, I can move them into the greenhouse in the fall and try to extend the season a little.

I also planted 1 square each of radishes, leaf lettuce, and spinach.  For these type of crops I like to plant 1 square each week, so that I have a continuous harvest throughout the spring.  For the radishes, I will use 4 squares, and after 3-4 weeks, I end up planting one square and harvesting one.  Lettuce and spinach I will end up with a total of 4 squares of each planted, by the time the youngest plants are ready to start harvesting, the older ones are just about done.

We are almost into full blown planting season, so I hope to get the walkways finished shortly.  Look for more frequent updates as May comes around.

Unusually warm weather

It is March 20th and the temperature is going to be close to 80 degrees.  Usually the garlic is just poking through on the warm days and there is no thought of planting anything else.  However, we are going to take advantage of the weather and put in some radishes, spinach, and lettuce.  The garlic however is loving the warm weather.  You can see it is up to almost 8 inches tall and about 1/2 of the onions have sprouted already.

There are 9 plants per square foot, equaling 36 heads of garlic and 108 onions.  The best part of square foot gardening, is that I can have a box prepped for planting in an hour or so.  Fill up the boxes with some new compost, put down new strings to mark off the square feet, and start planting.  No tilling, very little weeding, and a lot of food grown in a small area.

If you are interested, check out Mel's book:

Compost

For some reason, I've always been infatuated with compost.  The idea of taking plant material, piling it up, and it turns into dirt has amazed me from the time I was a kid until now.  I remember gathering grass clippings as a kid, shredding them, and turning them weekly, always in shock at the heat generated in the middle of the pile.  On our 4 acre homestead, I have 3 compost bins that are 5x5x4.  That is big enough for me to turn the compost with my front loader and to hold all of the compost we have.  We moved onto an old pony farm and the barn hadn't been cleaned out for several years.  I still have a large 40x10 stall clean out and put into the bins (which will require me to build a 4th bin).

Anyway, compost has been on my mind.  Yesterday I cleaned out 1/2 of my boxes from last year, taking the old, dry plants to the bins and layering with loads of manure from the barn.  I don't own a chipper/shredder yet, mainly because new ones cost way too much, so I'm waiting to find one at an auction.

With the rainy season in Western PA upon us, this is the perfect time to get the new compost working and by layering the dry material with the manure and sawdust from the barn, it should all break down nicely by summer.  I have 100 cu. ft. of compost ready to go for the year, so this new batch can work for an entire year before being put into use.  Frankly, I like the longer wait time as it allows the seeds to break down and there aren't as many weeds when it is used. Once we get our rabbits, their manure will contribute to the compost and by next year I'll have 100 cu.ft. of black gold.

For anyone that is getting into gardening, I can't emphasize enough the benefit of composting.  You are going to have vegetables that are unusable, grass clippings, leaves, kitchen waste, and your spent plants.  Rather than throw all of that out, start a compost bin and turn that into nutrients for your garden next year.  The results from that black gold far surpasses what I've ever gotten from dirt + fertilizer.  As a matter of fact, last year I had 6 foot high pepper plants and more than enough produce without using any fertilizer at all.

Happy composting.

Planting Onion Sets

The garlic popped up about 10 days ago, right on schedule with the daffodils.  With the 60+ degree temperatures we've had and the amazing weather forecast, I decided it was time to put the onions in the ground.  This is probably 4 weeks earlier than I would have normally planted them, however everything is defrosted and the forecast is for 60 degree temps for the foreseeable future.

For those of you who don't know, I have a square foot garden, which is raised beds, 4x4 feet split into 1 foot squares.  I planted onions in 12 squares, 9 per square, giving me 108 potential onions.  Half are sweet onions, the other half are red onions.  I'm looking forward to seeing how they do since I've never planted onion sets before, always planted seeds.

I also turned my compost and started cleaning out the big stall in the barn.  The big stall is 10x40 and has 4 years of horse bedding and manure in it, left over from the previous owner.  This is going to be my wood shop, so it is time for it to get cleaned out.  I might have to create another compost bin in order to hold everything and have one for rotation. I definitely need to get a chipper/shredder.  I've been putting it off, but I need to shred the left over plants from last years garden and it would be nice to shred the manure/bedding that i'm cleaning out.

Soups ON!

As winter decided to come back here in Pa the other day I thought what a great day for soup! Now the last time I made a tomato base soup it really wasn't that good, it wasn't terrible but not good either. So I decided to listen to my husband and look in the LL Bean cookbook we have. (You can never go wrong with LL Bean.) So I found two recipes for a stew and adjusted it a little.

Ingredients:

1 lb of Elk Stew meat
 1/4 cup of flour
Salt and Pepper
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 small onions, chopped
1/2 cup green peppers, chopped
1 can corn, drained
1 quart frozen green beans
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp marjoram
1/4 tsp thyme
1 Tb. chopped  parsley
1/2 cup red wine
1 quart tomato Juice
1 pint of diced tomatoes
1/2 cup white beans
1/2 cup kidney beans
1 cup beef broth

Saute (in same pot your going to cook your soup in) the garlic and onions in Olive oil until soft then add the green peppers. Remove from heat and place in bowl

Roll the meat in the flour, salt, pepper. Brown meat in same pot add garlic, onions and green peppers. Add tomato juice, diced tomatoes, wine, beef broth, corn, green beans, beans and herbs. Cover and let simmer about 5 hours Checking liquid from time to time and stirring.

I must say that this soup was very yummy...in fact we ate it for three days! Cant wait to try again.

Superbowl Appetizer - Rabbit Nuggets

I wanted to make something that my wife and kid have never tasted, so during one hunting trip this winter, I saved the backstraps off of the 3 rabbits I got and put them in their own bag.  I had planned on making rabbit nuggets for the Superbowl for weeks.  I cut the strips into 1 inch nuggets, breaded them in pancake batter with pepper, rosemary and salt, then deep fried them in vegetable oil for approximately 5 minutes.  3 rabbits gave us 28 nuggets and both my son & wife thought they were amazing.  Needless to say, Debbie is totally on board with raising meat rabbits after two delicious rabbit meals.

Ingredients:
Rabbit backstraps
2 cups pancake batter
1 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp rosemary

1) Cut backstraps into 1 inch nuggets
2) Mix pancake batter
3) Add pepper, salt, and rosemary
4) Coat rabbit with pancake mixture
5) Fry in oil for 5 minutes or until dark golden brown

Meat Rabbits

I started doing research into raising rabbits for meat.  I recently got into rabbit hunting through my neighbor and my family LOVES eating rabbit.  However, it is cheaper and less time consuming to raise rabbits than it is to raise a beagle.  Plus, I have a food source I can count on, even though I love hunting, I can not count on my ability to hit game or for the availability of game.  I think I have 8 - 10 in the freezer right now from 5 or 6 trips this year.

Looking through Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits, I saw a lattice house that held the rabbits.  I think we are going to build something very similar.  We have an area of the property that is over run by vines and located amongst some small trees.  The vines can grow up the lattice and provide protection from elements and the shed will fit in very nicely with the natural environment.

As far as the number of rabbits, I think we will start with 2 bucks and 2 does.  That should give us 1 meal of rabbit meat each week through the year plus allow us to build/replace our breeding stock.  Right now I'm leaning toward New Zealand or Californians.  Pretty basic rabbits with a body weight of 8-10 pounds.  The manure will be a great addition to our compost, which is mostly horse manure now (left over in the barn from the previous owner).  I still have to research housing facilities, food costs, etc. before we commit to raising rabbits, but right now we are strongly leaning toward it.

Firewood

The weather turned cold, the snow fell, and we ran out of firewood.  Completely out.  I figured we were about 2 cords short when I was cutting over the summer.  So, I cut some of the standing dead trees on our property and that got us by for a few days.  My neighbor told me that I could have all the dead wood on his property.  Most of that wood looks like it had been lying on the ground for years and is way to rotten.  So we cut a little over there that I knew was good and surveyed the rest.  It looks like there could be 8-12 cords of good cherry and ash.

I began the day deciding to cut down the 8 foot maple stump that was in the backyard.  We cut down the tree 3 years ago and the stump was through the deck, so it couldn't come down until now.  After cutting through, it took the tractor to push the stump over.  Once I got the log cut into firewood length pieces, that's when the fun began.  The logs were too heavy for the tractor to pick up with the bucket, so I brought the log splitter over, however, the logs were to heavy to maneuver under the splitter.  The next option was to cut the logs in half.  That effort resulted in a ruined chain when I hit an embedded nail in the log.  At that point I decided to bring out the old fashioned splitter, a sledge hammer and a wedge.  Another fruitless attempt.

Feeling totally defeated, I gathered everything up and walked away.  I wasted a whole day trying to split 4 maple logs, 40 inches in diameter.  I grabbed my chainsaw, crossed the creek, and started cutting the downed trees on my neighbor's property.  The first logs I cut into were starting to get punky, but still burnable.  Then I found several good loads of cherry and ash.  I carried one 8 foot log across the creek with me on my way back to get the 4-wheeler.  At 6:30 PM, I finally had a load of wood in the house, enough wood to get through until tomorrow evening.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get 6-8 loads cut and hauled across the creek before I start work.

There are two lessons learned today

1. Cut more wood than you think you'll use.  Cutting wood in the snow and cold, when there is no more wood in the house is not fun.
2. Don't overlook the dead trees in the woods.  80% of the logs I cut into that I thought were rotten, were actually solid, seasoned wood. 

Garden Planning

With these spring like temperatures and the arrival of the Burpee seed catalog, I can't help but to think about gardening.  I'll be starting all of my plants from seed again, so that means my gardening schedule starts in a couple of weeks.  I use a method of gardening called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew.  My dad started doing it back in 1989 and had huge success.  In case you aren't familiar with square foot gardening, you basically use raised beds made of 2x6 lumber that are 4 feet square, split the box into 16 sq ft and plant each square foot.  Some vegetables take 1 plant per square foot while others fit as many as 16 plants per square foot.  Last year I had nine 4x4 boxes and two 10x1 boxes, for tomatoes, which produced enough food to feed my family for an entire year plus give a lot away to friends and family.

This year, I'm adding two 12x1 boxes to go on the back side of the garden which will house the cucumbers and possibly winter squash.  I'm also planning on adding wooden walkways between the boxes using the old decking boards from our deck.  The final addition to the garden would be to collect the water off the barn roof and run drip irrigation lines to the boxes set on a timer for morning and evening waterings.  I won't really start any of those projects until the spring, but my spring TODO list just keeps getting bigger.

As for the garden plantings, here is my plan:
144 green beans
144 yellow wax beans
16 bell peppers (last year the plants were 5 ft tall)
4 jalepeno peppers
4 cayenne peppers
4 hungarian hot wax peppers
2 habanero peppers
2 bhut jolokia peppers
256 carrots
1 zucchini
1 crooked neck squash
64 garlic
64 onions
100+ radishes (I plant and harvest one square of radishes each week until July, then again in the fall)
64 beets
64 turnips
12 heads of lettuce
4 squares of leaf lettuce
20 tomatoes (mostly paste tomatoes for sauce)
4 cucumbers
1 winter squash

Weird Weather

It has been in the mid to high 40s the last several days and it looks like spring outside.  I keep thinking about gardening, turning my compost, and getting ready for the pigs to come.  Then I remind myself that the cold weather and snow are coming in a couple of days, so enjoy the weather and take advantage of it to get some stuff done.  So I took the deck off the big tractor and got it ready to move snow.  Although it is faster and easier to move snow with a backplow or the quad, you can't beat the convenience of moving lots of snow with a front loader.  I got the house stocked with firewood for the ensuing cold front that is coming.

Speaking of firewood, it appears that I will be about 1-2 cords short this year.  So I will need to do some cutting in January or February.  Fortunately I have wood on the ground that just needs to be cut.  I just have to get my trailer finished in order to get two cords in one trip.  One thing we've found out is that when you heat with wood, you think about wood ALL THE TIME.  During the winter you are thinking if you have enough, if the house has enough stocked, if you have to put more in the furnace.  The rest of the year you are cutting, splitting, stacking, drying, and taking stock to make sure you have enough for the winter.  You are constantly looking for new sources of wood to cut.  We love how the wood heats the house and how much cheaper it is than if we had to buy heating oil, but it is like having a part-time job.

Start of a New Year & New Blog

I've wanted to document our progress of gardening, raising livestock, food preservation, etc. since we moved into our country home 3 years ago.  I've decided that this is the year to start.  Hopefully over the next 12 months I will update this blog with the progress of our farmette.