Spring Beginnings

It's been a busy week on our homestead.  With the warmer temperatures and lots of rain, our garlic really popped up. 

Garlic growing

We were really excited to see the garlic coming up through the straw mulch we put down.  And now we just can't wait to see how well it does at keeping the weeds down.  Because we plant in raised beds, we put the straw down really thick in between the beds and about 1 inch thick on top of the beds.  Next year, we want to mulch in the fall instead of the spring.

Today we got our new egg laying chickens, 8 red sex links.  We can't wait to have fresh, organic eggs again.  Since our chickens stopped laying in December, we've probably eaten 3-4 dozen eggs total in 4 months, compared to 2-3 dozen a week. 

New chickens

Now on to the chores and to-do list.  Fences to take down, fences to put up, new electricity in the barn, new raised garden beds, and the list goes on and on.

Starting Seeds

Last year we bought a Burpee XL Ultimate Growing System and it worked very well.
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-kits/xl-ultimate-growing-system-prod002628.html

However, it used those expanding peat moss biscuits that were enclosed in a mesh, which I didn't care for.  The watering system though was fabulous.  We could go up to 7 days without watering and we had excellent plants; by far my best seedlings ever.  The cover doesn't exactly fit the tray and is fragile.  I cracked it trying to get it down on the one corner, but it still works well.

This year I decided to use the peat pots with the self watering mat and tray.  We are also trying Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix.  In the past I have used my own compost, but this year it's under 2 feet of snow and frozen solid.

Our seed starting setup

We've grown our vegetables from seed for years now with several different setups but all basically the same.  Hanging above the bench is a $20 shop light from Home Depot with daylight T-8 bulbs.  Then it's one or two flats of cells and a little plastic dome that goes over them (the dome seems to be very important until the plants get pretty big).  Under the trays is a heating pad.  The cells I like to use are the larger ones where you get 36 cells per tray.  With these Jiffy Strips, we get 50 cells per tray.

I will review the starting mix and the Jiffy Strips in the upcoming weeks.

New Garden Design

After gardening with a square foot garden made of 2x6 for several years, and complaining about things each year, I've decided to try use a different approach going forward.

I want to keep with the intensive planting that Square Foot Gardening introduced me to, but improve upon a couple of things.  First is to build my beds about knee high, so roughly 2 feet high.  The hope is to save our backs a little, make mowing easier, and provide more nutrient rich soil to the vegetables. 

With a bed this high, we are planning on using landscaping timbers stacked up and connected with long nails.  We'll see how that goes.  Otherwise we'll connect them with 1/2 in bores and rebar.  But with beds this high and using landscaping ties, we are also planning on making our beds 20 feet long.  This will actually make the foot print of our garden smaller.  Right now we have 4 feet between each box on each side.  So with this set up, we will only need 2 long beds to get the same space as our 9 beds AND our four 1x4 beds!!

Another advantage that going from 13 beds to 2 beds is that an automated irrigation system becomes a lot more manageable and cheaper.  Even without an automated system, watering will definitely be easier.  Our final improvement with the beds is to put hardware netting on the bottom of them to keep the moles out of the beds.  We've lost too many crops to moles/voles over the years.

Our spacing between our beds will allow us to mow in-between the beds.  So maintenance between the beds will now consist of one pass with the lawn mower.

We will continue planting in our intensive, "square foot" way, but will have to think more carefully about where we plant things.  We will also have to get a lot more soil into the beds.

So as I get my seeds started this weekend, I'll be spending plenty of time thinking about the logistics of where things will be planted, how much space they take, etc.

End of Year

It's the end of the year; a time for reflection and planning.  Our homestead feels a little empty with no chickens to take care of.  We started the year with 5 laying chickens, raised and butchered 25 meat chickens, and then butchered our laying chickens when they stopped producing.  We are already planning on getting 6 laying chickens in March.

Right now we are excited about growing two or three pigs in our current fenced in chicken yard.  One pig for us, and the rest for our families.  Our families are excited about the prospect of us growing some pigs for them as well.  These pigs would be butchered right around the time when the new layers are ready to occupy the space.  Although I'm not throwing out the idea of raising them on concrete in the barn as my neighbor does.  One of the benefits would be the ability to collect and spread the manure on our fields.

Speaking of fields, if I had laid out my beds better, I could have got one more bed in the field and used up all of our seed.  Our goal this year is to sell 500 pounds of garlic, which would make the tractor payment for the year and purchase a new raised bed maker from Buckeye Tractor.
http://www.buctraco.com/3%20Online%20Catalog/Model1921-Dx.htm

We are also looking forward to planting a half acre of corn.  After talking with our friends, family, and neighbors, we've decided on a the types of corn and are preparing our seed order.  We haven't yet figured out how we are going to plant the corn.  I've seen 1 and 2 row planters at auctions for less than $300 that need some work, but for only 1/2 acre I could get a brand new walk behind planter.

As the year winds down, we have been spending time looking at more acreage.  Wooded acreage for cutting firewood, hunting, and building a small camp.  Tillable acreage for expanding our garlic crop and raising beef cattle.

Reflecting on our garden and our harvest the last few years, we have to make some changes.  We have raised beds that need repaired/replaced.  Our 1 foot wide beds are going to expand to 2 foot wide for our tomatoes.  Our walkways need to be repaired and finished.  And finally our soil/compost mix needs to be refreshed in all of the boxes.  We've talked about putting up a greenhouse on the south side of the barn so that we can get an early start on everything and even grow some things year round.

We will not get all of the projects done that we envision for 2015, but we've come to realize that is just a part of homesteading.  There is always more to get done than there are hours in the day. 

Overall, we had a good year and we are looking forward to 2015.