Making Soil

I have an area on the farm that I want to plant carrots. Not just a few carrots tho'. I want to yield around 100lbs of carrots. Why so many? Well although I'm just guessing, I think that is about how many we need for an entire year.

Anyway, to plant carrots you need good deep friable soil so the carrot root will grow nice and straight, and long. The soil I have is thick and heavy. It has never had anything growing on it other then grasses and I believe it has, from time to time, been under water for a few months some years. It is really dark and full of organic matter, but it feels and handles like modeling clay.

Here is my experiment for making it usable for carrots, and any other root veggie.

I started out digging a trench where I want my row to be. It's about 30 feet long and as wide as my shovel. I used what I'm calling the forking method to dig the trench. Basically I dig out a couple of shovel scoops at the end of the row then jam a garden fork into the ground about 3 inches down the row and push the dirt into the shovel hole. Then I move another 3 inches and push the dirt into the hole I just made. and so on down the row.

This breaks up the dirt really well, and makes it easy to remove with the shovel. I scoop the dirt into a mound right next to the trench so I can put it back in later. I did this twice and ended up with a trench that was about a foot deep.

Although the dirt is broken up really well I think it would just pack down again if I just put it back in the hole without some sort of amendments. So here is what I did.

I took a small stack of newspapers and some grass clippings (that I hand scythed) and ran them through my leaf shredder. The combination of the two made a really nice mulch which I spread on the bottom of the ditch. Then I took the fork and broke up the bottom of the ditch to mix the mulch in. The next step was to scrape in some of the dirt add more mulch and fork it again. Then fill the ditch with the rest of the dirt, breaking up the clumps as I went and fork it one more time. I shredded up some more newspaper and put it on top of the now full trench and then laid some newspaper sheets over that and covered the whole thing with a little more dirt.

Now what I do is wait for a few days, maybe a week and see if the ditch attracts some worms. I saw quite a few while I was digging but I want a whole bunch more. The worms should do the rest of the work for me. I'll need to turn the rest of the newspaper into the trench before I plant but I hope to get seed in the ground in less then ten days.

I'll let you know how it goes.

-dale

Debbie found a weasel pup abandoned in the brooder tent yesterday. We are pretty sure it's an Ermin, or short tailed weasel. From what we can figure out it's only a few days old. Why it was abandoned is any ones guess. I think the mother was killed by something and didn't make it back to the nest and this baby crawled out looking for food and warmth. But who knows?  It's eyes aren't open yet, and it has already escaped it's box once, the weaselly little guy:)

-dale

P.S.

To follow Debbies adventures in weasel rehab please check out her bolg.

http://wedonegonecountry.blogspot.com/

-d

Bees

I put out my Top Bar Hive today. I prepped it with Beeswax and a little lemon grass oil. I'm led to believe that most TBHs that are set up in this way will catch a swarm as soon as the local hives start to split. I'll need to check it once a day to be sure that no body else moves in while I'm waiting for the bees to show up. Wish me luck. If I get any bees I'll take a photo.

-dale

Ducks!!

Now we have baby ducks. They are Indian Runner Ducks, or as we like to call them...

Stand-Up Ducks

Here is a link to see some images of full grown Runners

But these ones on the right are ours. The Images are kinda pink because of the heat lamp on them. We will get some better photos soon.

Our chicken chicks are doing really well, and we have two turkey poults that are really weird looking. If you have never seen a baby turkey, they look a lot like a creepy down covered dinosaur. But really small. Photos of them will be coming as well.

The garden is going in a bit at a time. We have onions and potatoes planted, and we put in 40 strawberry plants. The strawberry plants are in a permanent bed that we will harvest from all year. 20 of the plants are June bearing Honeoyes, which as the name implies will give us a bunch of berries in June for canning and freezing. The other 20 are Ozark Beauties, Which bear all season for fresh picking and eating all summer.

The onions and potatoes are planted in the rotating garden to keep diseases at bay. We are doing a type of deep double digging method of planting. Basically we use our little Mantis tiller to till up a row about 1 foot wide, dig out the soil, and till again. Dig that out, till one more time and add compost or manure, till that together then put all the dirt back. What we end up with is a foot deep trench with good fertilizer at the bottom, and very loose and clean soil on top in a long row type hill. Really good for deep rooting plants.

That's it for now.

-dale

Chick Photos

Here are a few really bad photos of the chicks

-dale

Chicks are hatching

Well the new chicks are hatching! Photos coming soon!

It's too early to count them (you know the old saying) but 4 have emerged and 1 was almost out and 1 more egg had a little hole pecked in it. There are still 3 more eggs that are under the hen, can't tell if anything is happening with them and I don't want to disturb them too much. So 4 at least, 6 most likely, and 9 possible.

I guess I counted them anyway.

-dale

Tilling

Well, We got a tiller for the back of our tractor. It's not too bad a machine. I runs on it's own 6HP engine so it can really go onto anything that can pull it and lift it out of the ground. Right now it's on the back of the Craftsman garden tractor, which is big enough for it although the sleeve hitch to which the tiller attaches to the tractor is manully operated and the tiller is heavy. My arm is a little sore today form lifting it up and down.

Yesterday I tilled up the area we ran butchering chickens on last year. I plan to plant corn and carrots in that area. It's about 20 by 60 I think and took a few hours to till through all the sod. There should be a lot of nitrogen in that bit of ground. Good for corn.

I also ran the tiller down the edge of the Mud Clucker canal for wheat, that's about 600 sqft. See my wheat growing guide right here. I cast the wheat seed today and should see some growth in the next few days. Wish me luck. I hope to get about 50 lbs of wheat out of that area if the wheat produces 10 to 1. That's enough for about 1 loaf of bread a week for a year.

I really hate to till the ground and hope to not need to after next year, but we have a lot of areas that we want to cultivate and the tiller is the quickest way to get it turned the first time. After I pull the corn or wheat up I should be able to just disk the ground and get it ready for the next planting.

-dale