And so the 2014 Garden Planning Season Begins!

     This is the time of year to reflect on the past and dream up the future.  Our future is looking a little different this year as we get ready to welcome our first child into the world this May.  On one hand that makes me think we won't have as much time and energy for the plants and animals.  On the other hand it makes me want to redouble our efforts in growing our own food and healing the land.  Anyway my new years resolution this year is to increase the percentage homegrown food in our diet so there's that.  I am quite proud of the major effort over the last few years that has taken us from 0% to somewhere less than 1% of our diet coming from our garden.  But it's not where I want to be and not what I want to provide for our children.  Still, I was looking through some pics and realized that it has been almost exactly one year since we got our first egg so that's pretty cool.  We are still averaging about 8 or so a day in this dark time of year, though the ameraucanas are barely producing at all.  The leghorns are doing the bulk of the laying with the red stars and rhode island reds not far behind.

     We made it through the flurry of holiday traditions and obligations in fine style this year, though I am still somewhat recovering from the summer of masonry.  Busy summer, and the gardens sure suffered for it.  We had many successes but things started getting out of hand after July.  More produce than I'd care to admit went unharvested or unprocessed, and the edges of the lasagna beds never got cut this year.  Not quite as many as I would have liked but I did manage to save some collection of seeds for next year.

This years list of seeds saved:

Oregon Sugar Pod Peas
Daikon Radish
Mammoth Sunflowers
Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry
Strawberry Spinach
Amish Paste Tomatoes

     One exciting development has been meeting a couple of local seed savers this year.  A man named Bob who was giving a passionate speech about the importance of protecting heirloom genetics while demonstrating an antique cornshucker at a local event known as the farm breakfast.  We had a great conversation and he gave me two handfuls; one of heirloom flint corn that he got from some Amish, and the other a colorful Indian corn.  (I hate using the word Indian in this context, the corn has nothing to do with India and it makes me feel like a stupid American who's bad a geography and ignorant to the plight of the hundreds of unique human cultures that once inhabited this land)  I brought the handfuls of seeds back in my shirt pockets and carefully packaged and labeled them when I got home. Gonna need more garden space.

     A wonderful family came to our yard sale early in the summer and started talking plants.  They ended up staying for hours while Nikki gave a tour of the gardens and talked animal husbandry and such.  Mason, a boy of impressive intelligence and enthusiasm, traded me for some black krim and golden jubilee tomato seeds that he had saved and brought in clever envelopes made from reused paper.  We are very excited to be building a network with some fellow seed savers in the area.

     All things considered, this is looking to be a daunting garden year.  There is still much to do as far as grading and repairing the front yard that was reduced to mud by heavy equipment in the process of digging out and repairing the foundation of our home.  There is still a large pile of dirt close to the house in what will eventually be our kitchen garden.  Since we leave most of the plants standing over winter to provide shelter for beneficial insects there will be quite a bit of cleanup and prep work in the back gardens and hugel mounds.  I had hoped to have an herb spiral and new lasagna beds put together in the fall, but construction delays happened instead.  Such is life.  We do have the two hugelkulture beds in place though, so that will be a good place to start planning plantings.  I will likely use the straw bale method to get the rest of that area started after it gets graded this spring since we had such good success with the zucchini last year.  Also, come spring we will have a lot of damp straw bales that are currently insulating the hoop coops.

     I've got some new ideas to test out this year.  I am trying to design a cheap, modular frame system for the garden.  I am hoping that we will be able to use them for a variety of purposes including; starting seeds outdoors, extending the seasons for veggies, protecting plants from chickens and other predators, isolating plants from cross pollination, a pen for small animals or broody hen or injured chicken, perhaps even a solid wall version for creating temporary compost bins or planting boxes for potatoes.  The frames would all be the same, but the sheathing could be swapped as needed with clear plastic, remay fabric, screen, chicken wire, wood or whatever.  We will see, I put together a prototype so far but it needs a little bit of tweaking and a whole lot of testing.  

     Currently we are battling the snow and the cold of a real Wisconsin winter after being lulled into false confidence by the last couple of light ones.  But that's life here, and if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes.  The hens seem to be faring well so far, though we have to shovel out an area for them or they won't leave the coops.  Unfortunately 5 out of the 6 babies we hatched out this year turned out to be cockerals and they are getting big rapidly.  But it has been too cold and we have been to tired and busy so far to send them to freezer camp.  Gonna have to do it before spring gets here and they get really rambunctious.

     Meanwhile life roars by at it's usual raucous pace and employment continues to demand the best from both of us.  But the seed catalogs are starting to come in and the time is here to make lists and maps and timelines and to dream of green things and fresh tastes!

More Better Hoop Coop

     Randy, the mason who worked through the basement repair project with me, also happens to be a fellow flockster (That means chicken keeper in Harvey Ussery speak).  When he saw our hoop coops he liked the concept and decided to build one of his own.  I have to say that he made some impressive improvements to the design.  For those that missed it, pics and plans of our hoop coop can be found here.  Below is a series of pictures showing some of the finer points of Randy's coop.

     He used a slightly shorter frame giving an overhang to the structure.  It's a nice look and offers some shade and protection for the front wall though it also makes the interior slightly smaller.  On the front are two brown barn steel panels that he had laying around, complete with j channel and bottom trim pieces.  Makes for a sturdy and attractive front wall.

     On the front of the plywood person door is a guillotine style chicken door.  I can see the advantage of this type of door, as our chickens sometimes push their hinged door shut and lock themselves out of the coop.  The ones inside are not smart enough to push it back open when that happens.

     Both screen and hardware cloth cover the vents in the front.  On the roof  are a couple of small solar cells powering led lighting inside the coop.   Randy and his family really love this feature so far, the fixtures stay on low all the time to give some ambient light all night.  They can be switched to high when someone is working in the coop. 

     The Led fixture, seen above, has a photocell to turn it off in the daytime.

     One of my favorite innovations about this build is the curved 1x4 on the edge of the cattle panels.  This gives some framework to the corners and makes attaching tarps and screen much easier.  In order to flex the 1x into place, Randy first cut a bunch of shallow kerfs into one side of the bord.  Then, after thoroughly soaking the wood, slowly pushed it into place against the cattle panel and secured it with a 2x4 in the center.  Tricky stuff, but it adds a great finished look to this project.

     The frame is covered by two tarps; a large canvas one and a smaller plastic one.  The ends of the tarps are held in place by lengths of shock cord that he happened to have a spool of.  For the canvas one he threaded the cord through the grommets but the plastic tarp is folded over creating continuous pocket for the cord to run through.

     The cords are tied to an eye bolt in the base of the coop.

      The sides are secured with bungee cords. 

     Inside the coop, straw bales give some structure to the corners and support a 2x4 perch.  A row of feed bins serve as nest boxes and clear plastic panels let in some natural light across the back. 
 
     With so many options, truly this is a building that is unique to each builder.  Thank you Randy for allowing me to publish pics of this fine example.

Some Forest Garden Wins

     Despite a sparse germination and our almost total neglect of the baby forest garden, there were some things that worked quite well.

11/23/2013

The mammoth sunflowers came up strong; providing shade, structure, and food for wild birds.  There is still plenty of seed standing, so I occasionally break off a head and drop it for the chickens, supplementing their food supply in this time of limited forage.  The plant also provides some nice, semi-woody, rough mulch that can capture blowing leaves where we need them.

11/23/2013

     The millet has worked in a similar way, coming up in scattered clumps from the seed balls.  The wild birds don't leave very much standing, but I am guessing the chickens find some dropped seed in their foraging as well as what we drop for them. 

11/03/2013

     With all the construction and other craziness going on this Summer, we only managed to work on two paddocks this year, keeping the birds concentrated on each area in the turf killing phase way longer than I originally envisioned.  We were able to add enough high carbon mulch to keep things smelling and looking ok, basically doing the deep litter method over a large area.  The above shot shows the first paddock, which was seeded in June, and had about a month to rest and germinate before housing 2 broody hens and 6 chicks for the rest of summer.  Since the the other birds have very little respect for our (non-electrified) premier net fencing, they would find their way in as well, to help themselves to a sampling of the fine insects, fruit, greens, and seed that this paddock already offered.  The netting did discourage them enough to allow some plant growth.  We don't have total control of the flock at this point, but if we drop the fences they will roam much farther throughout the day.  With the netting up, about 1/2 the birds stay in the paddock, and the rest don't wander as far, and hopefully stay out of the neighbor's yard.  Hooking up the charger I'm sure would help, but I really don't want to zap our neighbor's dog, who is a total sweetheart and patrols the gardens daily for us.  Also it seems like such an encumbrance to us in our daily chicken chores.  I think we will only resort to the zapper if we run into a bad predator situation. 

     The second paddock is plenty killed and mulched at this point.  I am planning to get seed and make new seed balls over winter for the new section.   It will end up getting planted in early Spring.

10/19/2013

    The harlequin marigolds germinated and grew quite well in place, though I can see many of them lost the distinctive striped pattern that makes pop.  I am going to have to be very aggressive with rouging out non conforming blooms if I want to keep the genetics on this heirloom true.  The good news is that I still have a ton of saved seed and at least 1/2 a clue which batches came in better.

10/19/2013

     Daikon radishes and zinnias dot the area.  Arugula coming up in patches, surrounded by clumps of millet.  The green snow fence helps to restrict the flow of chickens through the paddock allowing the plants a chance to thrive. 

09/27/2013

 

     The hatch-lings loved living in the shade of the pear tree and helped clean up the bumper crop of pears that we never got around to harvesting.  Mayo Indian Amaranth on the right just in front of a clump of Comfrey.

09/27/2013

     The Daikon Radishes shown above can be a tasty crop for people, though we only managed to harvest one, just to sample it, this year.  More importantly though, the large taproot is able to break through hard pan and loosen compacted soil.  The arm sized roots will be left in the ground to rot providing pathways of organic matter that earthworms and other composting critters can follow down along with moisture and oxygen.  Eventually the organic matter will get mixed into the soil in an orchestra of precision micro-tillage that goes many feet deeper than our mechanical tillers could ever reach. 

08/26/2013

     Plantains, Dandelions, and Pig weed dominated earlier in the summer.  The pig weed I pulled and dropped as rough mulch, hopefully before it formed seed.  The dandelions and plantains were left in as forage and dynamic accumulators.  Garlic cloves sprout randomly throughout the paddock.  Various lettuce and strawberry spinach plants are scattered in the mix.  Four clumps of comfrey grow on the drip line of the pear.    The chickens pecked at them a little throughout the warm season, then ate them to the ground when things got cold and forage became scarce.

     The legumes showed poorly despite my attempt to add a dried packet of nitrogen fixing bacteria starter to the seed balls.  The occasional pea or bean thrived in the middle of the paddock.  The hairy vetch got off to a wispy start and then vanished.  There has been no sign of the white clover, Siberian pea shrub or black locust so far.  I am thinking this is due to high Nitrogen from the chicken waste, but that is just a guess.

     An unknown squash climbs it's way through a mass of cherry tomatoes and tangles itself in the fencing.  The Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes that were in the seed mix came up in abundance and ripened just in time to give the chickens a quick snack before the frosts hit.  There were also some oddball volunteers that I am guessing were planted by the chipmunks from the hybrid Roma tomatoes I grew two years ago.  I wonder if there are quicker to ripen varieties which would work better growing from seed like this. 

     Overall I feel pretty good about what we have done so far.  However, my vision for the layout of the back yard and my ideas about how to incorporate the birds into a working forest garden are all  changing quite a bit.  One of my goals for this winter is to produce and publish some better drawings of the evolving permaculture design for this property. 

Complacency Kills

We forgot to close up the birds last night and ended up losing two of them.  We think it was a hawk or owl.  We found one of the leghorns in the neighbors yard with the head and organs missing.  The other was one of the Reds.  She was still alive, but had a bad gash in her side that was not fixable.  We decided to put her down.  I guess I'm a little amazed that this is the first predation we have suffered out here.  Hopefully it will keep us more vigilant in the future.  :(

Random Updates 9/27/13

"I'm fixing a hole, where the rain gets in.  And stops my mind from wandering....."


     We started a little project back in the beginning of July, replacing two failing cinder block foundation walls on the house.  Ahhh... the joys of owning a 161 year old house.  Every project turns out to be about 10 times more difficult than I anticipate.

The funny part here is that the original field stone walls are still ok.  It is the addition, which I'm guessing is between 50 and 100 years old, that is failing.  It's been a difficult couple of months.  Right after work I meet up with the mason; who is a friend of a friend and also happens to be a great guy and a master of his trade.  The two of us have been working on the wall most evenings from 4:30 till dark, as Nikki works her two jobs.  Meanwhile the gardens and chickens only get a basic level of maintenance and we are living with giant dirt piles, and a lawn reduced to mud as our household gradually descends into a state of chaos.  

     I wish we could have come up with a more environmentally and energy responsible solution than concrete block, but economics and local building codes don't leave us with a lot of choices, so I take some comfort in the idea that we are rescuing a very old house from despair.  At least that's what I tell myself while laying in bed listening to the mice in the walls.  Still, rehabbing this old place was the way we could get out in the county, where we have space for chickens and gardens.  As I look out at the sunrise in the morning, or when the humming birds come up to my face and say hi while I'm strolling through the gardens munching on berries and fresh greens, I know that it is worth the constant effort to live here.

Despite the numerous challenges we have encountered, I have to say that I am very happy with the results so far.  It is wonderful to see our creepy, dungeon like, basement slowly transformed into a livable space.  

Now that I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, I am finally ready to say "Thank you Brian".  Thank you for talking me into this insanity.  Thank you for bringing your expertise and heavy equipment as well as all the hours spent digging a giant hole in heavy clay.  I also want to extend a special thanks to my brother in law, Randy.  Thank you for bringing some muscle to the job just when I need it the most, and for hauling away all that waste concrete.  It's times like these that the importance of community really shows itself 

     As far as the rest of the homestead is going, I have about a dozen things a day that I wish I had the time and energy to record here.  Some surprising successes and plenty of failures to discuss, just never enough time in the day.  I have been taking pics when I get the chance, so I will try to do some reflective articles over winter, when I have a little more time on my hands.  

     The whole chicken paddock/forest garden concept has been stuck on hold for a while now.  The birds are still in the second paddock location, where they have been living since early June.  This is way longer than I intended for the grass kill phase, but I have yet to even finalize the layout of this section, so I can't really plant it or do earthworks yet.  We have been able to add enough high carbon material (mostly straw) to keep things reasonably healthy and smelling nice.  However, the chickens have gradually lost respect for the short (still not electrified) fence and are getting more and more out of control.  When we can't manage to keep them entertained with fresh loads of compost or enough fresh treats, they simply hop the fence and go off to forage.  This isn't a huge problem for the number of birds we have, but I know that being able to control them will be very important for forage and manure management for what we are trying to do here.

     Of the leghorn chicks that we got from a grade school teacher this Spring, 11 turned out to be cockerels.  We separated them out when they started getting aggressive and kept them in the mobile hoop coop on pasture until they were big enough to harvest.  Without any hens to fight over, they seemed to get along well enough.  Keeping them confined in a smaller area helps prevent the meat from becoming tough and stringy.  

     Harvest day went a lot smoother than last time we tried it.  Largely due to the home made killing cone we constructed out of some old traffic cones that we found on the property.  An idea we got from reading the Walden effect blog.  Nikki has processed a lot more birds than I have, but with the wonderful step by step pictures and instructions found in Harvey Ussery's book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, I managed to help her get the job done.  

     I don't know if it was having a little more experience with such things now, or the fact that we froze the birds instead of cooking them the same day, but there was a profound difference in how much I enjoyed eating the meat.  The first time around I felt a little queasy about the whole affair and ate very little.  When Nikki cooked one of these on our little rotisserie the other day, I have to say it was the most delicious chicken I have ever eaten.  That first bite was a neat moment when I finally felt like I understand what people are talking about when they ramble on about being connected to the source of their food.      Baby steps...

     One exciting development this year is the hatching out of 6 baby chicks, three each from two broody hens.  We are keeping them in the first paddock, which has been seeded with some success and is starting to fill in with various plants.  The mom of the older three birds has lost interest and rejoined the larger flock.  Her babies moved in with the other mom and the seven of them sleep in an old dog kennel with a tarp over it that they seem to really prefer over the fancy brooder that I built for them. 

A variety of different plants have germinated, and the chickens nibble at many of them in between scratching for bugs.  They love to hang out in or under the pear tree.  The tree produced a rediculus number of delicious pears this year, but we haven't managed to harvest very many of them.  The chickens are certainly enjoying them, along with the insects they attract.  

     I am not totally happy with our management of this system so far, but it is working out for the most part.  I am looking forward to having enough established paddocks to allow a better recovery of both plants and insects between visits from the chickens.  But considering how busy we have been this summer, I am mostly just happy that it is working at all.

     In spite of our near total neglect of the gardens this Summer, we did surprisingly well on some things, along with a few notable failures.  Despite the presence of blossom end rot, early blight, and horn worms we harvested a pretty respectable number of perfect Amish Paste tomatoes.  Even though our rogue chickens ate more than 1/2 of them, we still had plenty to give away over the last moth or so.  The biggest and most perfect were set aside for seed saving.

The orange bell peppers that were inter planted between the tomatoes, on the other hand, were stunted for some reason.  The few peppers we picked tasted good, but were tiny little things on tiny little plants.  Not at all sure why, maybe just the weird wet, cool, start to Summer we had this year.  Overall, though, the zone 1 kitchen garden area performed pretty well for first year hugel mounds.  We even got to try our first goji berries.

     The lasagna beds in the back are suffering a bit more.  The chickens have done considerable damage.  I am not too concerned, as that area will eventually be incorporated as part of the forest garden / chicken paddocks.  The fact that we are getting anything at all back there, in spite of not watering at all after initial planting, I think is a testament to how effective sheet mulching is at producing great soil conditions.  We have harvested numerous cucumbers and garlic.  The tomatoes and ground cherries are doing great.  The raspberries even produced a second flush of giant sweet berries, even better than the ones we harvested back in June.  They have never done that before!

    There is much more to say, but I should probably wrap this up now.  As nice as it has been to take a morning off work and give myself a break from the grind to ruminate on gardens and such, I still have to cut the grass before the mason comes this afternoon to set some more block.  The fun never stops, I tell ya.