It's been a while since I've been on here. Not too much going on, really, and it's already the 4th! What's up with that? How time flies. Most of my time this break so far has been spent researching and planning the garden for summer. I've got some seeds ordered and will be ordering more soon. I've decided to plant in jiffy 7's this year, and think it will save an enormous amount of time and space, not to mention mess. I've got designs for plant benches that will sit in front of the south windows, and those will probably go up at the end of the month. I was going to make them this week, but we'll be having a progressive snowshoe before school starts, and figure that there will be more room without them. And I probably won't start planting until February anyway, so it only makes sense. Hopefully I'll have time to build them then.
I've decided to do a lot of raised beds, implementing the square-foot gardening techniques and combination planting together. In planning the gardens for this year, it was pretty interesting to read about the plants that don't do well near each other. I hadn't followed this last year, and sure enough, the crops that were next to each other that shouldn't have been didn't do well at all. THe ones that thrived were by the plants that aided them. Pretty interesting stuff. I'll actually grow quite a lot of plants this year to see how it goes for starting a CSA officially next year. There are a few people who are interested in fresh veggies, so I should be able to sell them regularly. It's pretty exciting!
Oh, I also sent out an email asking if people were interested in having me raise meat chickens for them this next year. I am so not into butchering, but have been reading all this info on eating locally and supporting sustainable farming. I've realized that I can be a part of this by offering pasture-raised meat. So far, the support has been overwhelming. Orders are in for 150 meat birds, and about 50 layers. That's a lot of eggs if I plan this right! At least a dozen turkeys and a few pigs, too! I've decided to build small shelters with moveable fencing for the chickens. They can be spread out all over the place and still be safe from the coyotes and wolves that got so many of our chicks in the past. I'll probably space out the ordering of the meat chickens as well, so that most of them can spend the majority of their lives in the pastures. It will be too cold for them to be out much earlier than May, which means being inside for a while. We'll see how it all goes. I think people will be patient with me knowing that we'll be learning as we're going.
Here's a few xmas pictures. The guys loved the Drunken Goat Shenanigans book, so that's excellent. I think it's been the best gift I've ever given them!
Little Guy xmas day:
I ended up redoing some of the chimney--I just didn't like how it was looking on the sides. Here's what it looks like so far. I'm hoping to finish most of it this weekend:
It's hard to see, but there are cup handles that are glued into this side for coat hooks...
No comments:
Post a Comment