Category: garden

7 months, Baby, Black Copper Maran, chicks, Cream Legbar, garden, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, peach tree, permaculture., sick, vikings, warehouse 13

Mini Farm update

Olof
After I posted on Monday I started feeling icky and on Wednesday morning I got the stomach bug that the boys had had. It wasn’t pretty. My husband took the day off and took care of my children only bringing Alex up to nurse (yeah I was loosing liquids but still had to feed my giant baby). I spent the day in bed. Ached all over. Not doing well at all but for some reason not able to sleep. When I gave up on laying with my eyes closed feeling like poo I would turn the TV on for a few episodes of Vikings and Warehouse 13 and then turn them off for a while and just lay there trying to sleep even though sleep did not come. But after all of this I woke up yesterday feeling renewed. I felt grateful and happy and ready to take on my day. Here are some of the images from my beautiful day yesterday.

Alex turned 7 months old yesterday. Weighing in at 29lbs and 30inches!

Magni enjoying a snack of veggie straws on the back porch.

Odinn playing with the baby chicks Sassy and Chipmunk while they had their first day outside.

Sassy the Black Copper Maran 2 and a half week old chick.

Chipmunk the 2 and a half week old Cream Legbar chick

My Peach tree that didn’t make it through the winter.

Tomatoes, Kale, Lettuce, Broccoli, and Collard Greens.

My first harvest of the season. 1.7 oz of asparagus that I added to the veggie soup I made last night.

I spent the day just catching up on chores and enjoying my boys’ time. Making mental notes of the things that need to be done around the mini farm in the back yard like digging up the dead peach tree. I don’t know what killed it but it only gave us one crop of fruit and that was last year and the animals ate them all before we could get to it so we never even enjoyed it. Sad to wait so many years for a tree to mature only to have not enjoyed it much at all.

The baby chickens have hit the punk rock stage of loosing their fluff and getting in feathers. It will be an interesting experience to introduce them to the big girls since I have never done such a thing but my sister in law gave me some good advice and we will see how it goes.

Now I sit at home and my poor husband has the stomach bug. I feel for him but I hope he feels as renewed as I did after it is over.

I plan on weighing everything I get in from the garden this year so far I’m at 1.7 oz. from the Asparagus and I plan on harvesting it into the early summer. That is the joy of permaculture. I was hoping the peach tree would be another easy harvest but alas no. I planted a grape plant and hope that in the summers to come we will get some grapes from it and we have the cherry bushes that have just finished their bloom.

If you are interested in learning more about permaculture (the art of keeping plants that come again and again to feed you) then you might be interested in this book.

Australorp, Backyard, boots, Buff Orpington, carrots, chicken, eggs, fava, garden, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, planting, sustainability

Mini Farm Coming Along

Olof
OK, so I was going to take a before pic but honestly I was too ashamed at the state of my garden and horrified that my neighbors back door opened up to it and has had to look at it. It’s the only place where we do not have privacy fencing since there was already a fence there. But so far, I cleaned out the beds, used my Garden Weasel to turn the soil, added 6 cubic feet of peat moss and some organic fertilizer then turned the soil some more to mix it all up and then watered thoroughly.

I know it’s a mess! Wish me luck!

 I planted some Fava Windsor Broad Beans a couple of weeks ago and waiting for them to pop up and this weekend I´m planting some Organic Carrot Seeds Carnival Blend, some beets, some peas, lettuce and other cold hardy plants.

A couple of years ago I put down some weed cloth and put mulch over it. This looked great and was an awesome idea until my cats and the neighborhood cats thought that this would be the ideal place to poop. Yeah, eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww. I kept stepping in it. I got to the point where I didn’t want to go into my garden area. That, plus the heat and the bugs just caused me to quit all together. My garden became a mess and my harvest was lost since I wasn’t keeping up with it. Now I have vines and weeds growing through the cloth. What do farmers do then (this is an Icelandic saying when there is a problem)? I´m going to clean out as much as I can put down even more mulch and then put down pavers for stepping on. This means that I need to go to my city’s free mulch site and pick up LOTS of mulch.

Mathilda the s/he bird
Owl, Buff and Mathilda getting lost in the weeds.

OK so the chickens are growing FAST! I know one of my Easter Eggers is a rooster so his name is Dinner. I live in the city so keeping a rooster is not being very neighborly. I’m still waiting to see if Mathilda is really a girl. I go back and fourth on if she is a he or a she so right now she is a s/he. LOL. I have just started letting them free range in the backyard. They are funny to watch and much easier to keep then I thought. Don’t know why I didn’t do this a LONG time ago. If you are on the fence on this one just jump in! If this is not the hobby for you then you can sell them and people will for sure buy laying hens and your coop.
Just make sure to read books on keeping chickens so you know the basics and have a library to reference to if you start having any problems and check with your local ordinands to see if you can legally keep chickens in your city. The entertainment value alone is worth keeping these birds. I could sit around and watch them all day. In June they should start laying if what I am reading about them starting around 18-22 weeks of age. I can’t wait! I’m still waiting on my Icelandics (lay white to pink eggs) and on a Maran (lays chocolate brown eggs) and Cream Legbar (lays blue eggs). It will be so much fun keeping these fun colors in my frig and giving them to the neighbors and friends.
Waiting for my boots to arrive from Amazon. Have to have proper attire for taking care of my mini farm.

What are you doing this spring? Trying anything new? New plants, animals, hobbies?