Author Archives: Quail Run

Planting Permaculture Style

One of the hallmarks of permaculture is using deep mulch to build fertility, slow down weed growth and preserve moisture. We’ve spent many hours gathering yard waste, chipping and shredding it and spreading it in the garden beds. In some of the beds we already had plants growing, in those beds we piled the mulch around the seedlings. But in other beds, that hadn’t been planted yet we covered the entire thing.
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Which makes things a little different come planting time.  In the past it was fairly straight forward, hoe a little row, sprinkle seeds, cover and water.  Done.  Simple.

When using deep mulching the trick is to get the seeds in the soil, to dig past all the mulch to the actual dirt.  People do this two different ways, some people dig down, and some people dig a little hole or row and fill it with compost for the seeds to grow in. I used the “dig down” method.  Having ten 50×4 foot beds to plant, that is a lot of compost to haul around and add!
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Using a hoe I dug down, a good six to eight inches to reach the soil for my little seeds.  I was amazed at the difference in the soil already, after only having prepared the beds a few months ago.  It makes me excited, I am looking forward to seeing how great the soil will be next year and the next!

Building our own soil, building our fertility, growing food for our family and for others, making the world beautiful and productive all the while honoring the natural systems that have been here from the beginning.  That is the goal of Quail Run Farm and one of our greatest labors of love.
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Goats

Guest Post by
Kit 

On May 28, we had some new additions to the farm, three little baby goats. At only a month old, they had never been away from their mother, we had to become their moms. First we named them, we took a family vote. We all decided on Dolly for the girl, she is the most stubborn, and she gets her way. We have to hold her the most and get her used to us handling her because we will be milking her in the future. Then there is Jeb, he is the one with big black patches on him, he has the biggest horns and just likes to play. Lastly we have the runt, Jethro, he looks just like Dolly, but he is the littlest and just likes to be around us.

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Dolly the little girl

They totally depend on us just like they had with their mother. So we had to get them used to us so they thought of us as family, and they would trust us so we can feed and milk them. We got them and we just played with them, all the little kids were holding them. They really loved all the attention. we got little harnesses for them, so we can let them graze and can control where they go. Then we showed them their house and the yard they would stay in and graze.

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Jed learning how to use a bottle

Because we are their “moms” we have to feed them just like their mother did. It was hard to get them to take the bottle, we had to get them to open their mouths and to actually stay drinking it. It was very messy. When we first started they would hardly have anything, and they needed three ounces each feeding, three times a day. Now that they have been with us for a week and a half, they have figured it all out. We got special goat bottles that are more like what they are used to so it got easier.
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Now we just hold the bottle out and they come and know how it all works, they even follow us when we have the bottle. That’s how we get them back into the yard now, just hold out a bottle and they will go where you want them to. Dolly took the longest to figure it out, and she wasn’t eating as much as her brothers, or what she needed to at all. She just figured it all out today, things have to happen when she wants them to or not at all.
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The first night we had them, they got out! lucky they didn’t want to explore, and just went to the house. we fixed the gate so they can’t get out anymore. one day we went out for their feeding and Jethro had his head stuck in the gate. Who knows what other surprises will happen with them. One thing the goats really like is to be held, one time Dolly was sitting on my lap and she fell asleep. First day we got them, Jethro let me hold him like a baby.
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It’s really cool and funny to see how much personality they each have. Jethro really likes to nibble on our clothes, fingers, and even hair, if he can get to it. Dolly always plays “king of the hill” (or in this case log, rocks, or even our backs if we are bending over) she can pretty much climb everywhere and beats her brothers at it. Jeb is just there, he kinda does his own thing but he is the first to get the bottle when ever he can just pushes Jethro out of the way.
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Spring Medicinals for Winter

Late Spring and Early Summer are great times for harvesting WEEDS!  (Have I ever mentioned how much I love weeds?) In late spring there is a burst of growth, plants are getting ready to harvest the heat and sunshine of the summer time. This year I found several curly dock plants in my garden isles between the beds.  I was terribly excited, although I don’t think anyone really shared  my excitement over another weed. I waited for the leaves to get nice and big and then harvested it to make herbal vinegar.

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Curly Dock with seed heads

Young Curly Dock

Dock, also called yellow dock, curly dock, and broad dock is a perennial plant, which my Native American grandmothers use for “all women’s problems.” I dig the yellow roots of Rumex crispus or R. obtusifolius and tincture them. I also harvest the leaves and/or seeds throughout the growing season to increase blood-levels of iron, reduce menstrual flooding and cramping, and correct hormone levels.

Susun Weed 

I coarsely chopped the leaves, tightly packed them into a quart jar and them filled the jar to the top with pasteurized apple cider vinegar. The vinegar will help break down the cell walls and release the minerals and other beneficial constituents. A tablespoon of vinegar daily will help with iorn levels and “all women’s problems”.  After six weeks I will strain the plant matter and store the vinegar in a cool dark place.
IMG_6406Another plant I have been harvesting a lot of is the Common Mallow. We eat mallow fresh, cooked, we dry, tincture and vinegar mallow. I wrote an article about the medicianl properties of mallow here: Not So Common Mallow .
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This batch of Mallow I made into an infused vinegar for use in the winter time when coughs and colds sneak in.  I find a tablespoon of vinegar with honey in warm water much easier to get down the throat of a child than an infusion.

Mallow and I have become good friends and ally’s through the year and I hope to discover more of her.
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Things that attract

IMG_40231At some point you may want to try to attract a specific animal, insect, or plant to live on your property.  I have heard people talk about wanting to have more birds, butterflies, and other things visit, and or live on their property.  Many times, people will plant a specific plant, put in a bird house, or a water feature in the hopes that they will attract wildlife.  But then they are disappointed when over time the visitor does not come.  I have learned that it can be tricky to attract living things to your property.  But there are some things you can do that will greatly enhance your ability to attract animals, insects, and birds if you first understand the living organism first.

Every living thing needs three things to survive.  Insects, animals, and plants all need these three essential things to thrive and live in an environment.  If you want to attract specific insects, animals, or plants to your property, you need to supply them with the correct, water, food, and shelter.

First, every living organism needs water.  If you can provide the water that the living system needs, you have over come the first obstacle.  Not only do they need water, but they need the correct, amount, type, and source of water.  Some animals need running water, while others need standing water.  When you research what water the living organism needs that you want to attract, you have to keep in mind the depth, flow, temperature, mineral content, and a number of other things. To make the environment livable for a specific creature, you need to supply the correct amount of water.  It is not about making water available, but about making the correct amount, and type of water available.

For example, if you want to attract bees to your property, one way to do that is to give the bees a shallow pool of water that they can stop in and drink from.  Most people only concentrate on the flowers or the food bees need of attract them, but water can also attract bees. This article talks specifically about bees and how to provide water for them: Thirsty bees

Source: Root Simple – low tech home tech

Purple-throated carib hummingbird feeding.

Second, all living organisms have a need food.  Everything has to consume some type of food to survive.  For plants it is not only minerals from the ground, but also energy from the sun.  If you can supply the correct type of food for the living creature, you can attract it, and encourage it to stay on your property.  Food sources could include plants, insects, and other animals.   If you want to attract certain types of birds, you may need to also attract the insects that they use as a food source.  Food sources can very drastically from one species to another.  It is very important that you research what food source, and types of food the organism needs that you are trying to attract.

For Example,  if you want to attract a specific type of bird to your property, you would need to research the type of flowers, that those birds are attracted to.  Birds are so varied in their food sources that research is key.  Hummingbirds enjoy different flowers than a swallow would enjoy.  And if you are trying to attract birds of prey, it is not the flowers that will attract them, but the animals that are attracted by the flowers.

Apiary in South Carolina

Third, all organisms need some type of shelter.  Shelter serves several purposes.  It allows the creature to stay out of the elements if it needs to.  It can keep snow, rain, sun and other elements away when they could become to harsh for the creature to survive.  But it can also provide a place for the creature to hide from predators as well.  Shelters will be different for most living creatures.  If you want to attract a specific type of bird, you will probably need a specific type of nesting box.

On thing that we have tried is to create an area where insects can find a home on Quail Run Farm.  We have created our Fairy Hotel to try to encourage insects to take up residence.  We have also encouraged Kestrels to take up residence on the property by having a Kestrel nesting box put in place.

CONCLUSION

If you want to attract a living organism to your property or yard, you need to do some research.  If you can find out what type of water, food, and shelter the organism needs, you may be able to get it to take up residence in your yard.

You will also want to eliminate habitat for the predators of the creatures you are trying to attract.  Pets can also keep certain creatures from finding your property a place they want to habitat.

The opposite is also true.  If you have a pest that you want to get rid of, you can declare war on that pest by eliminating one or all three of the things they need to survive.  For example, you don’t like snakes around your yard, then eliminate the food source, or the shelter for the snake.  You will find that you can do things to convince almost any living creature to move on, and find water, food or shelter in another yard.

Blue Flax

In the mornings when you look west of our property there is a strip of brilliant blue standing out among the softer shades of green sage and the dusty browns.  It is striking, and beautiful and mysterious.  One morning Dadzoo and I decided to take a walk down there to see the wild flowers, I already knew what they were, we have scattered clumps of the blue flower in our back pastures, but I had never seen such a concentration of them and I had to walk among them.
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Our farm is set on the rising foothill  of Lake Mountain, so we are a bit above everything and have a great view of the flowers, but as we walked in to the valley the field of blue was obscured by swales in the ground and the tall sage brush that twisted and turned towards the sky, some reaching six feet tall. As we came over a small rise in the ground we saw this.
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Acres of blue flax, waving and dancing in the early morning breeze, their faces wide open facing the bright morning sun.
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IMG_6465It was glorious and beautiful, such a concentration of blue flowers in the desert, a herald to the coming summer, a shout to Mother Earth and Father in Heaven.
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Desert Mallow

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One of my favorite times of year, is after the spring starts to warm up some, the desert comes alive with color.  Most people think that the desert is a colorless, lifeless place.  But it is teeming with color and life if you just know where to look for it.

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One of the first plants to show its true colors is the Globemallow, or if you prefer the scientific name, it is called Sphaeralcea ambigua.  It is also know as desert mallow, apricot mallow, desert hollyhock, mal de Ojo, and sore-eye poppy.  This plant can grow up to 3 feet in height, and spreads 2-3 feet in width.  It has fuzzy leaves that contain white hairs on both sides.  The number of leaves increase as the plant grows in age.  The flowers are a 5-petaled, bloom in spring, and are usually an apricot to orange color.  It is a perfect flower for ornamental, desert, drought tolerant gardens.   It is also used in a lot of natural landscaping and habitat restoration projects in desert regions.

Cultural Requirements:

  • Full Sun
  • Natural Rainfall, but watering will increase flowering
  • Desert soil, tolerant to clay, but prefers good drainage
  • Propagates by seed

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Not only is it beautiful, but it can also be used in some medical uses.

Crushed leaves can be made into a poultice for skin inflammation and a soothing shoe liner for blistered feet.  For the poultice use warm water.  Fresh flowers and leaves can be chewed for a sore throat, hoarseness, or minor stomach problems including within the small intestine.   A tea made from dried plants for the same symptoms at  1 part plant to 32 parts water, but in this case don’t remove the water from heat, allow it to boil for 20 – 30 minutes, returning the level of water to 32 parts before using.  Drink a cup of tea 3 times a day until the complaint ends. – Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West – Michael Moore, 2nd Edition, Page 273-274

[amazonjs asin=”0890134545″ locale=”US” title=”Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West”]

 

Bamboo, the Experiment Continues…..

Earlier this spring we spend a Saturday preping an area along the south side of our house for bamboo(read about it here).  We like that bamboo will grow quickly, prolifically and tall, covering and shading the south, hot side of our house.  We are also anticipating many other benifits, bamboo creates a lot of biomass to use in the gardens, poles for garden structures and food.

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We ordered our bamboo from a company on Amazon, Maya Gardens Inc.  When the bamboo arrived it was beautiful and green with strong roots, it also came with a few pages full of instructions.  We decided to pot the bamboo up, instead of putting it directly in the ground, it was early spring and still quite cold, in a pot I could easily bring it inside at nights and give it extra loving care. In April we finally got around to planting it in its spot, and one plant promptly went brown and appeared dead, the other plant lost a few leaves, but seemed to be limping along.

I honestly thought we had lost one of them, the instructions said it may happen and it would still live, but still…..

 

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The bamboo that had “died”

 

Then just this last week i was walking past the bamboo beds and something caught my eye.

Something small, and green was poking up among the brown stems of the struggling bamboo plant, then I looked over at the other bamboo and there were several healthy shoots, happily growning, happily green and happily expanding!
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The grand experiment continues, I am excited and optimistic that this might actually work.  One hurdle over come, a few more to go and we have an established bamboo bed.

Goat enclosure

One of the things we try to do on the farm is reuse as much materials as we can.  We re-purpose wood, and other building materials.  Not only does it reduce the cost of the project, but it also reduces the amount of stuff that eventually ends up in the land fills.

Enter our Goat Enclosure.   The goal is to create an enclosure that is big enough for the goats we will be getting in the next Month or so, and reduce any cost that may be associated with it.  The cost for this enclosure was a total of $18.00.  I did use two new 4×4 posts for the corners of the enclosure.  The sides are made from repurposed 2x4s that are then covered with some old cedar fencing that we salvaged from a 30 year old wood fence.

Cedar boards reclaimed from an old wood fence.

Cedar boards reclaimed from an old wood fence.

Chadd removing nails from the piece of plywood we used for the roof.

Chadd removing nails from the piece of plywood we used for the roof.

We also did not want to purchase roofing for it, so we re-purposed old campaign signs from the recent city council election. (Thanks Ben Reeves for giving us your old signs).  I did have to modify the structure of the roof so that it was the correct width to use the campaign signs.

Shed roof made with old Eagle Mountain City Council campaign signs.

Shed roof made with old Eagle Mountain City Council campaign signs.

I used wood screws to attach the 2x4s to the 4x4s as cross members, and then used an air staple gun to attach the cedar boards to the 2x4s and to also secure the campaign signs to the top of the enclosure.

The enclosure is four feet tall, four feed deep and eight feet wide.  The front is partially enclosed, and we will probably be adding a gate in the near future.

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Front of goat enclosure.

Front of goat enclosure.

It will be interesting to see how the campaign signs weather in the sun and the elements over the years.  I think it will work nicely for the goats when the arrive on the farm.

Now all we need is some hay and the goats.  I am also going to use the chipper/shredder to turn the end of the fence board we cut into mulch.  If I can’t do that then, we will burn them in our wood stove this winter.

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Kestrel Cam

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CLICK GRAPHIC TO VIEW THE CAM

GREAT NEWS!  We have teamed up with the Eagle Mountain Kestrel Project, Legend Engineering, and a couple of other residents to bring you the Eagle Mountain Kestrel Cam.  We have picked one of the nesting pair of kestrels and have installed a webcam into their nesting box.  Shon Reed, an Eagle Mountain resident, has worked hard to get all of the elements needed to make it happen.  It should also be noted the Shon is a very excellent photographer, and you can see his work by going to his Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/shon_reed/

The Eagle Mountain Kestrel project is designed to help increase, and preserve the American Kestrel population in and around Eagle Mountain.  There have been a number of kestrel boxes placed around the city on public and private land.  Eagle Mountain city keeps an updated list of the location of these boxes:  http://www.eaglemountaincity.org/community/kestrel-boxes. Quail Run Farm currently has one of those boxes and is now helping the project spread the word with a 24/7 live webcam.  We are hoping to see this mating pair of Kestrels lay a clutch soon.

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The purpose of this post is to give you a little insight into how the cam is setup, and the effort that was taken to bring it to you.  One of the unique things about this box is that we also have a 24/7 weather station about 200 feet away, this station is collecting the weather data to go along with the video feed.  You can view this weather data, by going to our Weather Underground feed (Station ID: KUTEAGLE19).

The nesting box is on top a 30 foot pole, that was made from repurposed 4X4s wedged between 2X4s on either side.

The height of the box, and the poles materials has made it difficult to check the box, and putting a webcam in the box would be impossible without the donated time of Brian and Jordan, and the use of equipment from Rocky Mountain Power.

Brian and Jordan donated their time, and Rocky Mountain Power allowed them to use a bucket truck to help install the camera after hours.  I want to thank Brian and Jordan for donating their time after work, and Rocky Mountain power for allowing them to use their truck when they were installing the camera.

Rocky Mountain Truck

Rocky Mountain Truck

 

After we ran power to the pole, and extend our Wi-Fi coverage, we were able to install the web cam.  The webcam was purchased for the project by Lonny Reed the owner of Legend Engineering in Heber City, a Civil Engineering, Survey and Land Planning company.

Brian and Lonny Read looking at the camera and working on the strategy to install it with little impact on the falcons.

Brian and Lonny Read looking at the camera and working on the strategy to install it with little impact on the falcons.

Once the camera was prepped for install, Brian went up in the bucket truck to install the camera. Lonny and the rest of us were on the ground looking at the camera to help Brian find the best angle after it was installed in the nest. Shon was out of town during the install, but was being constantly updated on the progress and sent the live feed so he also could give input on the install.

Looking at the feed while Brian is installing the camera.

Looking at the feed while Brian is installing the camera.

Brian installing the camera.

Brian installing the camera.

Taping the cables in place.

Taping the cables in place.

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Kestrel pair watching as the camera is installed from a close by power line.

Kestrel pair watching as the camera is installed from a close by power line.

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Eagle Mountain can now enjoy the views from the webcam.  We have the feed available to everyone on the Quail Run Website.  You can view the camera by going to this link:

https://quailrunfarms.com/kestrel/index.html

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CLICK GRAPHIC TO VIEW THE CAM

The page includes a place where you can leave your comments, and start a discussion on what is being seen.  You can even share your favorite photo from the webcam in the comments section.

Let us know what we can do to improve the project, as well as learn more about these beautiful and powerful birds.

It should also be noted that we had some other birds watching us while we were installing the camera.

Red Tailed Hawks looking on from a near by power pole.

Red Tailed Hawks looking on from a near by power pole.

Once we were done with the actual camera install, we needed to complete the configuration, get the website setup, and make sure that it could be accessed via the internet.

Working on the wireless and port forwarding for the website and live feed.

Working on the wireless and port forwarding for the website and live feed.

Fencing

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One of our “fences”

Before we bought this property, three years ago, it had been sorely neglected and abused.  There were piles and piles of old construction waste piled all around the house and down in the pastures, old dilapidated sheds and the fencing was an array of hodge-podge materials and poor patching. Over the last three summers we have been steadily cleaning things up, making a dent in the garbage, hauling it off or organizing it to be re-purposed. Its a daunting job and we still have years of work ahead of us and about a zillion trips to the dump.
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IMG_6159In preparation for adding a small herd of goats to the farm this spring we had to replace some of the worse fencing along the property line. It is something we had been planning for the last three years, but fencing is a lot of work and can be rather expensive, however keeping goats where they need to be required that we finally get to that fence.
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This Saturday was fencing day, my brother came to lend us a hand.  As you can see he was a lot of help…. The men watched on as our fourteen year old daughter dug all the fence posts.  We are teaching them to work, right?
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After my little sassy pants daughter got all the holes dug and the fence posts in (yes she actually did all that, with supervision from her father, and they were actually building a shed for the goats so they weren’t slacking as much as it looks in the pictures) the men ran wire and stretched it tight, wiring it in place. The goat pen is ready for those little babies in a few weeks.

The difference is amazing, it makes me excited for when we get all the fencing cleaned up and replaced.

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