Today as I was out checking the garden I noticed that there were peas on the vines! The end of June our spring peas decided it was too hot and in a pout stopped flowering. They ended up in the compost pile and a new set of pea seeds were planted. I had been noticing a flower or two the last week, what I hadn’t noticed that under the leaves there were many more flowers than I had known. Today I saw them, beautiful snow peas, they should be productive well into October and I am so excited!
The “Orchard Meadow” thick and green, full of a variety of grasses and perennial weeds.
When we moved to the farm almost seven years ago the area that we now call the “Orchard Meadow” was barren, except for tumble weeds, some cheat grass and burrs. It was pretty sad. Our efforts to reclaim the land, to restore and add fertility and productivity were really quite simple. All land will eventually restore itself and naturally move towards supporting life and fertility within its sphere, we were looking to accelerate that process and add a bit more.
Common Mallow and White Clover, both have a very important roll in the health and vigor of the meadow.
To begin with we mowed down all the weeds and planted trees, mulching them deeply with horse manure, straw and wood chips. The second winter we over seeded the whole thing with drought tolerant pasture grasses and in the spring white clover and sweet clover. We irrigated the entire meadow and let the grass, clover and weeds grow.
Comfrey, the deep tap root bring important minerals to the surface and when mowed deposit them where the trees and grasses can most benefit .
Yes, even the weeds. Weeds in the context of reclaiming pasture are not a bad thing. The earth naturally reclaims herself, and what we would call common weeds are some of the first plants that come into an area to help restore, rebuild and nourish. And we had a lot of weeds, big tall lambs quarter and hog weed, and we mowed them a few times and in doing that created a layer of natural mulch. Every year the grass, clovers and good perennial weeds got thicker and the starter weeds became less and less. We added animals in movable pens to eat down the grass and fertilize.
Alfalfa, creates a lot of biomass and fixes nitrogen from the air and makes it bioavailable in the soil around it.
This year our trees are bigger and the grass thicker and greener than it’s ever been. I still have to water at least once a week because the trees are still young (some only a year old, we lost a few to gophers) but soon the plan is to only water every few weeks as needed.
Plantain, not only great for the pasture, but very medicinal.
I usually don’t bother with a fall garden. It’s mostly because of laziness. Not that I’m afraid of work, but that over the years I haven’t been very successful and I’ve been too lazy to figure it out. I feel like I’m either planting too late, or if I’m planting on time the garden is too hot and my germination rates are poor.
Lettuce seeds just starting to sprout in soil blocks.
When I started selling at the farmers market I decided I needed to start planting more lettuce as a cash crop and if done correctly I could get several harvests. However, two plantings later and a horrible germination rate, I was ready to give up. Maybe I’m not destined to have lettuce past June.
Then I read a book.
My opinion on starting seeds changed, like, completely. I’ve usually avoided starting seeds indoors. It was so much work, making sure they were warm enough and had enough light and water..for what? A week or two extra growing time? Well, when you are planting for sales a week or two or three is pretty huge. There is also the advantage of better germination rates than out in the field. I couldn’t get lettuce seeds to germinate well in the heat and dry of July, but I have an almost 100% germination rate in my 70 degree house where I can keep an eye on them easily. There is also the cost and bother of plastic or peat pots and flats, plastic wears out and peat can only be used once. I started reading about the soil blocking method, I ordered a soil block tool and made my first pan of soil blocks and sowed my lettuce seeds.
Newly prepared bed with fresh compost worked into the top couple inches of the soil.
As I said before I got an almost 100% germination rate. In the mean time I spent some time preparing my lettuce beds. For the past few years I had been using a no-till deep mulch method, and generally I like the philosophy and the lower manual labor (tilling, spading, weeding). However I was finding I still had problems with compact, clay soil and seed germination. After much research I’m transitioning to a low-till method, working only the top couple inches of soil, leaving the deep tilling to the worms. I worked this bed over with a spade, aerating the entire thing, then covered it all with my homemade compost and worked it in the top couple inches. All beautiful and ready for my lettuce starts to be transplanted this weekend.
Two and a half week old lettuce seedlings being hardened off for transplanting in a few days.
I will be experimenting with starting more of my seeds indoors. Our biggest obstacles will be heat and light, so we will be working with artificial lighting and greenhouse methods this winter. It’s always a big experiment around here.
I love variety and beauty. Gardening has always been very satisfying for me because I can experiment a lot with both variety and beauty. I’m always trying new vegetables and flowers, usually mixing the two.
One way I like to bring variety and visual interest to the garden is by vertical plantings. A couple years ago Mike made several of these four sided trellises in some of the garden beds and I’ve has a lot of fun growing things right up them. I do a lot of runner beans (they have a prettiest flowers) and cucumbers, but one of my favorites would be mini pumpkins.
I’ve done a lot of mini pumpkins over the years, they are so cute and they kids just love them, they last through fall decorating and when they are done being pretty the chickens and goats enjoy them as an early winter treat. While pumpkins are a vine, they don’t naturally grow up, like pole beans or peas, and they need a bit of help. I like to use strips of cut up cotton shirts, they have a little bit of give in them, so when the wind blows it won’t snap the vine, they are very sturdy, but if one happens to be left in the garden they will break down nicely. They look a little ragged right after I lift the vines and tie them down, but bounce back pretty quickly. They are a fun addition to the garden and growing them vertically not only looks nice, but saves valuable garden space.
This is the mini pumpkin plant about a week after I tied it up, you can see how much bigger it has gotten and how nice and filled out it is.
For a long time I’ve dreamed of owning my own dairy animals and making all the yummy dairy foods. My first try at soft goat cheese was a success! My children may never get to drink our goat milk again, I’m saving it all for cheese.
I think this may just be the most perfect summer lunch ever.
One of my main jobs here on the farm, my main focus, what everything comes down to is the health of the soil. It doesn’t matter what the freeze dates are, the rates of germination, how many pounds of beans harvested per row if my soil isn’t healthy and nurtured. I can’t have big harvests, beautiful plants or nutritious thriving vegetables if my soil is dead. I spend a lot of time looking at dirt, putting my hands in dirt, observing my garden beds, analyzing and planning, sometimes for years down the road. I want good, rich, dark soil, full of organic matter and life, worms, mushrooms, mold and microbes. The problem is that we are in a desert and our soil doesn’t come that way naturally, therefore is takes a lot of planning and focused effort to achieve that in an organic healthy way.
The ladies getting to work on a newly built compost pile.
To do this we use many different permaculture methods. One method is the classic composting, nothing organic goes to waste here, from kitchen scraps to weeds, it’s all recycled in some way to help enrich the land. We use chickens extensively in our composting program. We also compost in place and do traditional compost piles, but the chicken composting is what I’d like to talk about today.
In the chicken yard we make a simple pile: horse manure, goat manure and bedding, old leaves, kitchen scraps, weeds and lawn clippings (be cautious using lawn clipping in compost, if there is any weed killer on it, it can cause problems in the garden, I know I’ve experienced it first hand). We do this for a couple weeks, adding food scraps and weeds, especially those that have seeds. The chicken then scratch through the pile, mixing it, eating weed seeds and leaving their droppings to further enrich the compost. Every morning when my son goes out to do his chicken chores he rakes the pile up high and the chickens get to work mixing it all up again.
A pullet working on a new compost pile, she will help breakdown all those leaves and hay.
In about a week the pile looks like this picture below, and in two weeks it will be finished and ready to apply to the garden beds. About 10 days to 2 weeks after a pile is started I make a new one and so it goes through the season. Black gold made by my feathered friends and farm hands.
When done right the compost is hot to the touch and steams when the core is opened, this will help kill weed seeds and speeds up the compost process.
This is the time of year when the cool spring vegetables are finished and the warm summer vegetables are on. The beets and carrots are getting just big enough to harvest. They are small, but I think the small root vegetables are the most tender and sweetest, I’m always excited when I can start harvesting them.
For Sunday dinner I braved the blistering 100+ degrees and trekked into the garden to dig up a few of the bigger carrots and beets that I had left, not taking them to market the day before so we could enjoy them for dinner. My four year old Jack followed me out and delighted in pulling up the carrots after I loosened the soil around them. He would exclaim, delighted, every time a long carrot root popped out.
When they are this young young I don’t bother peeling them, the skins are still thin and easy to eat. I do scrub the dirt off well and cut the tops off, leaving a bit of the stems, I think it looks pretty and it gives the roasted veggie a bit of a sweet crunch. I cut the beets in half, that way they roast at the same rate as the carrots. Then I simply drizzled with a little bit of avocado oil and sprinkle with salt. Then in the oven they go at 400 degrees for around 30 minutes or until they are soft all the way through.
When finished they have a beautiful golden color and the sugars have caramelized, creating the best flavor. The thin roots at the bottom of the carrots are a bit crunchy and so sweet, my kids love that part the very best.
We got our first trio of goats about three years ago this spring. Our own little heard, one little doe and her two weathered brothers. From the beginning we planned on breeding our little dolly and building a heard of small dairy goats. Visions of gourmet cheese and rosie faced children with milk mustaches from our own animals danced in my head.
Of course we had to wait for little Dolly to grow up. In the meantime we fed our little goats, played with them, let them eat weeds and graze the orchard. There is almost nothing more amusing than watching baby goats play.
When Miss Dolly was about a year and a half old it was time to breed her, we found a buck and waited for her to come into heat. I was also very, very pregnant and not so great at getting down to the goat pasture to check on her. We made a couple attempts at breeding, but neither she or the buck were interested and I, hugely pregnant, gave up for that season. It was probably the best, I was very busy that next spring with a new baby of my own.
Instead we purchased two new wee baby goats. We named them Billy and Daisy. Billy is our heard buck and Daisy one of our moms. That also made breeding Dolly much easier, we just let them live together over the winter and let the breeding happen naturally.
Then one warm Sunday morning in April I got a text just as we were settling the family in their seats at church and the opening song started. The text said “we have babies!” Clearly I had to go check it all out! Really though, I did feel like I needed to go check on our Dolly and make sure everything went well and see if she needed any help and check on the babies. When I got there she was proudly cleaning her three little kids, she had those babies without any problems, like a veteran mother! Three little baby bucks (I had hoped for a doe, but I guess we will try again next season). Instead of pulling the babies and milking mom right away we allowed her to raise them, I didn’t want to bottle feed babies or sell them so young and I feel they do better if they are with her. At around eight weeks old we started the weaning process and I learned how to milk a goat. That has been an adventure and a story for another time. It has been so fun to have little goats around again.
For a very long time I’ve been drawn to the dream and romance of small farming. I know that sounds a little strange, what is so romantic about smelly animals and hard labor? While that is true, the dreamer in me chooses to ignore that and focus on beautiful baskets of eggs, the glass pitcher of home grown milk and the satisfaction of a garden well weeded. I also cannot ignore the beauty of my garden at dusk or the thrill of those first pea shoots making their arrival in early spring.
Part of that dream included being able to sell our healthy, local produce and other products at farmers markets. Not long after we purchased the farm I started looking into what that would entail and very quickly the reality became clear: big markets are not for small farmers. I know that seems to go against the idea of farmers markets, they are geared toward the small farmer, right? Well, yes and no. They are geared towards the middle farmer. It is very difficult for a small hobby farmer, who has a day job to generate enough produce to make a farmers market profitable after booth fees and competing with the bigger producers
Then we decided to try to sell our products right from the farm, using social media we advertised what we had available and took orders for pick up. We had some success, but not a lot, people didn’t seem very interested in driving our way for produce. Which is ok, we are all busy people.
I gave up on my dream and decided to just focus on my garden and make it beautiful and not worry so much about sell, turning a profit or even breaking even. This clearly wasn’t my path. Or was it?
Then another like minded individual decided that my small city needed its own farms market and it needed to gear itself towards small farms and back yard enthusiasts. I watched, then I went and checked it out, then we took the leap.
I am so happy we did.
Three peas in a pod
I checked the old blog today and realized its been almost two years since there has been a post. Two years. Wow. We’ve been busy with the day to day craziness that comes with a family of eleven. The farm has been chugging along, we haven’t made any major changes there because homesteading is expensive! That being said, the garden is growing, the orchard is getting bigger, the goats are multiplying, the chickens are doing what chickens do and so are the rabbits.
The biggest addition to the zoo would be our littlest monkey, Hazel, who was born December 2017 and made our family complete. She is what we’ve been missing.
I look forward to more writing and more sharing this year. I hope to finish my Master Herbalist course and start taking clients along with footzoning. The last two years have been a journey of healing, a journey I’m still walking. I hope to share parts of that and to help others find their path too.
The newest monkey at the zoo