Because the soil is so poor here we have to do a lot of amending to create enough fertility to grown anything successfully.  This may seem like a losing battle, who can realistically bring in tons of compost every single season?  That is why we are using no-till and permaculture methods, once we bring the compost and other amendments in and get the soil to produce, not tilling, mulching and leaving spent plants in place at the end of the year, fertility will naturally come year after year with little addition. But for now, we have to bring in composted manure, and a lot of it, and it was quite the dilemma at first, where to get it and how to afford it.

We were blessed to become acquainted with and soon friends with our neighbors across the road, they have been raising horses for many years and naturally horses produce a lot of manure and they have graciously allowed us many, many loads.  Dadzoo spent a good part of Saturday morning hauling load after load to our garden.  Beautiful black fertility.

For some strange reason the kids aren’t quite as excited as I am over a huge pile of composted manure….

We will now be spending many evenings and Saturdays sheet mulching our garden beds preparing for summer planting and building a dynamic ecosystem of fertility.