On Wednesday, we went for a hike and then out for breakfast where we drew out some farm planning/mapping on a napkin. It was exciting to see our farm and gardens all drawn out (until I had to blow my nose into the napkin...I'm getting over a cold). Then we stopped by the nursery and picked up tomato seeds, a couple of rosemary plants (ours struggled where I had them planted in too much shade), a few more blueberry plants, raspberry canes and a couple of other berries to try - one gooseberry plant and 2 sea-buckthorn shrubs. Sea-buckthorn is a plant that's talked about a ton in permaculture since it's nitrogen fixing plus the berries are apparently very nutritious (but not too tasty on their own, raw). I'm getting more and more interested in permaculture ideas - everything I've read and watched makes a lot of sense for conserving water, generating more soil and making a farm more productive and rich over time instead of stripping all of the nutrients away like in traditional agriculture (and then having to add them again every year with more fertilizer).
This brings us to the next Wednesday project: swales! We started digging a swale (well, I started...Nathan looked a bit shocked at the giant mess I was making, but he has come around to its cool-ness) around the edge of the pond. I really should have been using a level since swales need to be along the contour line of the land (their point is to hold water and gradually let it seep back into the ground). Instead, I used the pond water as my level. As it filled the trench I was digging, I made sure I was digging in a way that let the water stay still instead of flowing toward or away from me. We shall see if that makes for a level swale...
Everyone loves the swale...except the chickens! Perfect, since on the hillside (the berm) we planted giants beets for future pigs to eat, kale for the livestock (it apparently grows huge with thick stalks) and some grass to see how it does there. The swale seems to be acting like a moat that the chickens won't cross, and the ducks don't bother with those little grass seeds. It will be a different story when everything sprouts! Not quite sure how we'll keep it from being duck feed instantly...
As I was digging, I kept feeding worms to Victoria (the other ducks don't trust me enough to take worms from me yet - and they're the ones we raised from ducklings! Figures.) and she followed me around the entire times. She also managed to get some of Silver's fluff stuck to her face..
On Thursday we planted a bunch of red and yellow potatoes in the hugelkultur beds, and then we planted all of our tomato seeds in trays as well as our leftover pepper seeds from last year. We decided it wasn't worth trying sweet peppers again since we didn't get too many compared to the effort of planting them, but we didn't want to waste any leftover seeds. Plus, the red pepper jelly that I made with the small sweet peppers was really good so I wouldn't mind getting enough for some more of that. We've been putting our seedling trays in the seedling house that our neighbours gave us - on sunny days it gets up to 42 degrees C in there! We bring them in at night.
On Friday we took Zoey and Ryan (too much for Abby) on a bike ride along the trail behind our house. It is a flat gravel trail and it was beautiful and sunny. The trail backs along all kinds of farm and forest - such a nice ride and very tired collies afterwards! When we got home, we finished our blueberry/raspberry hillside bed. We used wire to fence it off from the chickens (3 strands across the front of the bed - seems to be working so far) and Nathan build a cute little gate at the side so we can go in and pick berries.
The herb garden area at the bottom right of that photo seems to be too shady for our herbs so I set to work building a new spiral herb garden (yup, another permaculture technique...).
Herbs that like well drained, sunny areas go at the top (like rosemary) and herbs that prefer more shade can go at the back (like cilantro). I used rocks that I found around the property, and then filled the bed with maple leaves, alpaca manure (still a pile of it in the shelter in the front yard) and soil from an old garden bed in the front yard.
We'd like to put paving stones in most of the front yard this summer but we need to find a good (inexpensive) source for them. The dirt patch is where there was originally a garden bed, but we are leaving it for now until we find the stones. No, we didn't get another dog - that's Reba the corgi who's staying with us for a few weeks.
These girls like to lie together - so cute! They even chew bones next to each other out in the sun.
On Saturday we turned in most of the rye in the front yard so that we can try to plant grass there. It will be a challenge since it's very shaded by the huge maple. Nathan built a compost pile out of the alpaca manure and hay, so we should have some nice more nice compost for the garden in the next month.
Phew! What a week. Our first batch of meat birds arrive on Thursday! They are a breed called Sasso and our plan is to have them follow the sheep through the pastures in rotation. Sheep eat the grass and fertilize, chickens follow and scratch through the manure looking for bugs and fertilizing some more. Fingers crossed that everything we did to help our pastures this year gives us better grass! It is definitely looking good so far, and with lots of pasture rotation hopefully it will just keep getting better.
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