Eggciting Gardening

Ok that was a pretty bad pun...but we did have some chicken help the other day in the front garden, no yolk. We were digging out all of the weeds and realized that the chickens could help us move the soil around a bit (and it was full of worms and other juicy bugs). 

We brought Speckles, Mother Clucker, Denise and Dorothy out one at a time on a rotating garden helper schedule. They were pretty content scratching around for bugs.

 We found this guy (I think it's a Western Redback Salamander) before the chickens got him.

Yesterday we went and checked out a livestock auction (no, we didn't come back with any more animals). We never even made it to the livestock part of the day! It took them 3+ hours to get through the farm equipment so we ended up leaving before they started with the animals. We did get to see all the animals in the barn - the lambs were tiny and adorable. Maybe it's a good thing we left when we did...

We woke up this morning to a strange scene - the farm gate was open, the landlord's truck was gone and there was a burn mark in the grass outside the greenhouse with an empty, blackened garbage can next to it. It turns out that our landlord woke up in the middle of the night and realized it was frosty out so he drove over to the farm to try and heat the greenhouse up. He attached a pipe to the heat vent of his truck and ran it into the greenhouse, and he lit a fire in the can outside the door and used a fan to blow the heat in. The seedlings all seem fine today (his and ours) - the thermometers apparently read -1 degree outside and 3 degrees inside at around 4am. The fantastic guard dogs never even woke up in the night...

Craig is a Genius

Craigslist is kind of fantastic. I already knew that, but I was never looking for such a wide variety of items on there before. Today I picked up 2 big rolls of chicken wire (actually, google tells me this is 'hardware cloth' and is actually a better option for keeping chickens safe than 'chicken wire') for $20 and a bunch of bamboo poles for trellises for $8. Just another Wednesday night...

Plant a Seed

There's still a month to go before move in day but I have itchy feet! Nope....wrong expression...and google is not helping me. Let's just go with antsy - I am antsy to get going! 

I'm researching like crazy (current tabs include "raising chickens on pasture", "succession gardening" and "top 10 signs that you might be batsh*t crazy") but reading and learning is only helping to cure part of the restlessness. Since I've basically never grown anything, what better way to give myself a nice easy introduction than to, as they say in France, go COUILLES PROFONDES! 

 We have an 85' x 8' section of greenhouse to plant in. If I were a smart little newbie, I would buy seedlings at the beginning of April to transplant...but since I really want to get going *now*, I decided to try starting some seeds indoors to see what happens. I figure I can buy seedlings later if this fails.

The greenhouse all covered up for winter.

I bought a seed starting tray, some seed starter mix and, of course, seeds. I forgot labels so I made a little chart so that I know what's planted where. I moistened the seed mix in the bowl and filled the cells of the tray, and then poked little holes with the chopstick, planted 2-3 seeds per cell and covered them with a bit of soil (according to each packet - and the super handy West Coast Seeds catalogue). 

My seed sowing station.

I planted bell peppers, chilli peppers, broccoli, basil, oregano, cilantro, tomatoes and then some kale and arugula, just 'cause. I figure that the kale and arugula do well in colder weather so they can go in the greenhouse right off the bat in April with a head start - they could probably go in as seeds now, I think, if I were already living there (this is all assuming the seedlings grow...the green-ness of my thumb will be determined shortly). 

The tray came with a plastic dome cover so I covered it up and put it on the best warm spot I could find - the floor of the broom closet in the kitchen. I have to figure out a grow light setup in the next few days.

Seeds all planted...the whole things looks so cute to me!

The best thing about being new to all of this is how exciting everything is! I hope that doesn't fade too quickly.