Ready to Plant (and 2 new chicks)

 Another busy day today! 

The poultry swap turned out to be a handful of trucks in a parking lot with some chickens, rabbits and ducks. It wasn't too exciting...but we did come back with 2 Rhode Island Red cross chicks that were born April 4th. They are supposed to be sex linked, so a 97% chance of being hens. I don't really understand the 97% part - I'll have to google that. They seem to have fit in with the other chicks. We gave them all worms from the garden this afternoon and the little ones were right in there stealing bits of worms and running away to eat them. 

When we got back we got to work in the greenhouse. First I unrolled the row covers

and raked through and watered the soil. It needs some compost on top before we plant in it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Nathan installed the drip irrigation. He dug a trench across the greenhouse for the main hose since the pump is on the opposite side from our beds.

There will be 6 lines of drip hoses. The two that aren't in yet will be longer and will go right out the back of the greenhouse to water our outside garden bed.

This is what we started with for the outside bed.

We moved it into place behind the greenhouse and Nathan screwed it all back together and levelled it. I recycled some of our moving boxes to cover the grass under the bed.

We then spent the next half hour filling the bed with soil from piles near it. All it needs now is some compost on the top and it should be good for planting tomorrow! It will have peas, lettuce, arugula, kale and spinach. 

First Few Days

It has been a busy few days but we are finally moved in! We spent Thursday on a (failed) mission to find an aquaponics tank while we had the uhaul, then packing up the truck, getting on the ferry and unloading the truck at the other end. The plants and chicks (and dogs and us) all survived the trip over! I was worried about the chicks getting too cold but they huddled together in the car and seem none the worse for wear. 

On Friday we met with the landlord and explored the farm and then proceeded to tidy some stuff up that we'd seen the day before and said we wanted to do "eventually" (so of course we got right to it...). Nathan fixed up the main gate; he braced the post that was falling over and took off a bunch of wire and rope that must have been used to keep some small animals in at some point. The entire farm property is fenced, which I didn't realize. Our house, though, isn't - there is a fully fenced yard about 10 m from the house but I'm lazy and I like to be able to let the dogs into a yard right from the door with bare feet and pjs when it's cold out. To fix that problem we extended the yard right up to the door of the house. It isn't the most beautiful fencing job (a mix of different sizes of hardware cloth and an xpen at one end) but it actually looks better now than it did when there was a separate yard away from the house. 

Yesterday we had to drive an hour south to return the uhaul truck (so glad we had a one way rental - Thursday would have been awful if we hadn't). We stopped and got some small tools, plants for the front of the house and a *lot* of food. The only grocery store within 20 minutes is small and expensive so we stocked up...and could barely push the cart through the store. 

The greenhouse is pretty much ready to go. We just have to add some compost to our half and rake through it, and then lay down irrigation. The pump and supplies are there so it shouldn't take too long.

I want to get the broccoli and kale seedlings in there to free up some space inside, and plant the lettuces. We're going to make a small outdoor bed at the end of the greenhouse (in the deer fenced section) for peas, arugula and some herbs. The first tomatoes that I planted a month ago are getting huge! They're already over 6" tall.

Happy farm dogs!

Today we are off to a poultry swap...just to look.....

 The old playhouse that we're going to convert into a coop.