April 13th
Yesterday I moved our pea starts outside and planted some carrots, rainbow carrots and radishes in the raised beds we built last year. I hope they do ok. The compost is not as broken down as I hoped...
I have tomatoes, assorted peppers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, onions, eggplant, marigolds, assorted herbs, kale and lettuce started inside. I hope to start squash, yellow squash, pumpkin, zuchini, cucumbers and pickling cucumbers inside soon.
I built two plant lights -- one from a light I pulled from under a kitchen cabinet we moved into the laundry room, and the other from a second hand light. I bought LED daylight bulbs for the plants. They are growing in small red solo type cups with a couple holes drilled in the bottom, in plastic hospital tubs I got cheap second hand, some are up on boxes to keep them closer to the lights until they get bigger... It is fun to play with the plants.
For projects they are doing two of our children are going to plan and tend their own raised beds. One for a school project is going to build another raised bed.
I saw a video about a trellis system using fishing line I want to try for the beds. My sweetheart had
some fishing line already. I need to get more wood then set it up... hopefully in the next week or so.
I have been digging thistles in the chicken yard. The birds follow me around to get worms out of the holes as I move to another one. One of the Buff Orphingtons (Nuggets) and a ISA Brown (KFC) are the bravest and stay close the others follow. One of the newest birds an Australorp (Stir-fry) was almost accidentally hit with a flying thistle as my bad aim missed the wheelbarrow. She stayed farther away after that. Oops.
I have slowing been wacking down dried weeds from last year and pulling rocks out. We would love to burn the weeds but we are afraid of the fire getting out of control so we have not tried it yet.
Today we hope to put of the first section of the "Flood bed". A hundred plus foot long, 2.5 foot high raised bed by the creek. We hope to plan perrinial foods in it and also have an extra barrier from the creek spring melts.
We hope to built up a wall/dike/burm on the North side where the water drains from the field behind us in the spring. We are pulling rubble from the creek bed that previous owners left there, then will bury that with dirt from "run" to make that part deeper and the wall next to it higher at the same time.
Lots of work ,but it feels good to be productive and see progress on our land.
PS the chickens are laying so well I have 3 dozen eggs in the fridge all from them. I have not bought eggs for at least a month, I think maybe two, and I have given some away and have plans to bring some to family in a week or so....
