Spring is..... here?

Well another Spring has arrived and brought with it some new challenges. Last year was the March 90 degree heat and drought and this year is May snow and rain. Luckily we had not planted summer crops yet or the snow would have wiped that out.

In late February we had 2 feet of snow in a 7 day time frame. That was interesting! I stayed at the hotel for the first few days but then could not get up the driveway, even Adams tuck couldn't get traction. Luckily the tractor did, so we parked our cars at the street and rode the tractor up to the house for about a week till it melted a bit. 

Handy tractor picking me up at the road.

Of course we have more projects than we have days for but we are picking away at them when the weather allows. 

We have continued to implement our "Biodynamic" practices as we work toward going beyond Organic. Part of Biodynamic farming is that everything on the farm is made on the farm. (Harder than you might think). We have our own compost this year using the plants from last year, yard waste and chicken bedding. We also have made two batches of "Bio-char". Very cool stuff. A pit is made in dirt, then filled with leaves, sticks and logs from the land then burnt and covered to smolder for a few days creating charcoal within the dirt pile. Mix that all together with the compost and you have an extremely fertile soil with higher amounts of nitrogen, potassium and carbon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

Then we had 6 inches of snow on May 3rd! 

We did have our spring garden planted (radish, carrots, potatoes, peas, beets, lettuce) and had it covered with fabric row covers so that protected those plants. Whew. We also threw together some cold frames for the lettuce with some old bricks and windows.

Tomatoes, Peppers and eggplants are sprouting in the basement and Adam takes great care of his little babies.  We got a 300 gallon water collection take and hooked it up to the gutter. We LOVE having this, we can water the seedlings and the chickens with fresh rainwater which is so much better for them and it saves money! we are going to get 3 more for each corner of the house. We will be prepared for drought this year.

 

Cold Frame

Spring Garden

We also planted 120 3-4 ft black walnut trees. 30 along the driveway and the rest in a bare area on the hill. Since we cut our own firewood we need to replace the trees we take out and Missouri conservation has all kinds of trees available. It will hopefully also create a wind block for the house, very windy at the top of our hill. Great for a wind turbine.... someday.....

Adam rented an auger to dig 120 holes. Still took two days.

Chickens are happy and getting big. We like to have them free range but for a few weeks we have them fenced in a pasture so we can grow our grass seed in some muddy areas around the house. (We have seeded twice and they eat all the seed, so they are taking a break from our back yard. :)

And yes folks, this is a bobcat stalking our chickens. Brave cat, this was at 3:00 in the afternoon right in the back yard while we had been out planting trees in the front yard.

Never a dull moment on the farm.......

Trouble maker....