beans in the garden already?

planted in the garden to date.
potatoes, which aren't coming up yet and might never.
beets, little plants almost an inch tall two rows.
onion plants, two rows they have taken well.
pole beans, yes we planted our beans already.

after observing the extended forecast we couldn't resist.

since our first year here we have been making arbors for our beans. the first year we tried to make it out of bamboo. although it was like a work of art it wasn't strong enough for heavy wet pole beans. our next year we started using cattle panels to form the arch. this has been a glorious thing. it provides a shady avenue to the back of the garden. initially the beans are like low hanging fruit. it is a delicious morning stroll.

this is the season that bamboo shoots with blazing speed. here one is skewering two oak leaves.

our bamboo hedge should finally offer substantial privacy this year.


today we mulched between the strawberry plant beds.

there are many blooms we are hopeful of a big harvest. the black raspberry brambles are doing nicely in their relative confinement.

we put down landscape cloth then a thick layer of wood chips.

this is our new grain storage.

these drums should pay for themselves in bagging fees within a few visits to the mill. they seal so well that i can tip them on their side and roll them around full of grain. originally they held tomato paste.

here is what we are using the snow fence for.

it is chicken proof and we want to keep the girls in the lower paddock away from the garden and yard.

their paddock is so large that they don't really try to get into the upper paddocks or yard.

i had to move the red farm gate to improve our chicken proofing


the new broiler chicks have arrived.

they look very slick and healthy. i like our new hatchery so far.

the upper paddock is looking very healthy this year.


some of our tomato seedlings are looking leggy. i put a fan on them to encourage stem strength.


tabitha's new additions to the root cellar are blooming.


we also started to mulch around the fruit trees.


this is last years tomato bed covered with leaves, plastic then cattle panels. i did that in the fall. soon we'll peel it back and see how our soil fared.


i still have to paint the new arbor.

other gardening duties have superseded it's final cosmetics.

kassi posed, asked me to take this shot and wants to put it on her blog.

kassi walked around with me while i took photos for this post. looking back through them it makes me feel like we have an idyllic farm for a child to grow up in, i hope so.

customers

we have been selling eggs for a few months now. it seems to be balancing out. i mean, we are mostly paying for our eggs and have extra for extended family. we were frightened of "the other fella" as my father-in-law calls customers. so far most everyone is very nice and gracious. i must admit that our eggs are amazing and that goes a long way to securing return customers.

a couple of days ago i was working in my messy garage and an extra big shiny new truck pulls up. an older gentleman wearing a veteran of some war hat says "how much are you gonna charge me for a dozen eggs?" i say "two fifty." he carried on to balk at the price. finally, he asked if i knew how much he could get them for in the store. "a dollar ninety three just down the road." he listed some local store near springfield that sold them for less and would i take two dollars? i said "i would just as soon give you a dozen eggs" i was heavily implying that if he might be too poor to afford them (obviously, he could afford them).

we exchanged a few more words, his face got pretty red and he left. i almost asked him directly if he couldn't afford them i'd go get him a dozen. it was just as well, he wouldn't have been able to taste the difference between our eggs and those minimized eggs in the store anyway.

that is the exception. most of our customers are wonderful. this is especially encouraging since we are preparing to take deposits for our pastured poultry starting april fifteenth. that is when we will take possession of our new chicks. our friends just got their chicks from the same new hatchery we are both trying this year. they look great.

yesterday we went to the semi-local feed and farm store. we got some new chicks. we are hoping for some colored egg layers. that will mix it up a little. we need to have a culling of older hens pretty soon. these new birds should pick up the slack in a few months. we have always ordered our chicks from the springfield hatchery or mail order. this method is new to us.

i also bought a new stock tank. two by two by eight feet. i put it next to the cow pen and plan rain water collection from the barn and pen shed. tabitha and i have decided that i need to roof the other half of the cow pen to keep control over the deep bedding. i might try to get to that after the annual easter egg hunt today.

happy easter

primrose path

if you have ever been to our house just after or during a rain, you have had to jump the puddle. we have been forever wanting to remedy this. our answer was to never ever pour cement there. in fact we already had a small pad that would need to be removed prior to realizing our plans.

a rocky path

one thing tabitha and i both have in common, we are purists. that is, we like to use natural stone wherever we can. if cement is necessary, we try to hide it. a person that has been to the ozarks knows that if you find a rock in the ozarks and throw it odds are you'll hit a baptist preacher. that joke is funny because it is profoundly rocky in the ozarks and there are many times many baptist preachers here. my friend james is a baptist preacher and finds that joke funny so please take no offense.

all rock are not the same. having a flat side is a blessing which we only enjoy a small percentage of the time. luckily just across the road in a ravine is a little dumping of old quarried stone. most of them are too large to get. even the ones that two people can carry are difficult to extract from their resting place. mike, my father-in-law graciously offered to come over and move our barn with his big-dig*. while here he offered to go get the stones that we carried to the top of the ravine.

the barn used to live between those two trees on the left.

three front end loads later we had a huge pile of beautiful rock. the following early morning we decided to dig the path for a suitable bed for the stones. it was a job that only a large adult with a pick and shovel could accomplish. toly was a huge help shoveling loosened dirt into the wheel barrow.

first thing was to put down a layer of chat.

then we started laying the stone.

tabitha was in charge of putting the puzzle together and my job was to set the stone.

we collect rocks that exhibit certain characteristics. can you tell how many of them are in the primrose path?

it was an entire day job for several people. well, two determined adults and four distracting children.


we were incredibly bushed, sore and collapsed into bed.

i am still surprised by it each time i walk in the front door.

today we planted two double rows of beets. we love beets. then we got the most glorious rain. it was slow steady and soaking. our beets should like it. i fixed the chicken water fountain. it was in a sad state and filled with mosquito larvae. i took special pleasure in dumping the mosquito laden water for the chickens to pick through and eat. i replaced the pre-filter sock and made a reinforced screen for the top of the bucket. it hangs under the eave gutter and automatically fills when it rains. i need to hook up my other rain water tank to a second water fountain. i have been struggling with the type of filter i need to make for it. finally have an idea. now i just need the parts.

we visited our friends yesterday for a deserved break after the rocky path. it was great fun. they have a very enviable green house filled with seedlings. they also had two sows farrow. those piggies were so cute. we are going to get two of them to raise out and butcher on our farm. i still need to build that smoker.

happy happy spring...


* toly calls all large machinery big-digs. now papa's tractor is forever named big-dig

and the winner is... well winners actually.

sheila was very close with only the original clues.
so close in fact that tabitha wanted me to call it over.
so sheila gets a bar of soap

christiana's ten year old also gets a bar of soap too. mostly correct still missing the chicken feeding part though.

stephanie got it almost exactly.

the idea:

we have a plague of japanese beetles here every year. they munch our fruit trees and other garden plants. tabitha took to holding a bucket with a little water under the fruit tree branches and shaking them into the bucket. then she would dump the bucket of hundreds of beetles into the chicken coop. the chickens would go crazy and munch them all up.

standard beetle traps clog and need to be cleaned regularly. i guess it can be scary since the pheromone lure can attract volumes of the beetles and if you don't kill them all in an overflowing trap you have just made your problem worse. all those extra attracted beetles eating more of your stuff than they did before.

so my idea is to hang this little hut in the chicken coop. it will hang completely within reach of the chickens. the bait will be protected from the elements and chickens within the cage and roof. it will be easy to load new bait and hang back on a screw for the chickens. hopefully the beetles won't be able to get to the lure/bait. i intend them to just try to get to it and swarm the little shed where my chickens will be poised for lunch.

this is completely untested and still a developing theory. testing will ensue once beetle season starts. i'll have an update regarding this topic at that time.

sheila, christiana and stephanie please email me your postal addresses and your packages will be on the way shortly. omelay (at) gmail (dot) com

happy spring
k-)

first clue

japanese beetle bait

there are some very close guesses. these clues should clinch it...

little building projects and contest

at every opportunity i am building a few seedling trays.

we have finally started to win the battle against damping off. we had a turn in weather. is quite chilly outside today. i had planned on making large soil blocks and migrating the seedlings to larger opportunity. i hope it warms up so we can tie into that this afternoon.

yesterday in the afternoon i built a mineral feeder for the cow. i altered my original plan for several reasons. it was going to be round and mount to a stump in our field. now that we have decided to mostly keep the cow in a pen i decided to make it initially mount on her feeder. once she is confinement i will move it to her pen.

i put the final coat of paint on it this morning. i have a large piece of conveyor belt that will cover this like a heavy flap. she will be able to nose up the flap to get to the minerals.

the four compartments will contain; fertrell salt mix, fertrell conditioner, baking soda, and sea kelp. the flap will shed the elements to keep the minerals reasonably dry.

i also built this, is of my own invention and it's use is novel. it will hang from that hole against a post.

it opens like this:

here it is from the bottom.

the first person to guess what this is will win a bar of our lavender soap. i will continue to add clues until someone gets it. the winner must comment on the blog not at FB where my posts copy automatically.

most excellent guesses it is not:
suet feeder
thread feeder

to beet or not to beet

that was the question. after a bit of deliberation we decided to pluck a few of the crowded beets that had younger fellows waiting to fill their void. kassi played the courier and presenter.

the beets were fabulous. tabitha steamed the tops and bottoms and served them separately. they were like sweet butter. i love beets and my affair with them was bolstered by these glorious examples. to that end we have decided to plant another double row of them. that will make three. luckily tabitha loves beets also.

another culinary development happened today. we got our half beef back from the slaughter house. he was grass-fed with the exception of some bribery grain to keep him friendly. we had burgers, the kids favorite. extra sharp cheddar and garden fresh arugula were only real condiments necessary. within the next few days we'll tear into the steaks. i look forward to that.

we mowed and mulched more on the tomato plants today. they seem very happy. the stupid wheat straw that i bought for that original purpose had so much seed left in it that i could have spread it on our pasture to re-seed it. or, i could have harvested all the new wheat grass and had a few mornings of wheat grass juice.

i also made the pulley operated ramp/door retraction mechanism for the chicken coop. it took a little adjusting to get it to operate smoothly. it makes it easier for the person putting up the chickens to close their door and lock it from outside their pen. no more tracking through the chicken manure each night.

i tried it tonight in the near dark and it worked wonderfully. the girls must have liked it also since they laid eighteen eggs today. i can't remember the last time that we got eighteen eggs.

kassi has taken to the computer so much so that she is standing over my shoulder waiting for me pass the baton.

house warming party

tabitha and i have been persistently struggling to get the new coop livable for the girls. compromises have been made. the short-list of the absolutely necessary before they would be safe and dry was finally accomplished.

i made the nest boxes out of old cupboard doors and wood scraps.

i had to attach the protective skirting yesterday morning before the girls could settle-into their run.

directly after their run was secure tabitha and i caught the birds from their upper coop. i filled a feed sack with a handful of diatomaceous earth and we slipped each bird in and gently shook it. after they looked like powdered sugar doughnuts we released them into their new digs.

the girls didn't recognize each other and needed to re-establish their hierarchy. a few dusty fights ensued. mostly they were freaked out with shock of their dusting trauma and release into a relative paradise compared to their previous prison of squalor.

while the girls waited outside tabitha and i finished chicken containment inside the coop. we figured the roosts and ladder perches to the nest boxes. we attached the minimum of them and opened the door.

chickens are such great creatures. they were curious and several of them promptly came into the coop. eventually all the girls found the nest boxes and laid their expected amount.

i opened the old coop to let it dry out. i felt like a slumlord of the farmstead. that coop has been a great secure home but it has outlived it's purpose.


in the garden, tabitha and i planted our final tomato plants. the weather is showing a huge hail storm headed our way as i write this... i hope the hail misses us this year. we could really use a break.

the tiller of dreams has still kept starting on the first pull and mashing through the ozarks soil nearly undaunted. here it is facing off it's foe, the giant ozark rock..

this rock actually won their first battle but i unearthed it with the pry-bar and shovel. i showed that tiller not to be scared of these rock. just call in the big guns when needed.

i also set up the sprinkler and a huge piece of tarp for the kids. i made that sprinkler a few years ago. the concept was based on a sprinkler i had as a kid. the entire thing is safe for little feet to step on without injury.
they made a hillbilly slip-n-slide.

tristan would careen the entire length of it.

kassi and toly really got into the act.

i set rome on the tarp and he immediately decided that this was fun.

rome immediately understood the slippery concept and promptly started careening on his very own.

the kids were cautiously avoiding crashing into rome.

legend of zelda's link?

tabitha finally made tristan his much requested link costume.

he has worn it ever since.

we have been doing a little fencing and gate building.

i have yet to finish the back run.

"Z"


henry was spying on us.