The dirt doesn't wash away anymore...

Moving into the new place this winter was such a blessing, I can't thank the universe enough for what it has provided for us over these past two years.  Touching the earth and smelling the spring has gotten my spirits and dreams up...and my back tired!

This bear of a property has been a lot of time and effort, but it is really rewarding and fun to attempt a bunch of different farming techniques and experiment with new earth and new crops and new ideas! Here's to NEW, and the Spring rebirth!

The move here was timely and after Back Breaking 101 last year, I worried about destroying my back trying to get things ready.  The great thing about farm college was, it was an education.  Don't do too much too quickly were my syllabus notes from last year. So I got into things, but a little more slowly this season.  It seems amazing in retrospect that in the last 2 years we have moved from a 50x100 foot city lot with 9 chickens to 100 acres with over 150 animals, and now back to 5 acres and around 60 animals and the goal of living as sustainably as we can.

The goal has never changed, just the methods, the experience of being farmers for a year and knowing that our end game is to live happily and healthily under the heavens with our own two hands(well, 8...).  To know that from the stewarding and loving of the land comes the food to survive and the satisfaction of learning and teaching our sons, remembering our ancestral core and how bonded we are to mother earth...

A truly humbling moment is when you look at your hands and see the stains of your labor and love of the land, dirt and sweat embedded in the cracks of age...the dirt doesn't wash away anymore.

We finally moved all the chickens and ducks out to new pastures and put in fencing and patched up all the horse shelters to be different coops.  That was most of my spare time in February.  The livestock are set and we made a new huge tractor for the cornish crosses we are getting for our meat birds this year.  I am looking forward to growing these fatty's and having some pasture raised meat!  Yum Yum!







In early March I started the long process of turning the pasture into farmable land.  It hasn't ever been a farm as far as I know, so years and years of pasture and horse dung has made a super thick sod layer and it has been a beast to get thru.  But in theory it will be a great growing base!  The rototiller beat me up pretty thoroughly and waiting in between rains for it to dry out enough without packing the soil was testing my patience.  BUT it got done.  Note:  Buy tractor.

I tilled three to four passes over each of the 4 plots.  We made a 20x30 kitchen garden up by the house and are trying to "lasagna Garden" in this area.  The Lynsky's came for a visit and I put them to work! We laid down all of our broken down boxes from the move and then brought in a soil mix and raised the beds.  This will be our root veggies, peas, salad greens, spinach, salsa garden, and all that business.  So far we have planted in the cabbage, beets, lettuce, kohlrabi, beans, peas and a few other things, we will stagger 2 weeks and plant another set of those things and then move into the warmer season plantings.

In the upper pasture I tilled a 20x60 patch and another 25x80 plot and then two 4x30.  They will have wheat, corn and dahlias respectively.

The wheat should prove an interesting experiment.  It's what farmsteaders call a pancake patch, since there isn't really enough being grown to do more than a few batches of pancakes once it is said and done.  But that should be an interesting endeavor nonetheless.  It was planted in three different ways(by mistake) to see how the wheat comes up.  First I planted 3 rows that were about a foot apart, but then after Laird and I planted I looked up the date, the almanac said it was possibly the worst day of the year to plant!  The next section I did a more thorough job of raking out sod clumps and packing the soil and the third section I didn't rake, so it was the least molested of the turned pasture.

When the Lynsky's were up and the moon cycle was more favorable, they helped me hand broadcast the wheat and then rake it in.  It should be interesting to see the different productivities of the sections.  I think the hard part will be the hand harvest, threshing and winnowing, but should be more fun than the tilling!  Cant wait to use the old scythe from Sharon's great grandparents farm!

The spring has gotten us all silly with hatching! We incubated about 18 eggs and had a really bad hatch.  7 total jersey giants from the batch and one silkie.  We lost power twice for at least 3 hours toward the end of the incubation period, but we are unsure because it happened when we were away one day, so we can't be sure how many times it went out.  When we came back it was on for a little while then we lost it again, so I hooked the inverter up to the riding lawnmower and kept the heat up until power came back. So now we have a generator!

The poor little guys in the hatch that did survive, hatched out in our super tiny incubator and could barely move around, so we built a Coolerbator.  It is an old wine cooler rigged with a wafer thermostat and 2 lightbulbs.


















The wafer is filled with gas and as the lightbulbs heat up, the gas in the wafer expands. It eventually trips the switch killing the lights, then as the wafer cools and contracts the switch trips the light back on.  You regulate temp by doing minute adjustments with a thumbscrew to the distance of the wafer to the switch until you have the temp you want.  It was a pretty cool build and Sterling really enjoyed learning about the electricity and mechanical aspects of the thing.  So now we wait for the next 48 eggs...YES 48... and see what will happen with them.  We have silkies, jerseys and viking chickens in right now.

Our next breeding experiment is with Sterlings show silkie cock, Blue Eared Buff, in a breeding pen with our naked neck hen, Hi Helen.  We are hoping to get what are called Show Girls.  They look like Naked Neck's with Huge pom pom poofs like silkies....should be hilarious.

It's been a busy busy couple of months, but soon we hope to be in maintenance mode instead of build mode for the rest of the season.  I almost forgot, we have planted 10 blueberries, 4 fruit trees, 10 cedars, and 10 raspberries.  I feel like thats a pretty good start to our fruits and berries!

Make sure to enjoy the spring, smell the air look at the buds and flowers watch the birds and connect to the earth.  As you run your life, and the hustle and bustle get you caught up, try to take a moment to look at what you do and remember, in the end, your actions to the planet affect you.

Look at your hands, look what they have built for you and thank them, for today these hands have brought you here.

Love from the farm.
The Rowlands