Spring Crops

K- New asperagus shoots are so exciting!

We started these from seed in pots at our previous home in Charlotte. They are pretty heavily mulched to keep the soil nice and cool and prevent drying. This is their 4th year. I'm not sure yet if I will cut any this year or not. I'll wait to see how many sprouts we get. These first ones look pretty thick and hearty.

The broccoli and cabbage are also looking pretty good.

Planting Zoysia

M-We planted 100 sq ft of zoysia sod (Myers) this morning. I used the bottom plow to dig out spots in the existing sod, then cut the zoysia sod to fit. Took a little different adjustment then actual plowing to get a nice level furrow, but once I got it set right it worked pretty well. Some furrows where a little shallow and some a little deep, but it sure beat doing it by hand! The Zoysia should gradually spread and fill in, 2-3 years from now we should have a nice drought resistant summer lawn. We got the sod from a local sod farm for $40, sure beats the junk they sell out of the catalogs. The boys were a big help cleaning up the old sod!

Flooded Pasture

M- We got around 4 inches of rain over the past two days. The pasture floods a little bit a few times of year, but the water usually drains in a day or two and is not a problem. The animals don't particularly like it, but the kids sure had fun splashing in the mud this morning.

Hauling Hay

M-I usually just haul the hay down into the pasture using the van, but we have had so much rain, I knew it would not make it back up the hill. I decided to give it a try using the Suburban. 1st gear, low range, and everything came out okay. The tractor got a little loose towards the bottom, but it wasn't bad at all. These weren't the heaviest bales, though.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is a great excuse to celebrate before spring.

Christmas Snow

M-Christmas day started with a few snow flurries and by evening we had 8 inches of heavy snow. Katies parents had the foresight to buy the boys sleds for Christmas, so we spent the rest of the weekend sledding, plowing, riding the tractor around and just having a great time!

Winter Brocolli

M-I planted some brocolli and cabbage in October. The cabbage didn't do much, be we got a decent little harvest of brocolli, even though it was frozen several times.

Making Meat

M- Well the time finally came for our steer. We fed him grain for 60 days leading up the fateful day. Our friends Walt, Josh, James, and Jamie all came to help. It took a 5 people 10 hours or so to process the meat far enough to get it to fit in the fridges, then it took me another day of wrapping before freezing everything. Katie ground several pounds and made fresh burgers for lunch. We continued with the beef theme for dinner and had grilled beef ribs. The kids REALLY enjoyed their ribs. We aged the remaining 3-400 lbs of beef for two weeks and the had the tenderloins for Christmas dinner. All in all, raising the steer and getting all the meat in the freezer was a lot of work, but well worth the effort!

M- After sitting idle all summer, I finally got the Suburban 12 I bought last winter running. Made some proper tire chains this morning and hooked up the plow/wheelweights I found and purchased last week. My neighbor, Jeff, was kind enough to lend his garden for testing the plow since ours had already been plowed this fall (see earlier post). His garden was in the soft bottom land and was tilled this spring. The soft dirt broke up easily and sure was fun to plow. The boys even gave it their seal of approval after they inspected it on their hands and knees! I still have a little adjustment to do on the plow, but it sure can dig. Now all we need is some snow so we can try out the snow plow!

Woodstove Upgrade

M-The old Fisher Baby Bear was a great stove, but it wasn't quite big enough for this house. I picked up this Vermont Castings Resolute off of craigslist a while back, but just got around to installing it. It puts out a good bit more heat and has no trouble getting the house up to 75 in the coldest of weather. The damper and thermostat on it are a little fiddly, but overall it is a good stove. I cleaned the chimney after buring a lot of yellow pine and there was very little creosote.

Apples

M- Our apple trees didn't produce much this year, 4 apples if I recall exactly, so we picked up this 50 lb bag of apples for $8 from a roadside stand. We made applesauce, apple pies, apple cobler, and ate tons of fresh apples. The animals sure enjoyed the peels and cores!

Compost Pile

M- I decided to build my compost pile right in the middle of the garden so all I have to do next spring is spread it out and plant. I started with a load of bark mulch from our local sawmill. I would have preferred some older, more rotted, bark, but the fellow at the mill could not get to it the way they had piled the bark. I had a few frozen hides from our lambs and hog that no one wanted, so I put them at the bottom of the pile and proceeded to unload the mulch on top of the hides. Every 10-12 inches, I stopped and spread a high nitrogen fertilizer on the pile and watered it in. This, in combination with the hides, will supply the nitrogen necessary for the proper nitrogen/carbon ratio to really compost the bark well. I would have preferred all organic nitrogen, but it is a little hard to come by as more and more folks are hanging on to their livestock manure these days. A few days after the pile was built, it heated up and steamed for quite some time. We should have good compost come spring!

Celerate Good Times

Thanks to everyone who came out to BBQ on Silver Creek. The weather was fine and the food was good but the company was grand! We had a lot to celebrate and were so glad to share it with our friends and family. As usual, my photography is inadequate but you will get the idea.The guest of honor

This was the most photographed quest of the day.

Garden Work

Until now, we have never mechanically tilled the garden. Over the past two and a half years, pigs have done it all. However, our pig that we raised in the garden last winter did a great job of rooting up the garden early on, only to pack it down tightly after a long wet spell. We planted in the packed dirt, only loosening a small spot for each plant and hoped that putting a layer of wood chips over the hard packed soil would help the worms do their job. As far as growth goes, the garden did just fine (we just had rain and insect issues). After the garden was done, we dug down through the woodchips to find that the layer of hard packed dirt was still there. Although it probably would have been fine to leave, we decide to till the garden. Even the tiller had a tough time cutting through the packed clay, so we traded some favors with our neighbor and good friend Jamie to bring over his 1950's Ford tractor and run his plow through the garden a few times to break things up a bit. The plow probably ran 12 inches or so deep and was able to break up in a few minutes what would have taken our 5hp front tine tiller several hours. After plowing, we ran the tiller around a little just to break up the clods and get into the corners where the tractor could not go.

We were very happy to see lots of rich dark dirt coming to the surface, even from 12 inches down.

After Plowing

Just a little of the red clay we started out with came to the surface.

After breaking up the clods with the tiller and raking a bit it looks pretty good. The plan now is to get several trailer loads of tree bark compost from the local sawmill, build a pile in the center of the garden which will be used to compost other materials through the winter, then spread over the garden before planting next spring.

Tarps

Last year we bought an expensive heavy duty tarp from our local hardware store to cover our hay, it lasted all of 6 months. Thanks to some helpful advice from the folks at http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/ we called a local billboard company to see if they had any signs they were taking down. The company said yes and below is what we got. What you can't see is that the underside is advertising a housing development. The signs are heavy duty reinforced vinyl and so far so good. And the best part is that they were free!

Woodchips

We use a lot of woodchips around the farm for mulching plants. They help retain moisture during our hot summers and add organic material to the soil. We also use it to bed the pigs we have raised to keep odor down. We have several sources for the chips/mulch. The city of Morganton mulches yard waste and sells it for around $10 a truck/trailer load, but it is a good 20 minute drive from the house. We have purchased a few loads from the city, but we prefer begging tree companies to dump their chips! No hauling and they are free because it saves the tree company from paying fees at the dump. There is also a sawmill only a couple of miles away that sells their bark the take off the logs. We have not hauled any from them yet, but they have some old bark that has composted down nicely that we are hoping to get a few loads this winter for our garden. The pile below came from a tree company owned by Nate's teacher's husband. The pile heated a little bit when we first got it, but has since cooled off.