Knocking Things off the List

I had a somewhat easy day at work today, so it allowed me a little time in the mid-afternoon while I had some daylight left to knock two things off my list.  How's your To Do list?  If it's anything like mine, I add two things for every one I scratch off.  I'm not complaining, though.  That gives purpose and ensures productivity.  It protects one from the sin of slothfulness!

First item on the list:  Move mulch to the garden pile.  We have a number of piles of wood chips that have been decomposing.  As I make space in the back of the garden, I move it from the yard piles to the big pile in back of the sugarcane in the garden.  These piles have reduced significantly in size as they decompose.  It's time to go find the right-of-way clearing trucks and get some more.*

The interior of the pile is moist and full of mushrooms.  If I rub it all together in my hands, it turns to a rich soil-like substance - a nice growing medium.

In the big pile of wood chips in the back of the garden, I'm working on what I call bacteria compost lasagna.  I call it that because I have layered wood chips, cow poop, wood chips, dead chickens that the mink killed, wood chips and cow poop.  Today I put a cap on the lasagna but topping it off with wood chips.  The bacteria in the cow manure and dead chickens will inoculate the wood chip pile with bacteria.  The mushrooms will further break down the pile so that next year some time, I can move all this into the garden.  Then we start the process all over again.

Second item on the list was to "secure the hen house."  As you saw, the mink murdered a number (about two thirds) of our flock.  They did so by accessing the hen house at night by digging under the tin walls that weren't reinforced by bricks and cinder blocks and gaining entry.  Today, armed with some self-tapping screws, tin snips, a drill, and tin, I drove the tin into the ground deep and screwed it in securely and then piled bricks and rocks against the wall to discourage them.

I know what you're thinking.  "It ain't pretty!"  It's not.  This is an old hen house that was given to me and moved on site.  Over the years, the bottom tin rusted out leaving holes that tempted various varmints and vermin to find their way into the hen house.  That ends today.  I know it doesn't match and its not even.  A friend told me one time, "Animals don't care if it's pretty.  They don't care if the wood or tin is cut square.  It just has to be functional."  I subscribe to that!

It's all patched up.  Along the back wall where the roosts are, prior to my patching job, you could see sunlight from where the holes were.  Not anymore!  The only daylight you see is from the coop door that I have opened.

Third item was to patch up the holes in the rabbit hutches.  These are really, really old.  There were numerous holes in the roof and in the hardware cloth that would allow critters to get in and kill my chickens.  I fixed all of that and worked on latches for the doors.

You can see the hens making their way into the hutch on top.  That's where I lock them up for the night, safe from predators.  The bottom hutch is not ready so that we can move the hens from the chicken tractor that's in the yard.

I didn't want to move them before I had everything fixed as best as I could.  That was an afternoon of fixing things.  The next items are much more fun.  I'll be digging sweet potatoes and picking pecans.  Hope ya'll have a great weekend!

When the Poop Hits the Fan

 Oh boy, here we go...

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We've all seen images of Sri Lanka falling and their leaders being ousted from power.  Irate citizens storming the palace, swimming in the president's pool, and setting things on fire.  Costs are up, food and medical supplies are in short supply, people are hungry (and very angry).  Years of corruption led to a deep distrust in government.  The country is on its way to bankruptcy. 

What happened?  Their leaders bought into green energy.  Everything should be peachy, right?  Sri Lanka has an ESG score of 98 out of 100 - the highest in the world.  In April 2021, their leader, without notice, banned all imports of chemical fertilizers. This caught farmers by surprise and reduced yields of staple rice crops, driving prices higher.  Hunger is a great motivator.  It motivated regime change.

But look to the Netherlands...

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What is going on there?  The government sparked massive protests by proposing to cut the country's livestock in half to limit carbon emissions and agricultural runoff.  Dutch farmers also say that they feel disrespected the Dutch populace, media and politicians.  They are literally biting the hand that feeds them.

I'd like to talk about these two events for a moment.  Notice the similarity?  Poorly thought out government green initiatives caused this.  It is just my opinion and everyone has one.  Contrary to popular opinion, it is healthy and normal to think differently and have thoughts of your own.  We live on a little homestead farm where we grow approximately 90% of everything on our table.  It comes from right here off the land.  We don't use chemical based fertilizers or herbicides or pesticides.  (More on that in a minute.)  We generate very little waste.  We are about as green as it gets, but I abhor the green movement.  I love freedom.  The green movement is anything but.  I also feel that many green movement people don't practice what they preach.  These elites want to impose restrictions on you, while they're still living high on the hog. 

I want to show you how we grow our own fertility, but before I do, I want to tell you that since our country industrialized and most people live in the cities and don't grow their own food, chemical fertilizers are a must.  We won't use it on our little 5 acres, but if all the people in cities want food, and want it at an affordable price, synthetic fertilizers are a necessity to maintain yields and grow the amount of food and fiber needed to sustain life as we know it.

The other alternative is to have everyone do what I'm about to show you and grow your own food.  First, we compost everything.  All scraps go into a compost bucket that we walk out to the compost pile daily.  Egg shells, squash stems, onion skins, coffee grounds.  Everything goes into it.  

It all decomposes and rots down and attracts earthworms who do their thing in the soil and the soil fertility grows.  We also grow peas and beans that set nitrogen in the soil.  We're growing fertility.  We also make biochar and inoculate it with cow poop and bury in the garden.

At absolutely no cost, we have tree trimming companies deliver load after load of wood chips to us.  They dump them right there in the yard.  An eyesore, to be sure.  But it is gold.  For years trees pull fertility from the soil.  Then, when they are cut down and chipped, all that fertility remains.  It is imported to our 5 acres and I let it decompose.

After three years, this is what the wood chips turn into - black, rich, fertile topsoil!  I incorporate this into the garden.

We pick up dried cow patties and pile them in the back of the garden.  After they 'cool down' for a year, the cow manure is ready to be incorporated into the soil for fertilizer.

Here is our hen house.  You can see the roosting bars.  Chickens line the bars at night to roost, and they poop while they roost.  The poop falls beneath them, piles up and composts.  You've got to be careful with this.  It is so potent, if you put it directly in your garden, it will burn up all the plants.  It is wise to wait at least six months and preferably 9-12 months.

Here is some good composted manure that the hens produced.  Homegrown fertility.

This right here will grow some vegetables!

Those are just some of the ways we boost soil fertility and grow our own fertilizer.  We can do it on our 5 acre farm.  We're not trying to feed the world, though.  We're feeding our family.  We've also had years to learn and make mistakes and implement the new concepts.  How do you do this on hundreds of thousands of acres?  I don't know.  They want to drastically reduce the number of cows, so don't look in that direction.  Composting on that scale doesn't work either.  Chicken litter is used wider agriculturally for nitrogen application, but can't be currently broadcast as efficiently and economically as chemical fertilizers.

Before setting restrictions and making proposals about something like farming that most politicians know nothing about, government leaders would do well to have well-thought out alternatives drawn up and allow appropriate time to change.  Something (experience?) tells me government ain't gonna do that.  You can have the highest ESG scores in the world, but if there's no food to eat, your people are all in poverty, and your leaders are driven from power, what did you really accomplish?  When the poop hits the fan, you oughta pick it up and compost it and grow your own food.