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!

Preparing For the Spring Garden with... Metal Mulch

Several years ago I watched The Back To Eden Film to learn about a neat gardening technique.  The Back To Eden Gardening method is one that Paul Gautschi tells about in the Back to Eden Film link I provided above.  You can watch an informative free movie that explains it by clicking the link, but essentially, the gardening method seeks to re-create the habitat and environment that naturally occurs in the forest.  (Created by God, of course) 

Ever notice how you don't have to water (or weed) the wild berries that you pick each year?  That's because God takes care of it.  Paul Gautschi explains how to use wood chips and mulch in your garden to preserve moisture in the soil and crowd out weeds.  I don't have a readily accessible source of wood chips, but I've used hay to mulch to pretty much achieve the same effect in our garden. 

This fall, however, with no wood chips and no hay, I've resorted to using another mulching material, not so much to plant crops in, but to prepare the soil for spring planting.  This mulching material is not biodegradable, but it does serve a purpose.  It's "metal mulch!"  Let me explain...

After building our barn, we had a lot of leftover tin, consisting of 3 foot sections of tin that we didn't have a use for.  I'll be the first to admit it's not aesthetically pleasing,but it works.  Below you can see how I'm using it.

I've spread out the tin to be used as a ground covering.  The barrier cover of tin on the ground will crowd out any weeds, smother and kill them, and not allow any sunshine through to allow weed seeds to germinate.

Below is an example of the soil condition you'll find beneath the tin when you pick it up after a few weeks:

See how there are no weeds underneath?  Another bonus is that the soil beneath the metal mulch is moist and arable.  The soil can be easily turned over with a shovel and worked into rows for planting.

The photo above shows the area in the walkway of the garden that we picked up the tin from to place in the center of the garden where we'll be planting onions.  If we didn't have the tin laid out, rhizomes from bermuda grass would have run into the garden and created a situation that would have made preparing the seed beds exceedingly difficult.

Come springtime, we'll compare the area covered with metal mulch to the area that has grown up in winter grass.  It will be evident which method is superior.  Even if you don't have leftover tin to use, you can do this with leaves, wood chips, a tarp, cardboard, newspapers, or any other item to re-create the same situation.

Gathering Materials for the Barn Expansion

We're building an expansion to our barn, adding two "lean-to's" on either side.  Last week we showed how we put the four 4x4's on either side of the barn that will serve as the supports to hold up the roof extension.  Saturday was the day that we circled on the calendar to get things started.  I woke up at first light and drove to the farm in Oberlin to gather the building materials that Dad had offered to me for the project.

I like things with sentimental value and/or things with a story.  Here is a story (or two) about the raw materials we're using for the barn:  The wood we'll be using for framing up the roof is from a very tall and straight pine tree that was struck by lightning many years ago at Mom & Dad's house where I grew up.  The 5 acre property had numerous pine trees.  My brother and I had a Honda Z50 mini bike that we would ride.  We had a game where we'd throw pine cones at each other and try to knock each other off the mini bike.  Crazy, I know.  These weren't the pine cones that are open, but the ones that are tight and hard.  One time I knocked Kristian off the mini bike with a pine cone and he picked up a pine knot and knocked me over the head with it and knocked me out.  Who knows?  This pine lumber could very well be from the same tree!  Now when people ask me what's wrong with me, I can say I've been hit in the head...  At least I have an excuse!

Back to the story: Dad called a gentleman who was our crop duster pilot.  He also had a portable sawmill and cut up logs on the side.  He came and cut the tree into 2x4s and we stacked and dried it.  The lumber sat for years in the shop.  We're now going to use 58 of the 2x4s to construct the barn lean-to.

Now we'll also use corrugated tin for the barn lean-to roof.  At the farm we had an old pole barn that we called the "Combine Shed."  We stored the combines under the shed to keep them out of the weather.  As hot as it ever got during the summer months, for some reason, it always was cool and shady under that barn.  Over the years, hurricanes and thunderstorms ravaged the old shed.  It has fallen and its remaining structure is hidden behind the tall grass below.

Many sheets of tin from that barn, however, were stacked up.  I'll be using that tin for the roof.  The tin has many holes where it was nailed up to the rafters of the combine shed, but I'll patch them with caulk and it'll work just fine.  I worked as fast as I could Saturday morning and loaded the old cattle trailer with lumber and tin and made my way back home to begin the work.  A carpenter was meeting me to begin construction.

We had perfect weather to begin this construction project and I'll tell you about it tomorrow.