Author: Rick

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Seed Organizing

Rick

If you are like me you collect seeds.  I have a hard time walking past a seed display in a store.  There is always a deal or something interesting and it is only a few dollars.  Don’t get me started on seed catalogs or websites.  The real problem is how do you keep those seeds stored in a way that you know what you have.

I decided to try something new this spring.  I have harkened back to my childhood days of collecting baseball cards.  There was nothing better than getting a new pack of cards, tearing into it to see what treasures it held.  The joys of finding a Twins player, a rookie card or, the holy grail, a Kirby Puckett was the peak of excitement.

We had the same issue that I now have with storing seeds.  That is to keep the safe, organized and put away so your mom (or wife) doesn’t throw them away.  So I turned to the same solution I did as a youth plastic baseball card pages.

I got myself a binder, a couple dozen card pages, and way too many small zip top bags and set out to tame my piles of seed packets. (I will include links to all the things I used at the bottom of the post)  I took the open packets of seeds and emptied the contents into the small bags.  I then slapped a custom made label on the bag and slid it into a slot that would have held a Pat Meares rookie card when I had less gray hair.  The unused packets would be folded up in a way that let them fit but still allowed me to read the packet.

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The seeds were put into pages with similar other seeds.  This led to lots of questions from my helpers.  Like what is okra and what pages does it go on.  Which was a good question that I only could answer half of.  I guess that is what misc. pages are for. The girls were good helpers and actually made the process go faster.  I hope they learned something too.

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I only had a couple of real issues with the outcome of the project.  The first was I should have bought a different bigger binder.  The second was that the larger seeds like peas and beans filled up the little baggies and will slide out of the pages.  Overall I think it is a good method and should let me easily know what I have on hand.

Farm

Planning 2017: Plant Propagation

Rick

I have been experimenting with plant propagation for the last two growing seasons.  I would like to be able to propagate the plants I will need to establish all everything around the farm.  I hope that I might get enough extra plants to start a small nursery service.  This summer the plan is to take a big leap forward in making new plants.

I have a small propagation rig.  It is setup using an intermittent mist system.  I have a controller that allows me to mist the plants for a few seconds every ten minutes during the day.  This propagation bed is perfect for the wood plants that I would start from cuttings.  I will put a link to the propagation timer at the end of the post.

Aronia berry and mulberry plants will be some of the top things I will be putting in the bed this year.  The mulberries are super easy to propagate and the aronia are supposed to be as well.  I highly recommend the book  American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation.  It is an amazing source of knowledge and will give you instructions to propagation nearly every plant under the sun.

Last spring I planted 10 rootstocks each of pear and apple.  I attempted a few bud grafts off the apple tree we lost in a windstorm.  This spring we will see if those grafts took.  I would really like to increase my nursery of rootstock this year.  It will be nice to be able to propagate any trees we get on the farm the preform well in our environment.  It is also a much cheaper way to get a large orchard going and sustaining.

There are few plants that I don’t currently have on the farm that I would love to get established so I can propagate them.  Hardy kiwi, blueberry, raspberry, rosa rugosa, goji berry, and cranberry to name a few.  I feel that it is important to put plants in landscaping that give a return back the owner.  If you can put a plant in like Aronia, that will give you great flowers in the spring and lovely foliage in the fall and an edible yield, isn’t that better than a plant that just gives you something to look at?

This is the last post in the series that will cover things that I know I will be doing this next year.  The next posts will covering the things I have been dreaming about.  Things that would be new and exciting.  I can hardly wait.
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Planning 2017: Establishing the Pasture

Rick

The farm sits on 7 acres of land.  The house, yards, and orchard are currently on about 3 of that.  The remaining 4 acres is currently sitting mostly empty since we moved in.  We have planted a few trees.  As well as planted a small food plot for deer, but for the most part, we have done very little with it.

We enjoy being able to look out the back of the house with the chance to see birds, deer, and pheasants enjoying the habitat letting this land go to nature has provided.  The drawback is the noxious weeds that we have to control and the very little benefit we receive from the land.  I am hoping to find some balance that allows the best of both worlds.

The first step will be to get the weeds under control.  I have mowed small areas for a trail and to plant the food plot.  I have been pretty surprised with the stands of grass with will come in when the tall weeds are knocked down.  The first step will be to be able to knock the weeds down consistently throughout the summer.  I haven’t been able to come up with an effective solution that doesn’t involve buying some equipment.  This will either have to be a belly mower for Allis Chalmers C  or a pull behind self-powered trail mower that can be used by the tractor or the 4 wheeler.

After we can knock the weeds down, we will be able to focus on trouble areas more easily.  We can attack trouble noxious weeds will easy access.  Then if we have to plant grass or another type of cover in certain areas with the focus on small areas.  Once that is established we can do a few things with it.  We could put some livestock on it.  We could mow it and use it as hay.  I am sure there are other things that I just haven’t thought about it.

I would also like to put parts of silvopasture concepts into the land.  This is basically adding trees into the pasture.  I would like these trees to have a few uses.  One would be to give us some food items.  These would be less managed than an orchard, but would still allow us to forage for food.  The second use would be for them to provide food for the wildlife or livestock.  The last would be for a harvest of wood.  Some of the types of trees I am considering mulberry, oak, crab apple, osage orange, walnut, and maple.

This will definitely be one for the more expensive and labor-intensive projects for the coming year. I feel that we have waited long enough to tackle it and it will only become harder the longer we put it off and rewards that will come from getting it done will easily make it all worth it.

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Planning 2017: Managing Current Trees

Rick

Over the last two growing seasons, we have tried to increase the number of fruiting trees and bushes we have on the farm.  When we arrived we had 2 apple trees and one plum tree.  We found out this summer that a row of bushes we have that we thought were just for landscaping were actually Aronia bushes.

We have been ordering bare root trees from a bargain online nursery.  We have gotten very poor results.  Which is not surprising based on the stock we have received.  I will continue to request my free replacements but going forward I will be looking for better sources for my trees.  This will mean paying more for a single tree, but it should hopefully help with getting a better stock, but it will mean adding to the orchard more slowly.  Which won’t be different than now because I am averaging less than one tree being established a year.

The first year we had a peach do really well.  I didn’t heavy pruning last spring and the tree responded and shot up.  Hopefully, that will mean peach in the next couple of years.  This year we started a pear and an almond from the online source.  I bought a potted plum tree from Menards locally.  The existing plum we had wasn’t fruiting due to the lack of a pollinator.  So it was either get another plum or cut the existing one down.  We also added to more blueberry bushes.

The blueberries I planted on the downhill slope for a row of pine trees.  I was hoping that would provide the acidity needed for the blueberries.  The first two blueberries from two summers ago are still alive but were not thriving.  I tested my soil and the soil was alkaline.   So I added some sulfur and will continue to monitor it.

After finding out about the Aronia berries I have come to really enjoy the fruit.  Which might be because it is the only thing we had a good harvest of last year.  The bushes are supposed to be very easy to propagate.  So I am planning on taking some cuttings and start more bushes.  I also plan on doing some major pruning to the bushes.

We lost one apple tree in a wind storm last year.  I took some cuttings and grafted them to the other apple tree and some to the root stock I had started in the spring.  It was a really good apple and I am not sure what type it was.  So I am hoping some of the grafts will take and we can keep that type around.

Farm

Planning 2017: Managing the Flocks

Rick

We have two separate flocks on the farm.  We have 6 laying hens and 10 ducks.  We have had both flocks for two years this coming spring.  We have added new ducks to the flock from hatching our own eggs.  The chicks are now past their priming laying and we will have to make some decisions.

We have both Buff Orpingtons and Australorps.  I really like both of the breeds and would like to keep them both around.  They have produced really well and seem to handle the cold very well.  I order the birds from a hatchery and had them delivered to my local feed store.  I will probably end up doing that again.  The only issue with that is having to brood the chicks.

We culled all of the roosters the first year.  We didn’t care for the noise of the roosters.  In hindsight, I wish I would have kept one around.  At least as a trial to see if he would have been loud by himself.  I had the chickens brood three broods of ducklings this spring.  This was so much easier than brooding them me.

I have thought about bringing in a rooster from another farm.  There is a sale this spring where I know I could get a mature rooster.  So we will have to decide what we would like to do.

The duck flock will be easier to manage.  We will cull out all but one or two drakes.  Then we can decide when and if we want to hatch more ducklings.  The other thing with ducks is they will stay productive for more years than a chicken.  We have a flock of Khaki Campbells that we originally bought from Metzer Farms.  I found the process of mail ordering birds to be pretty stressful.  This stress was all due to the post office and the shipping process.  Metzer’s was great to work with and would use them again for sure if we end up ordering ducks.

We have thought about adding guinea hen to the farm.  We have a pretty bad problem with ticks and they should help keep that under control.  We are a little concerned with the reputation of guineas of being loud and their pension to roam.  If the problems with the ticks get under our skin enough maybe will we take the plunge?

We have found the flocks to be enjoyable and really love the fresh eggs.  I think it is safe to say that we will continue to have them as part of the farm for the foreseeable future.

Farm

Planning 2017: The Garden

Rick

The 2016 version of the garden was too ambitious.  Some good results in 2015 made me overconfident and I over reached.  I knew that I wasn’t working with the best soil.  There were things that worked against me, the weather and the poor soil, but it was compounded by too much to do and too little time to do it.

I started all of my plants for seed early in the spring.  I had them under a grow light and on a seed mat. The seed mats are like heating pads that sit on under the seed starting containers.  It warms the soil which helps with germination. I had good luck with these and will do this again.  It was the first year I had used a seed mat and was very surprised on the difference it made.  Since I saw good results I will continue to this and will probably get a few more mats to.

I will be honest I hate weeding.  I hate being out in the heat of summer bent of a garden.  This is probably the main reason I have trouble in the garden.  If you don’t keep up with it the next thing you know you have a jungle.  So I am going to try something a little different this year.  I learned this from Curtis Stone, the Urban Farmer.  If you haven’t heard of him I encourage you to check him out.  He is doing some very cool things. Here is his YouTube channel.  He uses landscaping fabric in his garden beds.  He burns holes in the fabric and plants into those holes.  I assume he rolls up the fabric at the end of the season and gets years and years out of his fabric.

The goal I had going into last season was to focus on items that can easy store without a lot of processing.  Onion, potatoes, dry beans and winter squashes.  While that was the plan the things that the family really likes to eat comes into play and the next thing I know is we have tons of things planted in the garden.  This year with the new baby I will be planting lots of things that will go into making baby food.  So I expect to plant things like beans, peas, beets, and squash pretty heavily.

I am also planning on reducing the size of the garden.  Tentatively, I am going to divide the space into thirds.  I will keep about one third in production.  This will force me to limit what goes in the ground and allow me to care of it more.  We had such a poor year in 2016 that the yield can not be less.  The second third I will put into a cover crop.  I have not decided what I will use, but I am thinking a turnip or radish along with a clover.  The last third will get sheet mulched.   The idea would be to plant the 2018 garden in the sheet mulched area and sheet mulched the 2017 production area.

Paring back the garden will allow me to reduce the time needed to keep up with the garden.  Giving me more time to work on upgrading the quality of the soil in the garden.  In the long run I hope that will allow the garden to produce higher with a smaller footprint.  Which in turn will reduce the amount of time spend for to get that production.

 

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Planning 2017: Introduction

Rick

This is the first post in a series that will deal with the possible plans for the year of 2017.

I always seem to fight a problem of being too ambitious with my plans.  There is a saying the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is today.  It turns out that the best time to plant an orchard, plant a garden, build a chicken coop,  put up a fence, build a rabbit hutch and mow the lawn isn’t always today.  There is always that pull to move things forward and start new things.  Yet is needs to be balanced with giving the right amount of attention to existing things.

I am trying to keep that in mind as I make my plans 2017.  I am going to write a series of post that will lay out a few options I have thought of for this year.  I can then take those items and narrow them down to the few I will do.  I am going to divide this items into a couple lists.  The first will be a list of the things I all but have to do.  The second list will be things that I would like to do.

Must Do:

Might Do:

  • Plant more trees
  • Add different livestock
  • Add more rabbits
  • Build bigger greenhouse
  • Sell wood working projects
  • Aquaponics
  • Grey water system
  • Meat Chickens

So off the next few weeks I hope to touch on most of the items in that list and come up with a solid plan what will be taking place on the farm for the next 12 months.  I hope that if anyone has any feedback on the posts they will leave comments.

 

 

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2016: A Year in Review

Rick

The year 2016 flew past and is quickly coming to an end.  Over the course of the year the farm has seen a few changes and additions.  I am going to take a moment to look back on that year that was.

The spring started with our first attempts in adding animals to the farm from animals already on the farm.  We took advantage of our chickens going broody.  They were able to rear three broods of ducklings.  The flock was up to 15 ducks strong at its peak.  Due to losses, mostly from an undetermined predator, we are ending the year with 10 ducks.

We lost two chickens during the year one during the hottest and one during the coldest days.  We have 6 chickens all will be 2 years old this spring.  We will need to keep a close eye on production and make plans for adding some young blood to the hen house.

Kennedy received 2 mini rex rabbits for her birthday.  Unfortunately we lost one.  We have one friendly black rabbit.  He is a big hit with the cousins when they come to visit.

The garden was almost a complete lost this last summer.  We started with a very wet spring that was followed by an very dry and hot summer.  I would love to blame the failure of the garden on the weather, but I can’t.  I have been pretty ambitious  with the size and scope of the garden.  I will probably need to scale back to put more focus on establishing it.

This fall we added a new human to the farm.  We welcomed McKinley Joy to the world on Nov. 22nd.  She is doing great and already growing like a weed.  She spends most days eating and sleeping, while be doted on by her two proud big sisters.

We hope you are all enjoying the holiday season as the year winds down.  We are looking forward to what 2017 has in hold.

 

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Introducing the Farmcast

Rick

In the coming days we will be posting the first episode of our Farmcast.  The Farmcast will feature myself and my daughter Reagen.  We think that it will give an interesting perspective of the happenings around the homestead.  The least we are excepting is to have something fun that a father and daughter can do together.  If it goes well we will both learn a little something.  If we are really lucky it will be something that you will enjoy and find enlightening.

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State of the Farm

Rick

I have been wondering about away to start this blog off.  A way to give everyone an idea about where we are at.  So I thought I would give a sort of State of the Farm address.

The last year has involved several projects on our way to a sustainable homestead.  The year started with preparations to add our first livestock. A mobile coop was build for a flock of layers.  In the spring a straight run of 10 Black Australorps and 5 Buff Orpingtons were placed in the brooder.  Right as the chickens were removed from the brooder, they were replaced with 9 Khaki Campbell ducks.

After culling the cockerels the flock ended up with 5 Black Australorps and 3 Buff Orpingtons.  Those 8 layers kept us and our family supplied with eggs for most of the late summer and fall.  Now in the heart of winters the production has slowed.  After losing two hen ducks to predators we have 3 hen ducks and 4 drakes, 3 of which are over due to be culled.

In the spring we also attempted to add to our orchard with a several fruit trees.  Unfortunately we had little luck with the trees, but we will try again and will have a better plan on the plantings.

The annual garden produced well.  We had good crops of onions, potatoes, and dry beans especially.  We tried using soil blocks and a small low tunnel greenhouse for starting seeds.  We learned a lot about using this method and will be using it again.  Also in the garden perennials for asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries we also added.  We are looking forward to crops from those plants for years to come.

As spring approaches we are making plans for the next growing season and adding more to fledgling homestead.