The swale in the pasture went from empty to half full in the past 24 hours. Now we’ll see how long it takes to drain before it needs to absorb rainfall from the next storm.
I bought a winter-blooming heather plant and planted it at the edge of the ditch by the road.
Our neighbors’ fields were fertilized today.
Yesterday, our friend help us get the town-behind lawn mower that our neighbor gave us running. A kit with a carburetor, spark plug, fuel filter, and air filter was $20. Next I need to buy new wheel bearings for it and for the small tractor trailer.
We changed the oil and spark plug in the Sears tractor.
The Case tractor is not doing so well. The past few weeks, it has been hard to start, which was not a problem before. I replaced the spark plugs today. Most of them were black with carbon. I also topped off fluids. It took about 3 quarts of fluid in the torque tube and a gallon of oil in the transmission. The 3-gallon cooling system took a gallon of coolant. I replaced the engine oil, and there was coolant in the oil. That probably means it has a bad head gasket. Also, yesterday the clutch started to fail. Today I had to use the hand clutch, and even then, I had to turn off the tractor to change gears. One of the back wheels still has a slow leak, too.
I re-routed the temporary pasture fencing on the north side of the barn so that I can access the tractor parking area again. The sheep will probably have that extra pasture area finished off in the next two weeks or so.
The chickens have finished off my kale. 🙁
A few months ago, we got to use a hydraulic log splitter to split a bunch of wood we had gotten from arborists. Today, we stacked it along the west side of the barn, probably about 1.5 cords. We don’t have a woodstove, though.
We also reapplied wood chips around the young fruit trees after adding some landscaping fabric.
The sheep have mowed the entire pasture down to stubble, due to our not implementing paddocks. Heather has installed some temporary fencing allowing them to graze the area north of the barn.
We haven’t gotten any chicken eggs for months. But they don’t have a proper chicken coop in which to lay eggs, nor are we giving them any feed beyond table scraps and what they find in the pasture.
Something happened to the carburetor on the John Deere mower and it will barely idle at full throttle. I fiddled with it a bit, then ordered a new carburetor. At about $15 to buy new, they’re hardly worth trying to troubleshoot.
The Case tractor has a rear left tire that loses air over the course of about a week. I need to see if I can remove the wheel so I can take it to a tire store for repair. Otherwise, it’s probably about $100 for a field service call.
We’re still getting some kale from the garden, but the chickens have been escaping the pasture now that we extended it for the sheep, so the kale isn’t going to last much longer.
Our squash harvest… not bad for being an afterthought planting.
Info I found said to leave squash on the vine as long as possible, but harvest before heavy frost.
We had our first significant frost last night. Frost was in the forecast about a week ago, so we harvested our basil, but it was a light frost.
The remaining Jersey Giant chicken gets out of the pasture all the time and ravishes my garden. Well, this morning, she got mangled by a dog. So far, she has survived but appears to have a broken wing. We’ll see what happens, but she probably won’t be hopping the pasture fence and getting into the garden now.
Work has begun on turning an entertainment center into a chicken coop. I’m glad for that, because they will need some shelter come winter.
We left the garden in the care of Hannah for a week and came back to find destruction. My newly planted areas are completely dug up with huge holes, and the largest chard plant has been almost completely eaten. I’m guessing it’s the work of our non-egg-producing chickens. No yellow squash were picked all week, so I just had to pick five humungous ones that may be of no use to us.
Got my first Mortgage Lifter tomato today.
I harvested the last of my peas, and I’m going to remove them from the pods and dry them. I pulled out the plants, too. In their place, I planted (from west to east) rainbow mix carrots, danvers half-long carrots (north), chantenay carrots (south), some marigolds by the tomato plant, bloomsdale spinach (north), cylindra beet (south), calabrese broccoli (north), and chioggia beet (south). I also tried running some twine around my tomato plant on the east end to get some of the tomatoes off the ground. In doing so, we accidentally harvested some green tomatoes.
Our plums surprised us with how quickly they went from looking unripe to being ripe. The tree is loaded.
So far, we’ve figured out that a 50/50 combo of plums and blackberries mixed 1:1 with sugar makes a wonderful jam. We canned about 8 quarts tonight. We probably need to do about that much again to have enough jam for the year and to give away.
I tried in vain to find replacement pins for the quick release mechanism on the tractor loader. Then I remembered, with old things you’re supposed to be able to make your own parts. So I did. Now the quick release works again.
I lifted the old well cover today, and the water was 7 feet below ground level, giving us 16 feet of water.
We got our first picking of blackberries today.
I got my first handful of beans a few days ago. We haven’t been able to keep up with the pea harvest of a pound every few days, so I’ll plant half as many next year. My kale and chard are very healthy and producing well. My Mortgage Lifter tomato finally has some blossoms that have become fruits. Overall, my garden row hasn’t needed much watering.
Four days since last picking, and I got 20 oz of peas this time.
This my first pea harvest of more than just a few peas that I eat while in the garden. About 4 oz. My pea plants have been growing like crazy. I also got another 4 oz of kale.
Our neighbors’ fields were cut today.
I got my first kale harvest (4 oz). I found one green worm eating some kale.
My peas are looking fantastic. I picked a few today, but I think I should have enough to be part of dinner tomorrow or the day after. I added a one-foot-high fence for them to climb. I probably could have added something taller.
My second planting of beans is up, and greener than the first planting, which is yellowish.
My Mortgage Lifter tomato seems to be recovering and greening up.
I’m fascinated by soil health. It’s not only a foundational component of growing crops and pasture, but is a crucial concept for responsible stewards of this earth to understand.
There is life under your feet. And many common farming practices work against Mother Nature, causing long term harm to our soil.
A few months ago Josh read a book where he learned that rototilling may not be the best practice for long term soil health. It’s incredibly disruptive to the complex and rich “underworld” of fungi, beneficial insects, burrowing animals, bacteria and other things that make soil more than just clay, silt and sand.
Of course, when we look on top of the soil we see a beautiful connection of plants, animals, fungi, and water. But life goes much deeper than that below the surface. I believe the richness of life under our feet may just rival the richness of life that springs from it.
Five peas from my garden! Josh spotted them! 🙂
The peas that I direct seeded have taken off in the past week. They’re looking great. The beans have been up for a couple weeks. I planted 14 more beans today.
The tomatoes and squash plants have been doing poorly.
Our original sheep are white St. Croix hair sheep. (In some ways they’re more like goats in their feel and appearance.) But our newest sheep are Shetland/Gotland blend sheep, and their wool is luxurious, smooshy, soft and so, so curly. It’s exceptionally curly when it gets wet. This video shows some of the curly goodness!
