Sometime in the fall, Heather obtained a boatload of manure for the garden. Actually, not a boatload; more like a yachtload. Today I used the tractor to scrape off a few cubic yards of it and spread out the remainder across the garden.
Heather is super excited about having seeded her first indoor starts for the season: little gem lettuce, red Russian kale, mizuna, romanesco broccoli, Chinese broccoli, and green cauliflower. She made some garden markers, too.
We applied about three yards of aged manure to the garden today. It’s still soggy out there, so we got the trailer stuck a couple times.
We’re still harvesting kale, but it looks like it’s going to start going to seed soon.
About a month or so ago, Grant and I built two “rabbit tractors”. These rabbit tractors are large, bottomless cages that we can move around the yard. It’s a way for us to feed our baby bunnies with almost zero feed costs.
We came up with the plan to pasture our bunnies when our first grow outs were burning through 5-6 cups of pellets while in their cages. Btw, “grow outs” are bunnies that have been separated from their mum at 6 weeks, and are destined for freezer camp as soon as they hit 5 lbs.
Although moving the rabbit tractors to fresh (poopless) grass every few hours is labor intensive, it really is the best farm chore. Every time I go out to move the tractors, it’s 100 percent cuteness overload. Bunnies are naturally curious, so as soon as they hear me they come right up to the cage door to see what’s going on. They love fresh food, so whenever I bring something out like a pineapple top or shabby ol’ celery leaves, they devour it gratefully. Bunnies are in the same category of gentleness as sheep. Super sweet, super soft, and super affectionate. Truly a very adorable animal! (Unless you decide to try to pick it up–then it will eviscerate you with its razor sharp, deceptively strong hind legs. Seriously, don’t try it.)
Another benefit to having our bunnies in a rabbit tractor is that our grass is getting fertilized with nature’s best fertilizer! Rabbit pellets are considered a cold manure–meaning that it can be put straight on plants without having to compost it.
Got a small trailer load of horse manure. It’s mostly aged already. I dug and turned over the sod to make my 3×30 garden row. I layered and mixed the manure plus a tractor bucket load of wood chips.
