Homesteaders

2 years ago, my garden area was an old abandoned calf pen with grass/weeds about 3' tall. The first year we owned the place, a doe had a fawn hidden in that area for a couple of weeks, lol. I was still living in Wyoming with our dogs at that time.
The grass roots were really thick - I hate crab grass - you could literally peel back the sod and have it form a mat that you can carry to the wagon to be hauled to the compost pile. The compost looks really good, can't wait to get that moved to the garden area too.
With the tillage - every year it is getting better about weed growth. I need to get the weed seed load in the soil down to an acceptable level - weed seeds will blow in every year, but the base load is going down nicely.
Besides, it is still too cold to really plant anything, so tilling is just helping to warm the soil faster.
I plan on using newspaper under/around my tomato plants, with a heavy mulch on top of that. I am hoping that will stop the dirt from splashing up onto the tomatoes and causing disease problems.
 
Gotta get my tomato and pepper plants put in, pronto. I'm also working on getting a vermiculture post set up so that I can grow my own earthworms and mealworms (both for chicken use and garden use). I've got a decent compost bin going this year at least, so I have that going for me.

Will have nine layers by the end of the year and I'm actually thinking about raising up a small batch of meat birds too, but I'm still considering the ramifications of that. I'd like to raise the meat birds to just a very young age (6-8 weeks) and then process, to minimize the amount of time they're actually in the household. Ideally I'd like them to go from brooder pen to butcher without ever interacting with the main flock. I don't mind if they're a little underweight for processing.
 
I gave up on tilling... just seems to bring up weed seeds
Dump the stuff from the coop out there after the killing frost.
I run the one pen of chickens in the summer garden until time for tomatoes and such.. They took care of the slugs and lots of weed seeds. usually around Mothers Day or Memorial day I plant it. I put some weed barrier down, but the creeping charlie gets in it and is hard to remove.
The other garden is by black walnuts so only garlic onions, squash and such does well ther. I put grass clipping around everything there and it keeps the weeds down.
 
@danceswithronin Have you considered a tractor to raise meat birds in? it would keep them separate from your flock, provide them with sunshine and fresh air, and provide them a secure place to move around in.

My DH built me a chicken tractor to raise our meat birds in. I brood chicks out in the barn - I have a stall set up with chicken wire and one of those little coops that you can buy at the farm stores. I had 15 chicks in there last fall. They have a MHP (mama heating pad) for warmth and are mostly feathered by 4 weeks. They put out so much heat that they didn't need the MHP for long. This summer, as soon as I find them not using the heat I am going to boot them out into the tractor outside. Plan is to get them out into the tractor as soon as possible and move the tractor as needed - I figure every couple of days to limit grass burnout from poo. I want them to have fresh air, green grass and sunshine. The last batch I had ended up in the barn stall all their lives, but they did scratch around in the wood chips looking for treats.
 
I like my Dark Cornish. They set enough, but not all the time. Also the roo's are plenty big to eat. Although not at 8 wks. I keep the hens and still have so many eggs that I'm giving away dozens of dozens a summer. Currently looking for new buyers. So not the best layers but they do lay well.
 
WEll now it's been awhile. Update on the berry bushes. The red currants have produced and I've got some black currant bushes that yielded about 6 cups. I only have two reds and they've given me enough for red jelly and black/red jelly. Have Jostaberries and they've done okay but will be picking them tomorrow. Only two bushes there also. Grown from cuttings mailed to me from a BYC member.
 
Does anyone know who many cups of Red and ? to mix. I have about 4 cups of Red juice and about a cup of black berries to do up. I haven't done up the Jostaberries yet. Most Red currant AND call for a certain number of cups of each kind of berry, but I've got the Red currant juice done up so how many, Raspberry juice, etc. etc. to I add? I prefer the 5 cups of juice to 5 cups of sugar as that's easy to remember. Is there a Jelly/Jam making thread here somewhere?
 

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