Dixie Chicks

[ApiaryandAviary]

Good morning

 

[perchie.girl]

Imup...... blink blink

deb

 

[BriardChickens]

I put our 4 sheep into the fenced in gardening area yesterday. Totally overgrown with grass, it would take for ever to till that by hand so the sheep get to shorten and fertilize it all for 2 days.

No eggs yet from the poultry (omg look at that swan egg!!!) But chicken combs are darkening. I am debating on driving down to the next farm who sells eggs on the curb for something to stick into the incubator just to see if they both survived the move....

 

[Alaskan]

Toss the chickens and ducks in the garden, and they will give you dirt.

 

[CanuckBock]

Get pigs...there are lots of heritage varieties that use their snorts fer turning up dirt and snacking on delicious roots and such. Best way to clear land in BC is to fence it up and release the hogs. Incredible rooters and have heard of so many that have enjoyed releasing wiener sized ones to harvest full sized one in the fall with the bonus of a tilled area. Combo wire panels seem to be the best used to house them keeping in mind, they can dig, so containment is a daily watch for it issue...

One fella I knew on the Island, he worked running a restaurant and bar...he'd bring home the scraps from the restaurant to supplement the pigs' diet...yeh, in g-cans in the back trunk of his Cadillac! All fine and good until some guy from Germany thought he went back to his home country and shot up all this guys pigs. Wild boar hunting---on the Nor end of Van Isle...sheesh, eh!

 

[hennible]

I really need to get but in gear and move at least some of my birds to the greenhouse...

 

[Amberjem]

I won't be starting any seeds until next month. Asparagus is the first one from seed I will be starting...think it takes like three months. Our first "set out" day is beginning of June--you plant sooner than that and my MIL use to say you just lose everything.

When are you aiming to have seedlings (obviously hardened off) set out?

Garden is still blanketed in snow and lots of snow/ice has melted off. Course the negatives are saying now we're in for a drought...har har...trying to set us up again for $150/round hay again I suppose. There was NO drought in these parts...and none as far as Olds since we saw bountiful left to rot bales in the fields this weekend. I hate how we pay for things people think up to jack prices when last year should have had cheap hay for a change...oh well.

Found out how much seedling mix it takes to fill one of those ~72 plug trays...5 litres. So the one bag I had of 25 litres did up five trays. Good to know. I'll need to buy another to make up three bags for this season.

Old shelf on left, new "improved" model on right...HA! Way thinner wire!​

Picked up my second mini four tier greenhouse...on a shopping tour and found prices ranged from $70, $50 to $45 and bought the $45 one. No castors but Rick told me just to grab one of the molded plastic struts and we can fit some casters to it that way. Add maybe ten bucks to the cost if'n I buy the same kinda cheapy ones my original $40 greenhouse came with. The metal has been really stretched thin on the new version...nothing like how sturdy the old one is. Oh well--them good ol' dazes, eh.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

maybe a month month and a half.... for cold crops ...ya can be a gamble...but fairly sure the heavy frost is out now here we will see of course....fortunately have the greenhouse or indoors to keep stuff until ready for outside.. one of my goals this year is to work on a better crop rotation for continuous growing and harvesting....I really struggle with that

 

[Amberjem]

Good morning

Imup...... blink blink

deb

I put our 4 sheep into the fenced in gardening area yesterday. Totally overgrown with grass, it would take for ever to till that by hand so the sheep get to shorten and fertilize it all for 2 days.

No eggs yet from the poultry (omg look at that swan egg!!!) But chicken combs are darkening. I am debating on driving down to the next farm who sells eggs on the curb for something to stick into the incubator just to see if they both survived the move....

we need picturs lots n lotsa pictures

 

[CanuckBock]

maybe a month month and a half.... for cold crops ...ya can be a gamble...but fairly sure the heavy frost is out now here we will see of course....fortunately have the greenhouse or indoors to keep stuff until ready for outside.. one of my goals this year is to work on a better crop rotation for continuous growing and harvesting....I really struggle with that

I've left entire areas fallow for a season in my garden but she's a big plot. I find I grow more of the "others" than roots (carrot and potato, parsnips I've skipped years on...seed good for one year...yeh...plus such a long maturity...found one that is heritage Lancer and 54 days--how kewl is that?) and in some years, brassicas...boo yah, NOT past maybe turnips! This year I am doing a whole host of brassicas (gonna try purple cheddar and green coli...if I get round to one more order fur seeds), so that will help with the crop rotation. Starting them indoors, otherwise forget it. Too short here for growing much like those but did manage to find some short season ones--non-GMO and open pollinated.

I mean when you grow a majority of "others" what you suppose to do past fallow or a green cover crop. I use to put down winter rye on the Coast...but now, that'd be a joke and a half here.

FROST...heavy, what temp is that for you then? To me, forty below is heavy frost and I suspect you dunna go that low. Forty and fifty below in Celcius (-63 in F). We get literal FEET down frozen, and if you drive on it, talking 20 to 30 feet of frozen ground. Now nobody DRIVES on me veg plot...hee hee, but that kinda makes my cold over the top. There is NO over wintering of a three foot fish pond here...ice cube.

August 2015
Evil puppers...anything fer sugar peas...get them to be virtual angels...maybe...

​

Now for all the good crop rotation is suppose to have...I have heard of places in Europe that have grown say onions on the same land for decades...I grow my sugar peas against the same fence so the dogs can help themselves and feel like they are getting away with murder, eh. If you replenish and keep in mind which will take fresher manure and which need more like compost that is well rotted, I can see me tilling the dirt over a row and tilling back in to my fence line for the peas.

Best book I had for when I lived on the WEsT Coast...The Vegetable Expert by Dr. D.G. Hessayon (1985) outta the UK (nfi). Loved the simplicity of it all and the great drawings you may refer to. There was a whole series I bought but this Veg one...that be my Bible!

​

Only book I ever dun seen with growing corn indoors to start as a preferred method (all others won't even touch the topic...whimps!)...3" peat pots, start for the Coast end of April to set out in June under cloches--which is what I shall be following. Corn abhors disturbed roots so takes some effort but it is rather fine to be harvesting cobs when the neighbours are looking enviously at yer BQ in August/September with fresh scents of corn on the cob flowing their way, eh!

Sorta like the rubbing a salted wound with the lil' red hen syndrome!

With all the new plants we have on offer...if you could grow a garden 30 to 40 years ago...it is a simple breeze compared to the limited kinds we had back then. Corn grows all over the place now that it never could. Kinda like keeping heritage livestock and poultry, any lavishing of attentions and they go way over the top in production...you reap what you sow and then some.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[BriardChickens]

So this is the turkey and sheep in stand off before the sheep got moved...

My visitors by the front of the house. First came the turkey, then he went back to the coop and then came back with a couple of the chickens... Ha-ha

and a quick shot from the deck to the garden. Sheep are deep in the wild black berries..

Canuck, yes people keep suggesting pigs but dh doesn't agree yet.
He did agree that we need goats. Ideally I'd want to milk them and start making my own cheese