Weekly Farm Update: 06.12.22
We finally tasted our first tree fruit! The sour cherries produced a plate full of delicious red fruits for us in their third year. Below are some tart Balaton cherries.
Chicken Coop:
CM and I spray-painted the IBC tote black to reduce algae build-up from the sun and tried to install our first gutter. I made the cut too short so we had to get a replacement gutter. Fortunately, they are only $10 so it's not a huge mistake. Once that is set up we will be able to have an additional 300 gallons of water on hand for emergencies and general watering. our land is really flat for the mountains, so I bet we could water the whole property from this barrel if we had a long enough hose. We also took a minute to install another roost for the babies to use. The 3 older hens are not the biggest fans of the 10 youngsters so this gives everyone enough space.
Garden:
We spent one afternoon this week planting soybeans, salsify, and burdock seeds into seed trays. These crops are a lot of fun to grow and we look forward to harvesting them in the fall. The soybeans are intended to be for seed saving. We love the slate black seeds. Just Beautiful! Check them out on Baker Creek here. No affiliate links either. Here are some of the sweet corn seeds I am starting from seed. Aunt Mary's is a nice variety and this will be my first attempt at growing it here. Stowell's evergreen was last year's corn variety and did really well.
The garden is shaping up and shows promising growth with each passing rainstorm. There are two more baby bunnies that showed up and are very adorable but only as long as they leave our food alone lol
Rhubarb seeds were sufficiently dry to be bagged up for storage. Perhaps one of these days I will get time to plant them in seed trays to grow out in the food forests? I placed them on an old plywood board in the sun to dry them and that worked well. Judging from the picture there are easily over 1000 seeds ready to be planted. Gulp! Parsnips are finishing up their flowers and it appears we will be able to harvest a lot of seeds from these plants. The insects abore the small blooms too. Growing these vegetables for seeds has shown me the importance of designating space to grow out plants just for seeds. I will have to design sections for this to occur in our expanding garden and is something you may want to explore yourself.
In the tree nursery, I remembered to plant out a pound of Italian stone pine seeds after soaking them in water to help speed germination. Believe it or not, this edible pine is hardy here. Korean stone pines, another edible pine nut species can grow here but languishes in our heat. I have tried for three years to grow decent seeds and they just sit there. Meanwhile, the Italian pines shoot 1-2 feet per season. Due to the need for windbreaks here, I envision these pines planted out in rows that also serve as sources of pine nuts. We shall see.
Website:
This week has been busy as usual but I was able to publish an article about men's clothes and hygiene off-grid which was fun to write. It's all very real and what we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis when the summer heat sets in.
Thoughts:
I want to mention that we are no longer posting Weekly Updates or any more of our articles on Peak Prosperity. CM and I feel that the management of that business is going in a direction that we are not ethically or morally comfortable with, and so, we are walking away from partnering with them. I wanted to say this in case any members from Peak wondered why I was not posting on there anymore. We appreciate your understanding. Till next week friends!