The field has been disced

Well, it has been a busy week here on the farm. Most importantly, the field was disced last Thursday by our neighbors ranch manager. We, the farm, do not own a tractor, we just have a walk behind spader (small, looks like a rototiller). We were so excited when we saw the neighbors tractor out in our field and his ranch manager hooking up the disc to it. He drove the disc around the field about three times on Thursday, which broke up the soil very nicely. He will do the same one more time this week, once some of the biomass has broken down.


The field getting disced the first time around

Another excitment: We got our chickens! We ended up getting three hens and a rooster from a guy that was moving up in Sonoma. We got a pair of buff orpingtons, a barred rock and a sexling. We have already got about 10 eggs from them! The orpingtons are having a little trouble adjusting to their new home though. The female has gone broody (Disposed to sitting on eggs to hatch them), which would be fine, except she has no eggs to hatch! We put some fake, marble eggs in the coop so that the chickens would know where to lay their eggs and she adopted some of these. The reason it is not a desirable state to have your chicken in is because she does nothing but sit in her hen box! She does not eat, drink, lay more eggs, or go outside. So, we are trying to break it by keeping her out of the chicken coop and in a cage in the barn. Our rooster is having some bowel issues. We took him to the vet last week after noticing blood in his stool. We kept him inside for a day and he seemed great; everything was normal. Well, after a day back out, he was constipated again! We did not want to pay to take him to the vet again, so he has moved inside again where we have been feeding him things to try and "lube" him up ( apples, strawberries, peanut butter, and even vaseline). Sounds like a pretty good gig to me! (except the eating of vaseline) He has been waking us up with his crowing now the last two mornings at 5:30am! He then continues crowing until around 10am. We are really hoping he gets back to "regular" soon so that he can move back out!! We built the chickens a little run to play in until they get used to their coop, after which time we will allow them free range into the yard. They always get locked into the coop at night though to protect them from the abundance of wild life out here!


The pair of buff orpintons and the sexling.


The barred rock out in the run we built.

We moved a lot of the vegetables that are ready to be transplanted out of the greenhouse when we saw the field being disced last week. We are hardening them off -- getting them ready for cooler temperatures and more wind. We moved out our cauliflower, kale, some of our tomatoes, and chard. At night these vegetables are covered with remay crop cover, a woven fabric, to help keep them a little warmer. We are hoping these will be planted out by the end of this week or the beginning of next. We did get another 4/10th of an inch of rain on Sunday/Monday, which will delay discing by a day or two, but mostly we were very happy about the rain. It really broke up the soil and saturated it very nicely. We also started half our melons and cucumbers this week along with some watermelon. We are not going to grow a whole lot of watermelon this year, it is more of an experiment. We are trying two seedless varieties so see how they do and growing one big,red one. Oh, we can't wait for those to be ready (probably not until August)!


The plants being hardened off are under the white "box". Our greenhouse behind it and the beautiful disced field in the background.

Anticipation is really starting to build now, and we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel - the tunnel being an unusually wet and cold spring! With only 6 weeks left until summer, we know that the cool damp weather has to be coming to an end. Mornings are still quite crisp, with temps dipping in to the mid 40's. They say the warm season extends quite late around here, so we'll be hoping for that indian summer to bring hot weather in through September/October. Well we need to get out to work now, but hopefully our next entry will be all about everything we've been planting and transplanting in the field!

Its May!

Well, it's May and I think the rains have stopped! We definitely have a lot of water in the pond to last through the season and the ground is pretty well saturated! We are really hoping to have the discer (plow) in the field this week. It seemed that throughout April, every time the field finally dried, it would rain again, and not just a little, but 2" of rain in a day!! As they say "April showers bring May flowers"...

This week we worked on our tomato trellises. We are gathering redwood boughs (off the ground) to use instead of buying some cheap (but not really that cheap) lumber from the store. We cut the boughs to 8' long, criss-cross two pieces and screw them together to make an "X". Then we put a bar across the bottom to help reinforce them. Once we get them into the field, we will space them every 15' straddling 2 rows of tomatoes and run wire the length of the row connected to the top of our "X"'s. The tomatoes are supported with twine connecting from the plant to the wire above. The plant will then grow up the twine, hopefully to the top of the trellis. We have never tried this before, but we think it will work. We did install one in our "experimental" garden, where our heirlooms are planted.



Our tomato trellis

Yesterday, we got our chicken coop delivered to the farm! It is a 4x4x4 cube, which can hold up to 12 chickens, but we will probably only have 5 chickens. We have started looking for layers on craigslist; we are really looking forward to the fresh eggs (and manure)! It is very sad how chickens on large scale farms get treated; beaks and wings clipped, no room to turn around, etc. If you can grow your own or find someone who sells them off their farm, I would highly recommend buying them this way. Even some of the "free range" chicken eggs you can get in the store have their beaks clipped. Chicken beaks are like our fingers! They use them to explore the world and pick stuff up. Also, farm eggs or free range chicken eggs are MUCH healthier for you. The chickens eat food that is more natural to them, grass, bugs, worms, etc and their eggs are much higher in Omega fatty acids (the ones that are super good for you). If you can't buy eggs from a farm, then at least try to buy the ones at the store that are free-range, because these chickens do have the opportunity to go outdoors.


One side of the new coop


The other side, which you see inside the roost and laying boxes

Things are going good in the greenhouse and many things are really ready to go out in the field! I feel like somedays, our tomatoes double in size in the green house. We are hoping to start our cucumbers and melon seeds soon. We will grow Armenian cucumbers, french cantaloupes, "regular" cantaloupes, pickling cucumbers and English cucumbers (more your standard cucumber). We are really looking forward to eating these crops!!


The early girl tomatoes, which are looking great!

Other than that, not much has been going on. Brian and I have been getting out on more road bike rides, doing anywhere between 14 and 25 miles. Brian brewed his 2nd batch of "all grain beer" and we have been enjoying drinking his first batch. Kazy is doing lots of hunting of voles and mice -- up to 3 in a day!