Planting - Hedgerow and Garden

Lots of rain has meant little planting in the garden. But trees don't mind being planted in the rain. The trees went into my permaculture hedgerow.

Pear trees, mulberry tree, and Asian persimmon. All there
is to see are sticks in the ground and piles of mulch

Pear leafing out (and Waldo)

I started with the canopy layer this spring and will add other plants as I'm able. The trees were planted down the middle, shrubs, vines, and groundcover plants will be planted along the fences. That will hopefully benefit the animals in the pasture with a little foraging through the fence, plus allow me a path down the middle.

2 European Chestnuts, "Colossal", were planted in the other section.

2 newly planted chestnut saplings

I found an article, "Holistic Chestnut Orcharding" at the Appalachian Agroforestry website. After reading it, I will start to transplant some of my yarrow and comfrey plants here.

Transplanted yarrow

The blueberry bush in the middle is sporting little leaves and flowers.

I don't have much to show yet in the main garden, except my garlic is doing well

and my red raspberries are starting to leaf!

So far I've planted four beds:

Planted beds waiting to sprout.

Bed 1 - multiplier onions, Jericho lettuce, and Purple Plum radishes
Bed 2 - Detroit beets, Waltham broccoli, more multiplier onions
Bed 3 - Siberian Dwarf kale and antique marigolds
Bed 4 - multiplier onions and Nantes Carrots

This may sound terrible to you dedicated no-till folks, but I am so relieved to not be battling wire grass this spring in order to plant. Last fall we let the pigs into the garden to do the preliminary natural tilling, then Dan finished the job with his garden tiller. Wire grass is the biggest reason I didn't get much of a fall and winter garden in. Having to deal with this -

March 2011 photo of wire grass roots strangling a strawberry plant

It gets so dense that it becomes nearly impossible to plant anything and is a battle to remove manually. Consequently, I abandoned the permanent garden beds. We're very curious as to how the pig plowing will effect weed growth this summer. That will be the subject of future garden posts.

Speaking of strawberries -

Mine are starting to bloom!

How about you? Is the weather cooperating with your garden plans?

Planting - Hedgerow and Garden © March 2015
by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Goat Barn Preliminaries

The goat barn is going to be our building project this summer. Or perhaps I should say, starting on the goat barn is going to be our building project this summer. It will be the biggest thing we've undertaken so far. It will require a lot of time and money, so we'll just do like we always do and take it one step at a time.

Before we can actually get started, several things have needed to be done first. One has been a place to store hay. We used to store it in one of the two original outbuildings.

Photo from "Homestead Haying" (May 2013) before adding tarp walls.

It looked better in those days and has since been torn down to make way for the new barn. The new barn will have a hay loft. In the meantime, we decided to make a hoop house for temporary hay storage.

After we tore out the old front porch floor,
Dan used the boards to make a base.

6 ft by 12 ft is enough room for three round bales of hay

Covered with multiple layers of plastic and tarps it's not
very aesthetic, but it's functional (in more ways than one)

The other thing we need to do is to trim back this old oak tree.

Dan's truck is parked on the concrete slab which will
become my milking room and the center of the barn.
A sketch of our round barn plans can be found here.

Like it's sister tree, it is old and loses a lot of limbs. The last thing we need is for it to come down on the new barn some stormy night. Dan plans to cut back the branches enough so that won't happen. This will be some of next winter's firewood.

Even though there is no building activity yet, we think about this project constantly. Once Dan puts the finishing touches on the bay window, our attention will turn to the barn in all seriousness.

Goat Barn Preliminaries © March 2015 by
Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Built-In Playgroup

Several folks have commented on Helen's having quadruplets, because it seems an unusual number of kids for the single birth of a goat. When we think of goats kidding, we usually think of twins, singles, or triplets. For Kinders, however, quads are not all that unusual, occasionally even quints. This, plus the amount of milk, butterfat, and meat they can produce, make them the perfect homestead breed in my not so humble opinion!

The universal game!

With this many the concern is whether or not they're all getting enough to eat. I've been monitoring weight gain, also activity and contentment level. A kid getting enough to eat is happy, curious, and very active.

As they get bigger I'll especially have to make sure the little doeling gets her share. Bucklings tend to grow faster, plus they have that male chutzpah so that they often barge in and push everybody else out of the way. So far so good.

At 8 days old they're beginning to sample everything

Daphne watch continues.

I'm expecting at least triplets or one very large kid!

Kinder gestation averages 147 days; that day being March 29th. If there are less than three in there then they must be huge!

Only time will tell.

Built-In Playgroup © March 2015 by
Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/