Homestead Happenings

Well, hello there!

Welcome back to Homestead Happenings,

where we share what's going on here on our Piedmont property.

New life abounds, with the latest family of bluebirds

taking shelter in one of our birdhouses.

These parents are no doubt getting very little sleep,

having six mouths to feed!
 

The lettuce beds are feeding me well these days,

with more being sown this week for a continued harvest.

Watering has been a ritual every few days,

as we are in an extreme drought situation.

This weekend we should see some much needed precipitation.

The kale and lettuce make up my daily

(sometimes twice daily) salads.

There is nothing quite as satisfying

as creating a meal using food you've grown.

The fresh flavor is like nothing else.

The outer leaves are picked so that the

heart of the leaves continue to grow,

creating a cut-and-come again salad bar.

Of course, some of the bounty is shared with our chooks.

They love greens of any kind!

I noticed flowers on the elderberry this week.

This year will be the first time I attempt to

make syrup, which many folks swear

has medicinal properties.

The chooks can also be found hopping up

to reach the berries for a midday snack.

There are blueberries forming on our plants!

I had all but given up on these bushes,

and had planned to replace them,

but lo and behold, they came back to life!

Another treat I hope to enjoy before the 

chooks and squirrels help themselves!

With one bed of potatoes growing quite vigorously,

a second bed was started.

(The netting is to deter critters from digging in the bed.)

This variety is Kennebec,

which I've never grown before.

You can find out more about them here.

All crops were fertilized yesterday.

Fish emulsion is applied by hand

using 2 Tablespoons per gallon of water.

A five-gallon bucket allows me to mix up

all that is needed.

New seeds were sown using the soil block method.

If you ever played with mud pies when you were young,

you'd love this technique!

Conventionally, soilless potting mix is used to start seeds,

but I only had standard potting mix.

Perlite and vermiculite were added for better drainage.

Sufficient moisture is key here,

in order for the blocks to stay together once discharged from the mold.

It was surprising to find how easy it was to get the balance right!

Both crops and flowers were sown, labeled,

and watered in before placing in a safe space

away from curious critters.

It was so much fun that more blocks will be created later today.

After all, how can one pass up the opportunity to feel like a kid again?

So much of the garden is filling in,

and it does my heart good to see that the effort

I've put forth in the past few years 

is paying off.

It's so centering to sit out here with the chooks roaming,

reading a good book or simply enjoying

the wonder of the nature around me.

What a blessing.

This baptisia is one of my favorite sights in the front flower bed.

It's taken 3 years to bloom, but so worth the wait.

The magic of perennials never ceases to amaze me.

This clematis, which resides on the north side of the garden,

was also slow in getting established.

I look forward to seeing it bloom every year,

and am grateful when it surprises me

by being one of the first pops of color in the garden.

Along with winter sowing and soil blocks,

I thought I would try my hand at sprouting some seeds indoors.

Simply using a damp paper towel,

these fresh seeds from Sow True in Asheville,

didn't disappoint after just a few days.

I never tire of the magic of seeds.

Our new babies are two weeks old,

and growing like nobody's business!

They have already figured out how to hop up on 

the warming tray.

They are so much fun, and as you may be able to tell,

they are non-stop!

They all look lively and well,

and we are handling them every day.

Our older gals are enjoying their foraging time,

with plenty of grass, clover and bugs to savor.

I'm so grateful to have these souls in my life.

Life is just better with chickens.

I'd love to hear how spring is treating you!

Homestead Happenings

 

The weeks have flown by and June

is right around the corner.

A pup sitting job took me away from home

for a long stretch, and I've been playing catch up in the garden.

There really is no place like home...

Believe it or not, we've gotten over 10 inches of rain

in May alone.  Temperatures have been cooler than average,

which makes for great working conditions outside.

With more typical temps on the horizon,

I managed to fit a few tasks into my gardening schedule.

The pollinator beds are bursting at the seams

from all of the precipitation.

The pink yarrow has really taken off,

and shares space with purple coneflower,

daisies, rue and a huge parsley plant!

The other half of the bed hosts salvia, dianthus,

balloon flowers and baptisia.

I have an affinity for flowers in the blue family.

The nasturtiums are getting huge and spilling

out of the raised beds.  They are planted 

alongside the veg to attract pollinators.

These are a standard every spring in the garden.

They are edible too, if you like a peppery addition to your meals.

Aren't these sea oats a riot?

A friend shared these with me and I absolutely 

adore them!

They require very little and come back each year.

I would love to find a spot where

they can just go wild!

There is a ton of milkweed coming up

in the chook run.  This is the host plant

for the monarch butterfly.

Everything in this area is a volunteer.

Last year we had not one monarch caterpillar,

despite having two different varieties of milkweed growing.

It's the first time in more than 10 years

that we didn't host these critters.

I'll be on the lookout this year for them.

This monster is an elderberry bush.

When I first planted it,

I wasn't sure it was in the right spot,

because this is the northeast side of our property,

and it was underneath a canopy of trees.

It seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.

It's started to flower,

so the hope is for berries to make a healing syrup.

These red cabbages were bought as starts

from our local organic farmers.

They are absolutely exploding out of the raised bed!

I make coleslaw out of red cabbage and carrots often,

so this will be one less thing to buy at the grocery store.

When I came home from my dog sitting job,

I couldn't believe how much the potatoes had grown!

We have Yukon Gold and Yukon Red planted

this year. 

The fun part begins with uncovering the buried treasure

in a few weeks' time!

Lettuce, anyone?

This bed of lettuce has been feeding me for weeks,

and let me tell ya, this stuff is scrumptious!

This netted bag is hung around my neck,

and a harvesting-I-go!

On occasion, I share it with the chooks,

and they aren't complaining one bit!

I am blessed beyond measure.

Once a month I work as a volunteer at the Community Garden.

The garden has been overhauled this year,

being managed by one very dedicated and hard working

Master Gardener.

The harvests will go to feed others in our community.

It's such a worthwhile and rewarding project.

Thankful for the rain,

and especially for being home to enjoy it.

Gardening is a wonderful way to feed one's soul.

May you be thoroughly filled up.

Homestead Happenings

 

allium 

It's nearing the month of May,

and there's been a lot of activity in the garden, and beyond!

Here's some of what we've been up to.

Yukon Gold potatoes were planted in two different spots,

both in the ground.

Using grow bags is my preferred method for growing spuds,

but there were none available,

so I found a couple of bare spots.

They popped up about a week later.

The wire seen on this crop (and others),

is to deter chooks from scratching up plants,

and to keep squirrels out of my food source!

The Seminole pumpkin seeds germinated quicker

than I thought they might.

This was a new-to-me crop last year,

and I was quite impressed with it.

No pest issues to speak of, which is very rare

for squash of any kind.

The loofah sprouted up in mere days,

so it was transferred to its resting place

underneath the gazebo frame.

This will provide the chooks with some 

much needed shade come summertime.

The bonus is that I hope to have many loofahs to give away!

The first harvest of salad greens took place

yesterday, and it looks like we'll have ample lettuce

for the coming weeks.

There are also seedlings that will be 

transplanted into another bed in a week or two.

Gotta keep the greens comin'!

Although we have five blueberry bushes,

this is the only one that is loaded with berries.

I sure hope I get some before the squirrels 

try to take them all.

I will continue to work on improving our harvests each year.

The strawberries are ripening,

and care was taken to surround the circular bed

with welded wire to keep the squirrels out.

New plants may be acquired next season,

as they have to be replaced every few years.

A recent trick I learned to deal with pill bugs,

is to slice medallions of white potatoes

and place them in the beds.

The theory is that the little pests 

go for the spuds and leave the other crops alone.

So far, so good.

The potato slices need to be replaced every so often,

but it beats using pesticides!

ajuga

A tray of both food and flowers was sown

using the soil block method.

This process is still very new to me,

and it takes some practice to get the consistency of the soil

just right so that it stays in the metal form.

I'll keep working on it,

as I'd like to do away completely with using plastic.

Our flower beds are really starting to fill in,

with familiar favorites and a few new plants.

There is still room for additions,

and I'm sure I won't have any trouble finding just the right ones.

All of these plants must be drought tolerant,

as there is no irrigation in this bed.

What a pleasant surprise to see this pink yarrow blooming!

There are many areas in which we have the white variety,

and I had pretty much forgotten that this beauty had been added

just last year.

The baptisia seed was sown a couple of years ago,

and this is the first time it has bloomed.

It's so exciting to see new things popping up!

A few projects were finished over the last two weeks.

I was able to get five 5-gallon buckets of compost

sifted and put in containers.

This process is done once in the spring and in the fall,

and it gives me compost to add to the beds

each time something new goes in,

or to top off the raised beds.

I think it has improved over the last few years,

as the chooks scratching it up and adding manure to the pile helps.

The compost/storage area was tidied a bit.

I call myself "chronically organized", 

because I just don't do well when things are a mess.

Why waste time looking for things 

when keeping things organized is so easy?

A big project that has begun is that we have added

a 6 foot wire fence attached to the chook run.

We have three escapees who refuse to be confined,

and they simply climb or jump over the fabric netting we currently have up.

This new system is at least 3 feet taller, so we are  hoping

it will keep them inside.

The fencing is kept in place using conduit.

It's not a fancy or super sturdy fence,

but it's what I can do myself, can afford and it will

also allow us to put bird netting over the top,

to keep flying predators away.

We still have a larger area to fence in this way,

and we hope to finish that before the hot weather ensues.

It's probably not clear in this picture,

but we have a mole problem.

The center part of this photo shows the ground

raised up and disturbed.

The vole issue we were having in the runs

seems to have been improved by the vibrating spikes

we installed a few weeks ago.

That, and I also add cayenne to the chooks' feed

and select areas in the run where we see holes.

The girls don't taste the cayenne, but the voles do.

Ah well, we have to learn to live together.

The three amigas

Isn't springtime just magical?

So many gorgeous things showing off

and the signs of new life all around.

We had a family of wrens in our porch birdhouse,

and the babies just fledged this week.

So exciting and joyful.

I'll take the joy where I can get it.

How's spring coming along where you are?