Happy Harvest Blog
My scarcity mindset expresses itself in mulch
Last month when All This was bearing down on us, and seeing that isolation was coming – the thing that made me anxious? I don’t have enough mulch!! I went out of my way to panic-buy a load of hay, and obsessively made trips to the sawmill to bag wood shavings (the best free resource!), especially happy that I can get in and out with my little car stuffed with wood shavings without contacting anyone at all.
Boil 'em mash 'em stick 'em in a stew
I looked at the forecast and figured it was the last minute for getting the potatoes out of the ground. It wasn't. They were plenty well tucked in and could have withstood much colder temps. But they're out now. First I take the blanket off. Dig the potatoes...Oh look, I got a heart potato! That wasn't staged. It really turned over the first forkful. I got two heart potatoes today. Somebody's been here first.
The shuttle
Every night there's a risk of frost I bring in the seedlings from the tomato safe. Now, most of the tomatoes are planted in the GH, so there's only one wheelbarrow load, plus two flats of peppers etc. Since the big Benadryl freeze fiasco (well, and before), I carefully check the weather and if it's dipping, it's shuttle time. There's also a pile of flats occupying the windowsills in the house, and they get set out on the deck during the day, which is a short commute.
Shifting play structures
You know when something is overwhelmingly interesting when ALL the birds fall silent. They're that busy. Too absorbed to talk about it, to make announcements. Then little burbles of speculation.All three of the resident breeds explored the new apparatus, hopping up and over it and sidestepping along the high poles, but - I didn't anticipate this- the Silkies wholly claimed it as their own.
Out with the green, in with the brown
Anticipating a big rain, I pushed through pulling nearly everything out of the garden and planting it in cover crops.There are few tactile pleasures to rival plunging a hand into a sack of seed and hand broadcasting it:)
Planting in the greenhouse
However, when I raked away the chips from a swathe of dirt for a garden bed, the soil was dark and moist. Wow! Best of all, no sod! The hens took care of that this winter.
Winter Rye
The soil looks really good, full of worms, nicely friable. I’m sure happy we dug so many beds this spring. Now the beds are about one third in rye, one third in heavy mulch, and four beds will be in garlic in a couple weeks time.
Coop Management
I put clean grass into the nest boxes and throw dirty nest box grass onto the floor of the coop, covering the daily poop. Every week I put a serious thick layer of fresh weeds that really spruces it up in there. Monthly I remove the composting result to the garden.
Chickens Make Mulch
All I have to do is feed them twice in the same place, by scattering their breakfast grain in a grassy place. They are so vigorously committed to finding every last crumb that they tear up the grass, it dries, and I collect it with a rake. Clean, soft, dry garden-ready mulch.
Garden beginnings
We have our labor-saving, painless technique down pat now, with this wicked sod-breaker from Lee Valley. Makes a picture perfect, sod and root-free bed of soil that you’d never guess was just broken from ground unworked for 15 years.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
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