Prepping Pasture for Planting

Started the week with chickens in the dog pen! They went in, ate a little and went out again. Pretty funny site.

The weather has cooled off a little. The mornings are crisp and the house much fresher. The nights are easier to handle. Having no furnace means no air-conditioning. I don’t want to cave and get window units. For the most part, even through the heat wave, we’ve been able to sleep with fans. We close all the windows mid-morning and open them all up again late afternoon. It seems to be working.

But the last few mornings, I’ve had to put on socks to tolerate the tiles on the kitchen floor! The house is quite cold. Feels lovely.

My lettuce has bolted. The extreme heat is probably the cause. We have been picking and eating it as much as possible but I guess not enough. I think if you pick enough it slows down the bolting process. We may still get a few days of lettuce but everyday it gets a little more bitter. So I’ve started a half dozen plants in the hothouse to see if I can extend the season. I’m learning!

Next year, I will try to keep a calendar in the hothouse to keep track of planting schedules. I am not good at remembering to plant more radishes every few weeks. If I can get into that groove, it means, lettuce, radishes and other plants can be started at different intervals. This WILL extend my food production season well into the fall.

I will be adding extra shelving to the hothouse so that I can have more plants in the window. We should be able to grow kale, snow peas, turnips, lettuce and possibly extend tomatoes. I plan to start way earlier in late winter too.

But this week, one of my projects was to try the sheet mulching technique in the garden/pasture. After deciding on the patch to work on, I pulled anything that was bigger than grass. I then watered the area, put down cardboard, being careful to cover the whole area. Any spots getting daylight will continue to grow weeds and grass. I soaked the cardboard before adding a good layer of hay/bedding/compost.

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So 2 things:

The wind was high and dried the cardboard before I was done covering it up.

I don’t have true compost. Just a pile where we dump scraps, used hay and garden clippings. We haven’t been turning it so, it’s not becoming anything like earth, but I figured, use what you have.

I will keep the patch watered if there is no rain. What I am hoping will happen is that the weeds and grasses will die out, the cardboard and the stuff I laid over it will decompose and the ground will then be ready for planting in the spring.

If it works, it will be very cool. Only problem is, it took me over an hour to do the patch. It’s not very big. But short of hiring out someone to come and till the pasture, I don’t know what else to do. I keep hearing that tilling is not good but I can’t pull the turf off the area so… Hopefully this will work.

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We’ve also acquired a new toy! The previous owners left a diesel tank in the field. We (Brian) pulled it onto the trailer, moved it into the shade and sparks started flying as he cut it in half. Okay, so I was a little scared that the thing was going to blow up. We filled it with water to attenuate sparks but apparently, diesel doesn’t react like gasoline, so it was never really an issue. Either way, we all survived!

So we are the proud owners of what will soon be a pig roaster! How cool is that!! A side note to my brother: start looking for good rub recipes 🙂

We are in the process of partnering with the South Nation Conservation group to plant some trees on the property. Will keep you posted on this project. Should be interesting.

Half way through summer and not sure we’ve accomplished what was on our to do list when we first got here, but we ARE getting lots down. It’s all good.