My Motivation

I began touting the virtues of Animal Vegetable Miracle over on Mamamelodrama some time ago, but I want to push it one more time. This book really had a huge impact on my life, the choices I make, and attitudes toward family rearing and family feeding. It also leaves the reader with a great deal of how-to information, even though you thought you were just reading an interesting narrative. I took prodigious notes and am still referring to them. Make it your next read for sure!

Here is a rather generous excerpt I'd like to encourage you to read on Mother Earth News. I also highly recommend subscribing to the Mother Earth updates--they do such a great job on the healthy, family-focused, self-sufficiency thing, and do better than me on the "That's not food" front, too.

Go to the library or Amazon and get it for yourself. I did the library thing and I'm really wishing I had my own copy to refer to, though. You can read the reviews here:

The first thing you are supposed to do before you start to garden a space (unless you're planting in dirt you bought) is to have your soil tested. Soil testing kits can be bought at garden centers. In my typical rush-rush attitude, I blew this off--I didn't have time, I was going to compost and mulch and green-manure, and real-manure anyway, so why?

But I kept reading about how every time you harvest vegetables from a soil, you are also harvesting much of the soil's vitamins, and with the short-sighted chemical fertilizer method that doesn't leave any slow-releasing organic matter in the soil, it just slowly gets worse and worse. In the west garden, that was their primary garden spot for the residents here for years, and although there was a good leaf mulch and some grass tilled in to some of it, the far end just seemed a little dead.

Lots of earthworms mean healthy soil, and there are a lot less worms in that half of the garden. So I tested over there with a $5 kit (it was $12 for a set of 5, should have done that). My soil is very alkaline and okay on potassium and phosphorus but LOW on the big, important nitrogen.

It's hard to act on this when the plants are already in, but I'm going to take measures tomorrow, first to get iron sulfate to bring the Ph lower, then some organic fertilizer, since my compost isn't done yet (although I started a new pen bin this week in addition to the tumbler David built).

If you don't compost, you should! Even if you just a have a little container garden--and if you don't, you should! There are some areas of Canada where 90% of the residents compost. It makes for wonderful gardens and keeps valuable nutrients out of the landfill:

Click here for a quick compost lesson.

Another thing I've learned is that any kind of bean--bush, pole, green, kidney, pinto, whatever--actually gives back more to the soil than it takes, and it gives A LOT of nitrogen. So, I interplanted LOTS of fast-growing green beans today between slow-growing squash hills and one bean plant replaced a dead tomato in the middle of the tomato plants.

The soil in the pasture, which I may or may not have tilled tomorrow, is really good, virgin soil, black with lots of worms, and has had horses pastured there for many years prior, so that's just fertilizing at it's best.

Chicken question time:

Yes, it's going fine, they don't stress me out, but my kids' handling them does.

No, the coop isn't done yet, it's been raining. They live in the shed and come out into the yard by the shed during the day. I got home after dark from the temple last night and David didn't get my message about putting them back in the shed. They weren't eaten by racoons or a skunk, but they'd all put themselves to bed back in the shed in a big, warm pile of chicken on the floor.

Wintering chickens: Chickens keep themselves warm by huddling together, and the coop should be not too big so the heat they give off (a surprising amount, they all feel fevered) can be held in a small space--you need 3-5 sq. ft per chicken in the house (and 18" of perch space per bird). But, in areas with cold winters (read: not LA, but here), we'll need to insulate the coop before first frost with styrofoam or commercial insulation covered in a plywood inside.

Right now the design just has the studs with plywood over the outside, so the insulation will go between the studs with plywood inside. So Jen, yes, in NH, you need to insulate :) In winter, they won't be having yard time (unless there is an unusually warm day and there's no snow on the ground), so they eat inside and just are all "cooped up" in there for 3-4 months. If you put a light on a timer to turn on early, the hens will keep laying strong (laying is governed by day length), otherwise, in the winter they lay a lot less.

A hen has to be 20 weeks old to lay, so we're only at week 6. The roasters, I think I've mentioned, shouldn't live a day over 12 weeks. A good laying hen will lay 230-260 eggs a year in her first season (pullet season doesn't count as the first). But that number goes down quite a bit each year after that, so that's why you keep adding pullets each year and culling the poor layers for stew (apparently you have to stew chickens that weren't killed young because they are tough).

So, there's some homesteading talk for the day. Have a good Memorial Day weekend!