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This past week we completed some new seed starting trays. These are made of naturally rot resistant cedar. Each tray holds 40 of the 2″ square soil blocks. No plastic containers.  The blocks are held together by their ingredients, mostly the peat moss. So we have started 400 blocks with 5 different varieties of lettuce.  They have sprouted nicely. We hope these as well as another round of squash and cucumbers will be ready when we have our next poultry processing day. Speaking of that, we had a very unpleasant visit from a raccoon. He found a weakness in the top of the pen and kill every chicken in there. We double checked all the pens and then trapped him the next night. Once we get a guard dog at that place these problems will go away.

Thanks for reading -

Stanley

Recently we have been tweaking the plan for next years spring garden. It looks like we will need to increase the seed starting to do about 500 seedlings per month. Bulb onions will be the first thing to plant – October starts for Jan transplant, followed by January starts and Febuary transplants of green onions, lettuce and the cruciferous vegetables (cabbages etc). Most of that is harvested in April / May. The later garden gets Febuary starts and March transplants of squash, peppers, melons and tomatoes, as well as direct seeds of things like peas and carrots. After that most crops  (beans, corn, etc) are directly seeded into the garden. One of the techniques we practice is succession planting. Rather than trying to fight various pests and diseases you plant another crop a few weeks after the first one. If there are problems with the first planting you just plow it under and use the second crop.

Stanley

The broilers were moved to their pens on the new farm. Now we had a problem with a varmint coming around the chickens - probably a raccoon or a possum. First we tried a beefed-up electric fence. Trying to go more “green” it is a solar powered unit. Anyway he was not impressed. The live trap didn’t catch him. So we decided to make the pens more varmint proof. Thursday after work we got the new material and headed over to the farm. The storm was brewing back to the west. On arrival we rushed into the pasture. The wind was picking up and a few raindrops were falling.The first pen was quickly upgraded and readied for the storm. The wind had blown the top off the second pen. Once we got over to it we could see the lid was broken. The storm had arrived by now. The wind was blowing strong and the rain was coming down in heavy sheets. With no top on the second pen the young birds would either be attacked by the varmint or get soaked and probably die overnight. We gathered up birds by the handfuls and rushed them over to the first pen. Once we got them all moved we ran back to the barn to try to dry off and wait for a break in the rain. The next day we had a possum in the live trap.

The second pen will need the top repaired and the new varmint proofing put on, then we can move the birds back over there. I don’t know how m\any we lost in all this. It  may change our process dates. Stay tuned –