Putting the pocket gophers to work!

Raised garden beds

Now that we know we have voles and pocket gophers (thanks Runner Bean Ranch) EVERYWHERE!  I have realized that the only way we are going to grow a good amount of vegetables is with raised beds that have hardwire on the bottom (to keep the critters out!).  

In the old barns, there were a bunch of old stock tanks.  Most of them had holes and had been patched multiple times.  They were really not good for anything.  I decided to use these old stock tanks for some of the raised beds in our garden.

There were actually 7 stock tanks!  Can you believe it!  We kept the smallest one which was hidden.  It had been surrounded by insulation to keep it from freezing in the winter.  This one is in almost perfect condition so we decided to keep it, in case we some day get a large animal...some day...not any time soon...

Small stock tank we "found" in a wooden crate surrounded by insulation.

"Before" video of future garden area:

First, Henry had to mow the garden area.  It was like a jungle with grass and weeds taller than me...

We have started a brush pile.

Then, I positioned the stock tanks where I wanted them.

I drilled some drainage holes into the bottom.

I dug out a little bit to try and get the tanks level.  The idea is NOT to bury them, just to get them level.

Then, I put in some large rotten logs (sound familiar).  Using the rotten logs just like in the hugelkultur beds...

Put some smaller pieces of rotten wood on top of the large logs.

Here is where I start to put the pocket gophers to work.  One day, I went to sit down at my desk to work and I look up and see dirt flying through the air...

I was not able to get a better video of the little guy but this gave me a great idea.  I knew I was going to need a LOT of dirt to fill the stock tanks.  Even though they were half full of wood, it would still take lots of dirt to fill up the tanks.  Since the pocket gophers were working so hard to mound up all this dirt, I decided to harvest it.  Mark and I drove around in the Polaris and filled up buckets with gopher mound dirt.  

Then, Mark helped me put the dirt into our stock tanks.

We filled the stock tank up and then watered it.  

It is hard to tell in this next picture but I finally got a lead on a rabbitry with free wood shavings mixed with rabbit poop!  So I put a good layer of this in the tank.

Then, I put a thick layer of half composted materials from my hot composting bin on top of the rabbit poop shavings...

Then, I covered that with shredded hay from the barn.

 I will add more layers in the spring as this settles and before I get ready to plant!  I did get a chance to plant some garlic in one of the tanks and I will be sharing that in a future post...

I am planning on making some more traditional raised beds with wood sides and the hardware cloth on the bottom.  I will also post a pics of that...I may even get started on it over the Thanksgiving week.  We are supposed to have mild (and wet) weather...

~Denise

Compost! Using what you have on hand (and can get free!) to improve the soil...

Composting on the Farm

HOT Composting

One of my biggest challenges I realized right away is the need to build up the dirt to make it more rich soil for planting vegetable and herb gardens.  The end of August, I started reading and doing a little research about the "proper" way to compost...

Taken from The Rapid Composting Method The author is Robert D. Raabe, Professor of Plant Pathology, Berkeley:
For the composting process to work most effectively, material to be composted should have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30 to 1. This cannot be measured easily, but experience has shown that mixing equal volumes of green plant material with equal volumes of naturally dry plant material will give approximately a 30/1 carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio. Green material can be grass clippings, old flowers, green prunings, weeds, fresh garbage and fruit and vegetable wastes. Dried material can be dead, fallen leaves, dried grass, straw and somewhat woody materials from prunings. 

I read this book about making compost, Let It Rot!  It suggested the usual ratios of browns, greens and MANURE (as a nitrogen supply) to start your compost pile.  I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it...

 The problem is that I do not have a lot of manure right now.  So, I am looking for nitrogen alternatives.  I read this article about using coffee grounds as a nitrogen source in your compost bin (instead of manure.)  I am all about using s#@t for composting but do I have to even say that the coffee smells so much better!  I had no idea it was a high nitrogen material!

I was at Starbucks one day and I saw a bag by the door that was labeled FREE Grounds for Gardens.  So, I grabbed up some grounds.  

Two closed bins I use for "hot" composting.  I brought one and there was one left on the property when we got here!

The first store I went to had the grounds wrapped up in a nice bag (on the left).  The second store I went to just gave me a plastic trash bag full of coffee (on the right).

I know there are also local coffee houses that put out grounds for gardeners so if you don't have a Starbucks near you, just ask your local coffee shop to save some for you.

I have been picking up apples that fall on the ground and adding them to the compost bins.  I have lots of browns to add (old hay) but not a lot of greens so I am using the apples as greens and the grounds as a N source to activate everything.

One thing I realized (and also read in the book), is that the hay is going to be hard to decompose.  Putting it through a shredder would help but I don't have a shredder.  One issue is that by definition of being made into hay, it is very dried out!  Too dry.  Almost hydrophobic.  I pour water on it and it just runs off.  So, I have been putting it into the wheelbarrow with water to get it soaked through and then adding it to the compost bin between layers of apples.  I will probably have to switch to putting it in a 5 gallon bucket...need wheelbarrow for other chores...

Here is a video I put together about making the compost...

Henry made me this nice screen to put the compost through.  Thanks Hen!

These are 2.5 gallon bags of compost that I have collected and will put into our raised beds.

COLD Composting

There is a new trampoline park close to our house and they had a bunch of wood pallets sitting out in front.  I went in and asked about them.  They said I could have all I wanted.  So, I made a 3 bin compost area.  This is more of a "cold" compost process where you pile things in the first bin the first year and then move to the second bin the second year.  Then, the stuff in the second bin goes into the third bin on the third year and so forth...

Picture of 3 bin compost bins when I made them.

Picture of 3 bin compost bins in October.  Almost got the first bin full!

Here is a great Ted Talk about composting...pretty funny and educational...he says all you need to compost is leaves and coffee grounds!  

I had lots of aspirations of collecting old leaves around town this fall but that just did not happen.  Not enough time...maybe next year!

~Denise

Fall Farm Updates...

Random Farm Updates

We have been on the farm for several months now and are doing lots!  Here are some random updates...

We have probably a couple dozen apple trees on the farm but they are pretty over grown (like 30 feet tall!) and have not been taken care of.  The codling moth has gotten about 99% of the apples but I did find a few clean gems!

Henry has started chipping away at a huge wood pile in the back for firewood...

We have a wood stove in the basement of the house.  It is the original wood stove that was put into the house when it was build in 1964.  I have been told by the wood stove guy that it will be very inefficient (I didn't really expect him to tell me anything else...he is trying to sell us a wood stove).  So, my preliminary estimates is that buying a new wood stove is expensive!  We are going to take this winter to do some research and may be installing a new one next fall...
Not the best pic, but here is a different angle showing some of the wood. 

I started some mead from the honey I had collected in the spring.  If you don't know, Mead is an alcoholic beverage that you can make from honey!  I made Huckleberry mead...I just love to watch it bubbling away...

When my  mom and dad were here this past summer, we went huckleberry picking and I also found an elderberry bush up on the mountain.  I picked all the elderberries and brought them home.  I did not realize that there are 2 types of elderberries (well, actually there are dozens of different elderberries) but it appears to be 2 types of berries...black (these are the ones I found on the mountain) and blue.  We have blue elderberry bushes in our yard as shown in this pic. 

We found a plum tree on the farm.  We picked some plums and I made some plum butter.  I don't know if I should call it a tree or a bush.  It has lots of suckers coming out from the main tree so it is like one big clump of plums.  I started cleaning out under it but then got distracted with taking out a big rose bush.  I will come back to this plum at a later time...

Cleaned out an old rose bush that was leaning the fence over...in addition, there is a dead tree in the middle of the huge rose bush that needs to come down.  I took the first picture at the beginning of September.  I worked on it little by little and it took me a month to get it all cleaned out.

Pic of rose bush pushing fence over

After rose bush removed.  Now, you can see the dead tree!

Now, I have another big rose bush by the garden that I am going to remove...ugh...then, maybe back to the plum...depending on how the fall weather comes in...(I actually just finished this project yesterday...it was much easier because there were not as many suckers...)

In the middle of August, I decided to try and transplant some raspberry bushes.  There is a patch of raspberries on the property but they are located on a steep incline which makes it difficult to pick.

Raspberries that were transplanted from another site on the property.

Some of the canes turned brown and I was not sure they would make it.  I had already made up my mind that I would be happy if half of the raspberries survived the transplanting.  The end of September, I saw new growth on those "dead" looking canes!  Yeah!

I am busy working on the garden area and planting some fruit trees and bushes too.  I will have a post about all that in the future...

The dairy cows next door came over to see what we were doing when Henry was cutting firewood.

~Denise

Hugelkultur

Making a Hugelkultur bed

As I had stated in a FB post last week, I have always been intrigued by the Hugelkultur (mound culture) technique.  One limiting factor was that you need a lot of half rotten wood.  But guess what?  We have tons of old dead wood on our new farm property!  

Hugelkultur are no-dig raised beds with a difference. They hold moisture, build fertility, maximize surface volume and are great spaces for growing fruit, vegetables and herbs.  

Taken from Inspiration and Green Permaculture Magazine:

Instead of putting branches, leaves and grass clippings in bags by the curbside for the bin men... build a hugel bed. Simply mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost or whatever other biomass you have available, top with soil and plant your veggies.

The advantages of a hugel bed are many, including:

The gradual decay of wood is a consistent source of long-term nutrients for the plants. A large bed might give out a constant supply of nutrients for 20 years (or even longer if you use only hardwoods). The composting wood also generates heat which should extend the growing season.

Soil aeration increases as those branches and logs break down... meaning the bed will be no till, long term.

The logs and branches act like a sponge. Rainwater is stored and then released during drier times. Actually you may never need to water your hugel bed again after the first year (except during long term droughts).

I started by making a "before" video of the area.  This area is located right in front of the bee hive and it will be our kitchen herb garden.  It is located right outside the kitchen back door...

Started by digging a trench.

I made it about 2-3 feet wide and about 10 feet long and about 10 inches deep.

I threw all the soil to the side to be used again later.

Then, I filled the trench with large limbs.  These were all collected right on the other side of that fence in the background.  So, it was nice to clean out all those dead limbs out of the pasture area and put them to good use!

I threw in some old hay and coffee grounds.

Then, I put smaller branches mounded on top.

More hay and I watered the mound to make it nice and moist.

I placed the soil that I dug out back onto the mound.  This was a little tricky but I eventually got it all to "stick".

I bought some soil conditioner to put on top of the mound.

I planted crimson clover and oats into the soil conditioner.

The oats did not germinate very well at all.  The crimson clover is germinating in a spotty pattern and growing slowly.  Ideally, I would have started this project about a month earlier.  The weather has really cooled down and that is why things are not growing.  I plan to put a good layer of hay mulch or wood chips over the entire area to put it to bed for the winter.

Not a super great pic but you can see some of the green clover growing on Hugelkultur bed.

I thought maybe the voles would not like the Hugelkultur mound but I was wrong...they are already tunneling around in there!  I have been putting coffee grounds in their holes...hoping that it will detour them (thanks Nora, for the suggestion!).

Overall, I am happy with the project and excited to plant lettuce, herbs, and flowers into the Hugelkultur bed in the spring!

This place is for the birds...

General bird observations...

I know if you live on a farm already, you are probably like, "What is the big deal..." but we have been living in town for decades so moving out to a more rural area has opened up so many more opportunities to observe wildlife.  Of course, I could do without the voles, pocket gophers, and coyotes but you have to take the good with the bad.

There are great horned owls in the barn.  The windows have been broken out so there is easy access for them to the rafters.  They also love to hang out in the windrow of evergreen trees.  There used to be as many as 5 but now I only see a couple brave ones still hanging around.  Speaking of brave...it used to be that as soon as I left the house, they would fly out of the barn, but this day, he (or she) hung around while I even went into the barn!  It is too bad the lighting was poor but I did the best I could...beautiful birds of prey...(which of course, is more bad news for the future chicken farm...)

A couple of weeks ago, our neighbor mowed down the area to the south of our house.  It sure does look a lot different!  So, nice and open...as I was typing this, I just looked out there and saw a covey of quail running around under the apple trees.  

We always have a couple of hawks flying around but the day the pasture was mowed, I counted at least 12...

They were all looking for dinner...

I hope they can keep it up.  I saw this little guy near my compost bins...

I didn't get a video of it but there are geese that live on the pond at the dairy next door.  To the north of the house was a field of garbanzo beans.  After they were harvested, we had dozens of geese flying over our house, back and forth, to the field to eat up.  

There are also lots of magpies and other small birds that I don't know the identity of.  I like the idea of attracting small birds to the farm to help with insect control.  One of my goals for the winter month is to make some bird houses to do just that.

Honeybee update and Leafcutter Bees!

Beekeeping

Just a brief update on our top bar hive.  As I had noted in the July 2nd blog, our brand new queen that we got on May 4th died.  I bought a new queen the end of June and when I went to put her in the hive, I noticed that there was brood!  The bees had made their own new queen!  This was exciting to me because the hive had pretty much "fixed" itself.

I let it go and was super busy with unpacking that next month.  I went back into the hive the middle of July and noticed that there was not much brood and there was a bunch of supersedure cells.  The new queen that the hive made had died!  At this point, I was like, okay, I give up on this hive this year!

Of course, I could see the bees going in and out of the hive as we are unpacking boxes and playing around in the yard.  The middle of August, I figured I should open the hive and see what is going on. A new queen and lots of brood!!!  It looks like this queen might be the winner.

The problem is that because the hive has been in such fluctuation with making new queens, the bees have not had a lot of time to store honey.  They are starting to store honey but my hive should be like this in May (lots of brood) and now it is September and they are just getting around to storing honey...

I am going to start researching how to feed bees during the winter and cross my fingers that they make it!  This is far from an ideal situation.  As I had alluded to earlier, I pretty much had given up on this hive the middle of July when I saw that they were making another queen.  I am going to do everything I can to help them through the winter but I am keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed.

Leafcutter bees

One of the first things I did when we moved in was to put up a hummingbird feeder outside my kitchen window.  It was the end of June but I was hopeful that we might still be able to get some hummingbirds.  I am happy to say that we did get one female hummingbird coming around.  We also attracted some kind of flying insect that was enjoying the feeder.  The hummingbird would have to fight off the flying insects to get a drink but they seemed to work it out.

One afternoon, I was walking by a bush and noticed these "holes" in the leaves.  This bush is below the hummingbird feeder...

I had listened to a podcast about using bees for pollination.  The podcast had mentioned that if you see "holes" in your leaves, that it could be leafcutter bees.  I immediatly googled leafcutter bees and realized that the flying insects at the hummingbird feeder were leafcutter bees.  Leafcutter bees are really great at pollination.  I have seen a couple sources say they are 20 times better at pollinating than honeybees.

Taken from The Honeybee Conservancy website

Leafcutter bees are cavity dwelling bees that lay their eggs in existing holes. They do not create holes or damage structures to make holes.  We have a HUGE abandoned wood pile behind our house so I am pretty sure that is what they are using for their home. They use the round piece of leaf to line and cover the end of their nesting hole.  You can attract Leafcutter bees to your yard by offering a "house" for them. Encourage them into your garden by providing bundles of hollow canes, or a log of wood drilled with holes around 1cm in diameter.  Here are a couple of great articles about Leafcutter bees and there is some video of the bees using the leaf disks to line their nesting holes:

Buzz About Bees

The Honeybee Conservancy