Showing posts with label Homesteading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homesteading. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Ducks & Chickens

The ducks went to a new home. Our mallards are a happy couple on a friends pond! And the Pekings went to a duck farmer, they were aggressive to the mallards and NASTY to keep on our sized property. It was a fantastic experience and I hope to do mallards again next year. They were so loving and would follow us around! 

Our chicks are now teens and starting to produce eggs for us. After almost a year of chicken keeping I can say it is awesome and not too much work. It is a wonderful thing, even in out city home. We expanded out flock to new breeds, but were not able to get any rainbow layers :( Hopefully next season!

We plan to add 6-8 a season to keep egg production up. We will likely rely on the eggs and the meat from the ones at the post peak laying era of their lives for food once we head into retirement, in about two years.

 
 

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Raised Garden Beds

This winter has been shamefully warm here. My bulbs are up already! So this weekend we are going to plan our Gardens. Here is what we are planning to work with. (We cannot do in ground gardens where we are...there are dense roots under the top soil all over our yard)

We built these frames this summer/fall. The berry posts were yielding lovely berries until our dog ate the whole plant, thus the netting now. We have had lots of our strawberry plants multiply, so that is great. We are going to fill the boxes soon. We filled them slightly with topsoil, peat moss, and leaves that have since had time to compost down. We did use treated lumber (after reading the views of both sides) and have waited to fill them until the leaching could take place over the last months.

I am thinking we will decide to add more boxes. We had such success with what little we did this past year, that it excites me to see what this year holds. We will be able to use our compost (we keep it meat and dairy free for scent and safety!) and chicken poop. We did not move in until May last year, and it was June-July before we were settled. So this year we have lots of opportunity!