After an unseasonably cold April, May hit us like a ton of bricks and we scrambled to get a huge variety of projects done quickly. From the vegetable garden to the pig pasture, we ran all over the property this past month.
Our one-acre garden plot is way more than I anticipated, and it took all month to slowly get plants and seeds in the ground. In the end, I accepted defeat, and we seeded half of the acre for green manure. That still leaves us with nearly two thousand linear feet of vegetables, a giant undertaking after my 100 foot plot of years past. We have multiple root vegetables- new to me this year, three new varieties of beans- plus three from last year, 6 winter squash, 5 summer squash, 3 watermelon, and assorted peppers and tomatoes. With the new produce, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to preserve a variety in addition to sharing the bounty through our roadside stand.
We added some new chickens to our flock to offset the decline of our older hens. They are a great source of entertainment to the kids, and make short work of the compost we generate in the kitchen. The chickens are still all enclosed- several coops with outdoor access via a covered, fenced run. It’s not a perfect model and we are working toward more of a free range style to help with soil improvements, but it is a long term project that will need regular reassessment and adjustment. We are still working to determine the role of our chickens in the cycle of farm life, and that will dictate how we develop our chicken systems in the future.
The pig acquisition was an adventure, and continues to be a learning experience. They are really friendly animals, and their tilling abilities are unparalleled. Following the pasturing model from Out of Ashes Farm, who followed a scaled down Joel Salatin model, we realized quickly that our field is relatively inadequate for feed supplementation. However, the electric pig fence has proven to be an invaluable investment, and we are slowly working on pasture improvements. This lesson is helping us realize the healing that still needs to take place on our land, and we are making other adjustments as we go to speed up the process.
We are excited for the summer ahead of us, and watching how all our projects develop.