a beautiful and productive weekend!

It finally happened.

The sun finally came out and get this - it stayed out for THREE. WHOLE. DAYS.

It was glorious.

I had an eye appt Friday afternoon, so I was able to feel it around 3pm.

It was wall to wall sunshine from Friday to Sunday.

We got a LOT done.

I felt very, very productive!

We went for a hike around the property.

We also continued working on the garden!

We got some fencing up

My old door!

My plants are NOT thriving. I'm troubleshooting and replanted a few. 

Moved a couple more out from the basement.

Here it is! Now critters (and MR) cannot get in there! 

Love!

Steve also went out and got this for me. I had been walking (lunging) buckets of water.

This will be much, much easier and a lot faster!

We spliced it so I could also still water my flowers in my pergola flower boxes.

Mila loves the Poofy chickens!

Enjoyed the beautiful weather, well into the evening.

Composting Update!!

I started my composting journey this year. And here's the update. 

My goal is to make my own nutrient rich soil for my garden.

And another update.

I found out that my town provided (for a $20 fee) a 3 x 3 x 3 wooden box that could be used for composting. They also provided a table top bin for scraps.

I just found out that they will be delivering my compost bin this Thursday (tomorrow!)

I'm so excited to see what this thing looks like and what, if anything needs to be done to it.

It arrived!

Hell yeah! I'm so excited to get this started! I need to find the right location for it, I need to get my "station" set up so to speak. 

Now I'm going to have to separate out my food scraps. Before, I would generally throw out any leftover meat and only give my chickens the veggies, rice, fruit, etc. But now I'll have to keep an even closer eye on it. 

For the "greens" which is nitrogen-rich materials likes food waste, including meats, bones, and citrus, grass clippings, yard trimmings, fresh manure. "Browns" are carbon-rich. materials like leaves, trimmings, straw, newsprint. 

I'll have to make sure to pile greens then browns to create the right layers for decomposition. I'll have to watch to make sure that the pile doesn't get too wet or dry out. 

There's a hatch on this 3 x 3 x 3 wooden box, to allow us to get the nutrient-rich soil from the bottom. 

Composting Update

I haven't posted an update on this in a while.

Steve got me a huge food-grade tub that we plan on using to make our DIY composter. We haven't started the project because the weather has been just shitty. And, AND! It's supposed to fucking SNOW this weekend. 

SNOW. 

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Anyway, last week I was perusing social media and came across my town's board and someone posting that they had received a FREE composting bin from the city! I investigated further and realized that anyone who lives in the city, can fill out the form and get a bin delivered to their house. And they would also get a kitchen sized one to fill with scraps before bringing it out to the bin.

Of course I signed up right away.

I got an email the next day saying that this promotion is only for CITY residents, not town residents, which we are. 

WHAT?! What the fuck does it matter?

But, the lady who emailed me did say that town residents can get a 3' x 3' x 3' wooden box (I prefer wood over plastic anyway!) for $20 and it would be delivered. We would also get the kitchen bin for small scraps.

The kitchen bin! We are waiting on the town to deliver the 3 x 3 x 3 wooden box. 

Ok, well, still a good deal! There's no online form, so I'm sending Steve to show up in person to request and pay for one.

I'm so excited! 

What's in my garden this year?

Since I took a break from gardening last year, I'm itching to start my garden this year! I find it extremely therapeutic to nurture plants and watch them grow. My girls love watching them grow and helping to harvest!

Not only do I get to pick what vegetables I want to plant this year, but I also get to pick a new location. While this feels like starting from scratch again, I really don't mind. I'm excited to start fresh!

First is to choose the right location.

I'm thinking I want to move it closer to our chicken coop and closer to where our barn will eventually go up. When doing chores, I try to make it convenient and will consolidate chores to make less trips back to the house.

I will need to think about a water source. I don't mind hauling water, but I don't want to do it more than 3 times in a row.

I plan on composting and using my own nutrient rich soil.

I just bought one of these table top compost bins so I have a good place for scraps. We've just been using Tupperware containers or glass bowls for scraps for the chickens. It's not aesthetically pleasing to look at a bowl full of half-eaten food scraps.

Here's what's on my list to start:

1. Cucumbers - I really enjoy cucumbers in my salads and the chickens love them too. I have grown some previously and had good luck.

2. Tomatoes - again, I enjoy tomatoes in my salad or on burgers, etc. and have had good luck growing cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and San Marzano tomatoes.

3. Zucchini and yellow squash - we love grilling vegetables in the summer. I had like 6 plants or something; waaaaayyyy too much. I will scale down this year.

4. Peppers - I had one pepper plant and only harvested 2 peppers. I will likely plant more this year.

5. Eggplant - I LOVE eggplant parm and the way my mom cooks them. When they start to grow, they are the CUTEST. Definitely looks like an egg growing, and it's so cool to watch it get bigger!

6. Jalapeños - I grew one plant last year but got many jalapeños from just the one plant. So I'll probably do 1 or 2 plants this year.

This weekend I'm going to head over to Runnings to buy some seeds. I'll start them indoors to get them hearty enough before moving them outside. I've had much better success doing it this way than by trying to start with seeds outside.

Anyone have any other suggestions? I'm curious about growing broccoli - Ava loves broccoli, but I've never tried it.

I'm also interested in trying pumpkins and watermelon! We'll see what I come up with this weekend and I'll do a follow up post for when we start our seeds.

Composting

With my newfound love of gardening, I started to look into composting as well.

I've been going the traditional route of using store-bought soil for my garden. Nothing fancy.

Then I started thinking. Could I compost?

What exactly is composting?

Composting is a natural way to recycle decomposed organic materials. The process creates compost, or rich soil.

I can then use this soil for my garden, ergo recycling nutrients back into the Earth.

Not only that, but it allows us to reduce our waste, close the nutrient cycle (goes back into the ground, and into the foods that we grow), and prevent air pollution that causes climate change. (Original article can be found here: https://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/100-things-you-can-compost).

I wanted something like this. It's a tumbler bin that is rust-free, BPA free, and most of all, convenient to use.

Steve is against it.

I'm frustrated because whenever Steve wants something, regardless if I think it's ridiculous or not, (whether it's PRACTICAL or not), he will get it.

Shall we revisit the plow truck debacle?

He says it's too expensive for something made out of plastic and is that small (17 gallons). I remind him that for ME, it's also the convenience that makes it worth it.

With this already set up, all-in-one unit, I could easily go out after dinner, throw scraps in the drum barrel, give it a couple of turns and be done.

Steve suggested that he build me a 3-walled "thing" (???)  and get me a pitch fork to turn the materials over.

Um? Not exactly what I was thinking.

Remember that I work full-time out of the home?

After work I already have things to do - many times, without any help.

All the things I want or need to do, need to have a convenience factor built in. It just does. It may cost a bit more in the upfront, but I'm also of the mindset of "time = money."

This is where Steve and I differ. Not that it's a bad thing. Just different. He would rather spend 100 hours fixing something, than buy a new one. I'd rather buy a new one than spend 100 hours trying to fix it. (In my eyes, if there's a chance it can't be fixed, we've just potentially wasted that 100 hours - but it's jobs like this that make Steve nutty. He does NOT like not being able to fix something.)

ANYWAY.

The main things to keep in mind to have a successful compost are air, combination of ingredients and turning the pile to aerate it.

So what goes INTO a compost bin?

We need to make sure our compost pile is balanced.

To do that, we need to include:
- dry or brown things that contain carbon (leaves, straw, paper)
- wet or green things that contain nitrogen (food scraps)

We will need to make sure:
- we make the scraps small - the smaller the pieces are, the easier they will decompose. I read this is especially important if we plan on using our compost for a vegetable garden.
- the compost pile stays moist (what a gross word) and aerated.

Check out this link to see the 100 things you can compost.

Instead of the "buy it new for convenience sake" tumbler bin, we he decided to build one for me. I guess it'll give me more material to write about, versus just buying one ;)

Steve scored a food-grade 50 gallon barrel today for free!

Then we will build a base, lay the barrel on its side so we can effectively turn the materials over (without using a dang pitchfork!)

Hopefully, it will look similar to this (who wants to take bets that mine will look like NASA built it?):

Image credit: Pinterest