Crushed Egg Shells

With my latest garden was a mixed bag. The onions grew great. Lots of cucumbers before it got hot, the okra did well, but then I remembered why I didn't like okra (the taste), and the peppers did really well-so well in fact that I just gave another twenty away the first week of December. That said it was another atrocious year of failure for tomatoes in the garden. The watermelons yielded a single misshapen melon that found it's way to the hogs. I had a Celebrity tomato plant that did pretty well in a pot. So during the calm of winter it's time to get serious about next years garden.

We eat a ton of eggs, and I've been saving egg shells since last late summer. If you want a new way to annoy your wife, trying having all your broken eggshells just chilling in your fridge for months. I promise, it'll work. Anyway, I finally got around to processing them in the food processor. What you see above is roughly 100 egg shells, about 4 cups worth that will be part of the amendments in next year's tomato transplants. I think we'll probably be able to add another 100 or so egg shells to the cause by March planting time.

Hopefully between the horse compost, the chicken compost, rabbit manure, and the soil amendments I'll get more than a handful of tomatoes in return.

Garden Beds Ready for Spring

The picture above does not do justice to all the laying out of cardboard, shoveling, and raking it took to get ready for next spring. I'm hoping to put another two beds down this winter to quadruple the size of the garden and perhaps actually get more than a dozen cucumbers and ten thousand jalapenos. I'll be adding red wriggler worms to the piles as they outgrow the vermicompost bin to get the horse compost jump started with worms.

I'm still torn between bringing in a tiller for a one time jump-start and digging in each of the transplants with a post hole digger and backfilling the hole with compost, egg shell, epson salt, etc. Don't be surprised if I do a bit of both to see what works best. I'm also going to mulch with paper like I did on everything in Idaho to keep the weeds down. Another project just waiting for spring.

I left a path between the two beds, we'll have to see if the we can keep it bare. 

I also have a hundred yearling fruit trees coming for the Missouri Extension Service that are going to go into 4 gallon pots, somehow we're going to work that into the garden to maximize water usage.

Don't Tell Me Your Plans, Show Me Your Results

When I was coaching men I heard all the things they were going to do. Rarely did their visions of grandeur match up to the reality. It seemed the ones who told you least about what they were going to do were the ones who accomplished the most.

In my old age I've come to realize that I can't affect much outside of my family and maybe 20 friends. That's it. That's all I can try to help, save, change, influence, call it what you want. All I can do is take care of my family and do my best to plan for them to be taken care of them.

I have friends that span the gamut politically, as I'm sure everyone does. I find the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the only person elected to nationwide office just as useless this time as the last two time the current President was elected. The day to day effect of the Obama administration on my life was almost negligible, as I'm sure President's Trump will be. Do I feel less threatened by the upcoming Trump administration? Yes, but government, at it's core, is political power exercised at the end of a gun.

The F-You vote that was Trump will be fun to watch, that I can't dispute, but how much it's going to change my life I just don't know. It looks to be a reprieve, a few years to continue to finish getting out of debt, pay off the house, install solar, the ponds dug, a well put in, and the food production ramped up enough to feed us and have a bit to sell and give away.

I hope your family is striving each day to be more independent, more self reliant, and more loving to one another.

Prepping the Spring Garden Beds

You thought your job was crappy....

Part of homesteading for me has been simply returning to natural rhythms. The farm revolves around the seasons, not arbitrary dates on the calendar. I put down grass seed after a rain, not on a certain day. There's a lot of work, there's always 10 projects that I'd like to have done, but the beauty of the farm is things can also wait. 

On Veteran's Day I had to work in the morning, but took the afternoon to go pick-up a load of compost. The joy of finally finding a compost supplier is beyond words! Compost, loads of really high quality compost, are what have really been missing the last two years in the garden. Due to the recent rains, I only brought home about half of what I could have, I didn't want to get stuck! A full trailer will grace the trees next February, if not sooner.

Saturday we spent down in Waco watching the Baylor Women's Volleyball team dominate West Virginia, followed by dinner with some great friends at Catfish Plantation over in Waxahachie. It was amazing, if you ever get close, you have to eat there. Split a cajun plate with someone you love.

This also meant that the compost didn't get touched. Strangely enough it was still waiting for me.

Sunday morning I finished cleaning out the grass clippings that I'd used as deep litter bedding in the chicken coops. I put it on top of cardboard (the theory being that it'll help kill the grass underneath, yet break down by next spring). I spent the rest of Sunday, with the trusty scoop shovel pictured above, putting down about six inches of horse manure on top of the 3 inches or so of chicken manure composted with grass clippings and nitrogen rich feathers. 

We're going to double the size of the garden space for next year, and I'm hoping that the addition of the compost will help increase our yields. I'm also really excited for the asparagus beds. Next year marks the third year they've been in, and will also mark our first harvest.

It was well after dark before I finished, but I'm sure I'll post the final product along with my vermiculture experiment soon. 

Mission Statement Blog and Podcast

Coach - Mercenary - Farmer Podcast Episode 1 Mission Statement

Hey thanks for stopping by. This blog is going to be about my thoughts on things that interest me. Permaculture, politics, the national debt, raising Belted Galloway cattle, homesteading, preparedness, American Culture, and guns just to name a few.

I hope to have some intelligent thought provoking conversation. Feel free to comment, tell me where you agree and where you think I'm wrong (and why).

I'm a soon to be 40 year old man, married to the most beautiful girl from the Payette High School class of 1994. Proud parent to her two red headed daughters. We own a little 11 acre homestead in North Central Texas that we're trying to improve using Holistic Management, Permaculture, and common sense. I spent 8 seasons as a college basketball coach, and just shy of 14 years on Uncle Sugar's payroll, and hope the third part of my life after retirement will be that of a content hippie, thus the name of the Podcast. Coach - Mercenary - Hippie.

If you choose to follow this blog/podcast you'll see my opinions on life and the lessons learned here on the homestead. The first 40 to 100 or so episodes will be kind of rough on the audio, since they're recorded in my car. If I ever get enough listeners I'll invest in a better recording set-up.

Thanks for stopping by.