Growing Soil With Every Bale of Hay

One of the unexpected benefits I saw last year from feeding hay was that after each bale was more or less eaten by the cattle the remnants of hay left behind ending up being a great spot of pasture this year. As growing soil is a big part of our mission it's a big plus. In the photo above you can see where I drug another bale of hay through the bale from last week, and the soil that's already forming under it. To the right you can see a big green patch of green to the top right, that's where a bale was placed last year. 

Now each bale is placed in an area that isn't growing grass very well, or more simply, on my really crappy areas. It's astounding to watch in the spring as the remnants of that hay end up being a big green patch of pasture. Is it cost effective to add bales of hay simply as a soil amendment? No, but
there's no reason not to place the hay in areas where I'd like to see the soil improved.

I figure somewhere in the next decade I could really improve the worst areas quite a bit with nothing more than being cognizant of where I drop off my winter hay. Not a bad deal.

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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.

Wildflowers on the Homestead

If you're read this blog, and I know at least 3 of you personally, you've probably seen more pictures of wildflowers than any sane person would post... Why? We're growing soil here, and to do that successfully we need bees to pollinate everything. That means that we let the wildflowers grow everywhere we find them. 

It was 84 degrees on the 16th of November here on the homestead, so the flowers are still blooming and the bees are still hungry. All the wild sunflowers are still covered in bees and butterflies, as are the basil plants, and peppers that are still producing heavily the week before Thanksgiving. 

I hope we've done our part to feed the bees, and trust they've put enough honey away to have a comfortable winter here in Texas.

Putting Your Free Range Chickens to Work

Cow Patty

So the basis of Permaculture is minimizing inputs, and maximizing outputs, while improving the earth, and giving a reasonable . Joel Salatin routinely says that his egg laying tractors and broiler chicken tractors following his cattle grazing are there to spread cattle manure, add chicken manure, and lightly turn the soil, the eggs and meat are just a bonus.

Chickens at Work on a Patty

It's just been the last couple of weeks that the Ideal 236 layers have really started to go to work on the cow patties, but it's been a revelation. The cow patties within a couple hundred feet of the barn have all been reduced to the photo below.

Fertilizer and Soil Amendments 

It seems that each day the range of the layers increases a bit. We're doing our best to minimize predator pressure, and though I'm sure we'll lose some to hawks and feral dogs, I think that we've finally got things figured out to be sustainable moving forward. Right now the 27 chickens we hve on site are being fed roughly 3 pounds a feed per week, in a mix of cracked grain/corn at night to encourage them all to come to the coop daily, and a bit of the feed that I had left over from the FrankenChickens.

All in all I'm really excited about the layers coming online in early February for the eggs, but I'm also trying to find a couple of broody bantams to raise replacement chickens moving forward. The tractored chickens next spring will continue to help spread the manure and improve the soil on the homestead.

Learning From My Mistakes

There are so many learning opportunities on the homestead, and it seems as though I have one almost every day.

On electric paddocks with new born calves, I learned that I should have put the bottom strand closer to the ground.

I've learned that calves can get out of an electric paddock on a fairly regular basis, but rarely, if ever find their way back inside.

Whatever you tools/items you think about buying but don't you'll immediately need as soon as the store is closed, it's raining, dark, or a combination of the three.

Snakes will find your eggs, and your hatchlings. Wooden eggs will end your egg snatching, but it won't bring back your hard work on the hatchlings.

If you're buying a calf to introduce into your herd, always try to buy two instead of just one, they'll integrate a lot easier into your herd, and they won't be lonely. Nobody likes the emotionally needy.

Hogs are easier to raise than you think, don't be afraid of raising them.

Cornish Cross chickens are weird, but man they're tasty.

Finding a local butcher that cares as much about your meat as you do is like winning the lottery. Ask around, and listen. Start at the feed store, they hear directly from the farmer who does good work and who doesn't.

Growing Soil

Even after living for years in both the desert of Idaho and the lush greenness of the Pacific Northwest I still forget the joys of rain after long periods of dry. After three days of drizzle intermediately mixed with short periods of heavy rain it's been amazing this last week to watch the lush green sprout from the earth. It's always comforting to see the green return.

As I was putting out the rye grass the sprouts of life waiting on the rain were already appearing. The grass that had gone dormant has already put about three inches of growth on. Enough so that we've been able to turn the cattle back into one of the paddocks during the day to supplement the cattle pasture. Nursing has really increased the cow's appetites, and where last year a bale of hay lasted two weeks, they've burned through a whole bale this week.

We'll see how it goes, my neighbor still has quite a few bales of hay, but the overseeding will hopefully supplement their forage this winter. Last year I put down a few hundred pounds of winter wheat, not nearly enough to fully seed the field, but saw a lot of sprouts. This year I put enough seed down to hopefully really make a difference.