Disappointing Farm Year

   Well things have not progressed very quickly this year. Early in the year, just after getting my garden in, I was called away for six weeks to help my father as he was very sick with Multiple Myeloma, and had fallen, breaking his arm and hip at the sites of the cancer. I was very happy to be able to travel to him, and assist my mother. I took my amazing daughter with me, and she assisted me. I ended up taking over the cooking for awhile, in the hopes of building my Dad's health in the most basic way. Fortunately his cancer is now in remission.

    Unfortunately my garden was attacked with a terminal disease as well, weeds. I have a serious perennial weed problem here, gardening require constant attention to control the weeds. I did get some vegetables, but numerous problems including broken mowers, broken tiller, too much time away from home and other issues created a bad situation for gardening. However, we did get some vegetables.   Praise God that if it is in his will there is always next year!

     However, there are some good things happening. I now have these two: 

Mama De La Guzman's Lechita!

Hanz Cody Herondale

         Cody is on a short leash. He has an overly assertive personality, which is going to get him off this farm, as soon as he produces daughters.  He is only here because his Mama was a 2 gallon a day milker. So for the moment he is my hassle. We put some foam balls on his head, but they were the wrong kind and tore off. Getting some more today.

         Mama is not much of a milker so far, but she had almost weaned her baby before I got her. So we'll see how she does next year. I am currently drying her off, mainly because I am not sure if she was bred before coming here a couple months ago. I want to give her two months rest so she has a successful milking year. So she should either kid in January or Febuary if she was bred before coming here, or she will kid in March or April if I'm lucky and Cody is the Papa. Lucky being relative, as that also means I go longer without milk. I have so been enjoying fresh milk the last couple of months, and I really am not looking forward to being without it again. However, sometimes sacrifices must be made to insure greater production later.

I thought I'd write some about my progress here at Little Bit Farm. Well, in the last few weeks we have built, and partially covered a greenhouse. The small greenhouse is built of two cattle panels compressed into a hoop house between some T-posts, with 4 mil plastic. The T-post have padded cloth covers over their ends to keep the posts from poking through my plastic. This has worked quite well.

In Oklahoma, the wind is quite rough on anything covered in plastic. So far my method has held up well. The plastic is secured to the panels with duct tape. My son helped me frame the ends, and we are installing a table of wire on one side for seedling trays. I hope to finish the greenhouse this week, and seed my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. I'm crossing my fingers tonight as we are having quite a wind storm. Growing anything in Oklahoma is a matter of trial and error.

Today the grandkids and I went out and planted a scatter garden. We scattered several quarts of seed. This garden is part of an experiment in permaculture style gardening. This was as low tech as it gets. The kids and I just threw the seed far and wide.I am going to take notes on what sprouts, what wins out against the weeds, and late frosts, and what survives to bear a crop. This is going to be a limited care garden.

My purpose in the scatter garden is to watch how nature handles, what I usually work so hard for. The area that I planted is a smaller old goat pasture/pen. It is mostly covered in thick dead grass, at the moment. There was a little of everything in the seed mix, greens, corn, beans, peas, innoculent, root crops, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, and so forth. I will also go back out there at the beginning of next week, and throw a variety of culinary herbs, and flowers into the mix. Then I will watch carefully.

One year, I had a cat pee in a bucket of dry beans that my kids had taken the lid off of. I took them out and dumped them all along the fence line in tall grass, and you know nearly every bean came up. They did not survive to form a crop, because that year we had a dramatic drought. However, I believe they would have in a normal year. The plants just took off.

So this year, I will have a traditional garden, and a multi-layered scatter garden, and observe the results. Hopefully, I will get to see some exciting things happen!  I know the grandbabies had a ball throwing seeds around today. The whole idea was worth it, just to watch them have a ball getting it started!

Wow, the wind is really blowing tonight! Oklahoma is a challenge for any plant. Our hard rains, ice storms, wind storms, tornadoes, periods of drought, and hot summer's, make it so that a plant has to be tough to survive! However, Oklahoma is also one of the most fruitful states, with incredible plant diversity. We have wild plums, pears, Apple's, peaches, blackberries, currants, blueberries, and a whole host of other useful plants that grow here. As tough as a plant has to be here, our weather also guarantees tenacity in our plant life, and also in our people.

To change the subject, we are getting eggs hand over fist from our 18 hens right now. I actually have two hens that are brooding now., which means soon, we should have baby chicks. This is great! My whole goal is to create a flock that reproduces itself, and provides eggs aplenty. Some people want just eggs. Some people want lots of meat. Me, I want both!  And I don't want artificially generated meat either from animals that can't exercise because they are too fat! I want meat from healthy normal chickens, whose bones ate strong so they make my bones strong!

I figure I would like about 22 more hens. This gives me a few eggs to sell, and plenty to eat, as well as some to share with family. It also gives me plenty of settings for meat! There is nothing like naturally raised young dryers, raised to that perfect tender age and fried to perfection! There is something about that meat with just the finest flavor, that melts into your mouth! Or, that wonderful chicken and dumplings which has those oh so good for you minerals just simmered into the broth, which surrounds the tender meat, and is balanced by the light and airy dumplings, which melt in your mouth!  There is only one place I can eat that way, and it is right here on Little Bit Farm!

So here I am writing my first post of 2014. Things are moving along here on Little Bit Farm. I have ordered and received my early spring seeds. I have, with the assistance of my boys, erected a greenhouse frame, and purchased plastic to cover it. I have also made plans on how to approach my garden this year with regard to weed control and such.

   This year, I am experimenting with several new techniques. For my main early garden, I am using cheap, blue, tarps to control weeds. I am going to level my raised beds, lay down the tarps, and secure them with u-shaped pins. Then with a box cutter, I will slit the tarps where I want to plant, in the shape of a capital I. I'll then fold back the edges, pin, fertilize, and plant. This will give me paths that won't grow to weeds, providing me with a clean place to work as well.

           
               My mom is visiting this week, and today we are going to make seed tape today. This way, I will be able to simply lay the tape in the row, lightly cover, and reduce thinning.  This will really help with the root crops that do better with some space between. The carrots will be planted with some radishes to help mark the rows and get two crops from one row.

               Speaking of multiple crops from one space. My second experiment is an experiment in growing a plot more like nature. I have done a lot of investigation into permaculture. Permaculture is a practice of planned gardening that uses natural methods of producing food. One of the many components is working with nature, and combining many types of plants in an area to take advantage of the abilities of the various plants to resist pests, pull nutrients from the soil, and shelter one another. This allows for better soil conservation, and produces food with reduced effort.

                In the past, I have suffered with several stubborn weeds and grasses. I'm tired of the trouble that tilling seems to create on this plot of ground, so I am looking for methods to work with the natural system, rather than against it. So I am going to pick a plot, and just scatter seed. I have a lot of old seed. I am going to create a seed mix full of herbs, flowers, vegetables, vines, and fruit, and just scatter it with a hoe to just cover the big things. Then I am going to let it alone, let nature take its course, harvest any crop God provides, and study the results.

                 My intent is to actually do this in two places. One of these gardens will be here, and one out at my property. This will give me two soil types, and two different weed bases, and also two different animal and pest populations. By doing this out at the property, I expect to learn some things about how to manage the wildlife there. I also expect to learn about drought resistance, as neither plot will be watered. I also hope to learn about naturalization of plants. What plants will naturalize? What plants won't?  I am excited to see the results, and I will blog about it as I go. Of course, all of this will be in addition to my standard plot as a control as well as a hedge.

                 So that is what is happening here. I wish everyone a spring of growth and discovery!