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!