This Week

It’s been a busy week but I did squeeze in some hill time to go from this… 

To this. A bit more picking to do but getting there. 

The sun doesn’t come over the mountain until about 8:30 now. It’ll be after 9:00 Dec 21. 

Sent some extra cockerels off to freezer camp

Doing chores by headlamp in the morning sucks but the sunrise is pretty 

Made a yummy cheesecake from chèvre. Cheated and bought crust. Did you know they come in pecan now? It’s so yellow from my egg yolks. 

This poor chicken had a bad case of fowl pox but also somehow it’s eye is infected. Not sure it’s going to make it but she’s up eating and drinking so I’m doctoring. 

Mmmm. Posie your legs are just too short. I did find my beat up, dented 40 year old milk pail. It’s a bit shorter than this new one so using it now. The new one is fine under big tall goats but Posie has really short legs. 

I worked a bit getting grass out of this bed. Will take a few days before it’s all done and ready to plant again. 

Mmm. Pulled some carrots to cook. Not sure if they have nematode damage at all, it doesn’t look like it although forked roots can be a symptom these look more like the soil is not deep enough. I should probably double dig these beds before I try carrots again. 

And I found a heart rock  

#appreciation

Today I appreciate that the weather has been really nice. 

Farmer Friday

The last few weeks have been doozies. In fact this whole year has been something else. My culverts clogged a bit and I had some run off from the hill pen. You can see more of that in the video  below. 

I worked on new steps up to the hill pen. 

And it rained. A lot in a few days. I’ve gotten as much rain this month as I did for the whole year of 2019. 

So the goat pens flooded and needed mucked out. 

14 bags of bedding barely dried out the goat pens and the brooder coop. Most of the other pens had at least some dry space. 

I dug a little ditch around Caramel’s pen so hopefully the water won’t run in there again. 

There was so much water on tarps it was bending the kennel panels. 

View from the top. Took me all one day to bail water and muck out pens. 

And THEN!

It rained some more!

Since it was nice and cool I did make a pizza: Brick House Bakers pizza dough, home made mozzarella, homegrown tomatoes, basil, garlic chives with some figs from the Superior Farmers Market. 

Tons of weeds growing like crazy but so is everything else. A little birdhouse gourd. 

And a big one. 
Cosmos or maybe coreopsis 

Dahlia 

Tomatoes are starting 

Armenian cucumber 

A jungle out back

I got some of it tamed

Wild fungi

Another dahlia I love the colors, reminds me of water lilies 

Sorting out some Nankins. Nankins are little bantams that shouldn’t be too big. A young cockerel like this should only weigh about 20 ounces. Some of these are too big or don’t have the right coloring to keep for breeding. So I’m giving them away to 4H kids for showmanship birds. I have several pairs. Message me if you are interested and local

I did pick tomatoes and okra and a couple cucumbers but forgot to take pictures. Maybe in the morning. But I did get one of this weeks flowers. 

#appreciation

Today I appreciate we’ve gotten rain. I appreciate that despite the wildfires and floods I still have my house, my gardens, my animals, food in my belly and clothes on my back. 

Happenings

I know I've been AWOL for a  bit. Lots of things happening in my life right now. Some issues of the computer not recognizing that there really are picture on the phone to download. And my phone is old so the battery runs out real quick when I'm trying to do thing on it. As you know I root knot nematodes in several garden beds. I bought some things to help with that and will be adding a  page to the blog about organic controls showing the experiments I'm doing. In the meantime I'm not sure if these sunflowers have a nematode issue or if they just need more nutrients. I think it may be a little of both.

You can tell a lot about a plants nutritional status by looking at it's leaves. This sunflower leaf is very pale green so it probably needs some more nitrogen. The yellowing and die back at the edge of the leaf says it needs potash. I know that nitrogen and potash are both low in my soil and some other nutrients may be present but may not be available to the plant because of the high pH (usually 8-9. If you don't know what pH is you can check this article What is pH?)  The Royal Horticultural Society has a nice article with photographs of nutrient deficiencies here. The University of Arizona Extension Office has a good chart here but they don't include pictures and they don't offer organic solutions.

Plants often start out doing very well in the spring and early summer, only to run out of steam part way through the season. There can be many causes, having to water a lot because we are so hot and dry can leach nutrients out of the root zone, our high soil pH can tie up some minerals and make them unavailable to plants. Plants need more of some nutrients at different points in their life cycles. I have been watching some great videos from Dan Kitteredge and the Bionutrient Food Association about how the biology in the soil works and how it feeds the plants. I'll be working hard to improve my soil and foster the correct biology so that in the future there won't be any deficiencies.

In the meantime I've bought some Neem Cake fertilizer. They press an oil from the neem seeds and use it for controlling nematodes and other things. The material that is left is used as a fertilizer and also to help control nematodes. So I'm adding it, along with SulPoMag (sulphate of potash magnesia) which is a mined material to add potash. Crab shell meal is also supposed to help suppress nematodes. All of theses materials are going into beds before replanting. If the bed showed evidence of nematodes I'm planting cole crops like kale, cauliflower and broccoli as they are not usually bothered by nematodes. If there was no evidence of nematodes in the previous crop that's where I'm planting more susceptible things like beets and lettuce.

 One of our little Nankin pullets disappeared without a trace awhile back. I found a young pair to keep her company. They are still in quarantine but will soon be joining her. Hopefully they will hatch some chicks this fall.