Permaculture Leaf Compost Shredding with Chickens
The situation: We have an over-abundance of oak leaves every Fall. We have a shortage of good topsoil on this rocky Ozark hilltop year-round. How to use one problem to solve the other? Why, chickens of course.
Read MoreNew Home! www.larrapin.us & Chix Holiday
For the holidays 2011, I decided to finally move the blog over to its own domain: www.larrapin.us. So here we are! Gradually I’ll figure out how to link to all the material over at the old blog. I plan on staying settled here, so please bookmark or better yet, please re-subscribe so that you’ll get the posts by email. It’s a two step process, click and enter your email and the letters shown, then click “subscribe.” Step two is to check your email box and click that long “confirm” link that you really want to the get the now once-weekly posts.
Meanwhile, for the holidays I let the chickens ramble on the cover crop in the garden for snacks and greens. They were supervised, lest they devour the kale and spinach under the frost protection or scratch too deeply in the garlic and multiplier onions. They did pretty good with only one or two stern “move-alongs.” Mostly I cut or pull up greens out of the cover crop to toss into this area. But it was a holiday…
Despite being Christmas, it was warm enough that the bees came out to stretch their legs and buzz around a bit. The gardener was delighted to sit on the bench in the sun and dream of next year’s garden, while the chickens happily munched and explored. Happy holidays to all of you!
—A Larrapin Garden ~ with a new home at www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—please subscribe by Email here to get the posts in one new weekly email.
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Weeding is More FUN with Chickens!
Weeding With Hen Friends
Yesterday afternoon I was pulling some weeds out of a few garden beds that I didn’t cover with chopped leaves or cover crop last fall. The cover-cropped and leaf covered beds are beautifully weed free and will be easy to plant when I’m ready.
Easy is a good thing since I’ve been happily buried in preparing for Dig In! Fayetteville’s First Food & Farming Filmfest. I’m working with two wonderful local farm gals to bring foodie and locavore films to NWA. These films have been popular and won many awards in film festivals around the country. Several will be shown for the first time in Arkansas. The films are selected to inspire and empower us all—in a positive and encouraging way—to go local and organic. You can read about what we’ll be watching and watch film trailers here at OzarksAlive.org.
But back out in the garden… The uncovered beds have weeds, mostly henbit and chickweed. Note that foreshadowing… I actually don’t mind pulling the clumps up. In the soft raised-beds it’s very easy to do AND it’s so much darned fun using the weeds in the manner explored in the video below! But I also know that those exposed beds were also exposed to rain and weather, which compacts the soil….and those exposed, uncovered beds are much less kind the to soil microorganisms which make veggies grow so much better. So winter cover crops are my new best friend now that I’ve seen the incredibly crumbly soil underneath them.
When I do have weeds, this video shows what I do with them. I also chat a bit about chickens in your garden. Enjoy!
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. A special shout-out of gratitude to NWAMotherlode.com and OzarksUnbound for helping us spread the word about the Dig In! Filmfest!
Snow days at Larrapin Garden
The blue chairs in snow
We finally got snow last at Larrapin! Thursday morning dawned with a perfect three inches of crunchy powder on the ground. It was *so* cold I didn’t get out to tromp around as much as usual. But dashed out to snap a few snow pics later that afternoon.
Ada in her element
Ada the farm dog loves, loves snow and appears totally immune to cold. She sprawls in the snow as it it were a fluffly summer yard. In rain, she’ll hide out in the heated workshop where her bed is, but in snow, she’s outside, lounging.
Hibernating Chickens
Then chickens, on the other hand, have just decided to hunker down till spring. They wouldn’t even come outside (at first) to scratch grain (aka “crack” to the hens…). They finally emerged once the temps came up this weekend.
Xmas tree, acting as fig shield...
Underneath the old Christmas tree, the cut back stems of the fig are hopefully cozy and protected. They have a blanket of shredded leaves too.
The sleeping garden...
Underneath that winter sky and layer of snow, there’s a green, green springtime just waiting to appear. And the new/recycled garden bench is ready, as the perfect spot to watch.
As deep winter as it looks, it’s not that long till indoor seed -starting time! This worksheet-calendar over at Organic Gardening magazine looks really handy, and lists some of my favorite veggies. You customized the dates using your spring-frost date.
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/seed-starting-chart
And for an online version, here’s a quick and easy calendar for some basic veggies thanks to Skippy’s Vegetable Garden, one of my favorite garden blogs. You’ll find it here:
http://bioarray.us/Skippy’s%20planting%20calendar.html
Enjoy!
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Thanks for stopping by—leave a comment as to what is going on in YOUR winter garden beds!
Ahhh, A Few Cooler Days Coming…
What a relief! Last night I was out watering the garden (because I still haven’t put together the irrigation system I’ve had in the box since March) and the cool air just started flowing in – what a delight! It reminded me of living in the Black Mountains of NC, when in the summer evenings if you were out in the yard and the cool air would start slipping down the mountain above us. You could feel it flowing by like water. Wonderful memory. This morning it’s 61 and that feels nearly chilly compared where we’ve been! And cooler is better if you are wearing your fancy bloomers all day:
The chickens made it through the heat, walking around panting since they don’t sweat, hiding out in the shady loafing shed…which begins to look like a bus stop shelter when they are all lined up, motionless, in there…and flopping on the ground in the shade. The moment the temp drops, they emerge in full chicken busy-ness. I let them out of their pasture in the evenings to roam the yard and surrounds. If I let them out earlier they would have time to wander far enough east to get in the garden which could be disastrous to the mulched beds. Chickens and a deep mulch gardening system doesn’t work, except for the chicken, who thinks you set this lovely bug and worm trap just for their pleasure as they are kicking mulch to kingdom-come.
I’d been a little worried how the Buckeyes would handle the heat since they are bred to withstand Ohio winters, not Arkansas summers. But one Buckeye breeder is down in Alabama and is successful, so they’ll probably do fine here. He did post one time that he would drip the hose for them and they’d come and stand in the water. If our water bucket gets low, the Buckeyes will just jump in and stand there. I had to put a fan blowing into their coop at night because it’s so stuffy in there. The tree that used to shade it from the afternoon sun came down in the ice storm. That spot will be high on the replanting list this fall. Supposedly the Australorps are heat tolerant, being from Australia, but they seemed as hot and oppressed and the Buckeyes did. Handsome, our Australorp rooster who arrived in an all-pullet box of chicks last autumn, looked a little miffed getting his portrait taken. You can see though, how he got his name:
Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden! The whole place smells like garlic and basil after the big harvest yesterday. I’ll post about that next…AND I’ll finally post the last garden I visited on the Peace Gardens Tour.
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