Warm and dry in March

Last post I mentioned how we usually warm up and dry out in March. It happened again. We’ve been experiencing summer-like weather for the last few days, and it’s been keeping me busy.

On Sunday I had 50 asparagus crowns to put in the ground. I put lots of compost into the trenches I had already dug and set the asparagus crowns in it. I was able to get them all bedded, and hopefully they’ll be happy.

I also plowed an area for our field corn. It’s not a very big field, but hopefully we can grow enough for corn bread. Last year the crows ate the seed out of the ground and then the raccoons and deer tried to demolish what the crows missed. Hopefully, we’ll do better this year. I’m going to spread a good bit of compost on the soil before it’s time to plant since this particular plot has some poor soil. I actually plowed it a few years ago but didn’t plant anything in it. So, it’s had a bit of a break. I think it previously had tobacco planted in it, as just about every field here has.

Yesterday, I planted the nine cherry bushes that were anxiously waiting to be set in dirt. I put two in front of the house so that we can enjoy their blossoms in the spring. The other seven I set out in a row near the new asparagus rows – they’re on the edge of the orchard. I used the 12” auger on the tractor to dig the holes which was much easier than using a shovel. I dug them deep and put lots of compost in the holes before planting.

Yesterday afternoon I spent working on the manure spreader. I bought the spreader last spring, and the first time I went to use it, the apron chain broke (that’s what walks the material to the back of the spreader). I’ve been needing to fix it, and it’s been waiting patiently. In anticipation of spreading some compost on the gardens, I decided it was time to get it done. I took the chain out, replaced the floor with some new beech boards I had (it had a plywood floor with a few holes).

After buying the necessary hardware and links for the chain, I bolted the floor boards in, repaired the chain, and put it back in. I wasn’t able to try it out until this morning. It seemed to work fine, though. However, on the second load, another link in the chain broke. So, I had to shovel everything out. It occurred to me that at that point, I had shoveled more stuff out of the spreader than it had actually spread for me. I replaced the broken link and made a few adjustments, and then it worked fine.

I spread the pile of manure and bedding we cleaned out of the barn last fall – that was the accumulation from the winter before. Most of that I spread with the loader tractor and a grader blade after the manure spreader broke. I used a friend’s field cultivator to rip the material into the dirt and work up the ground. Then, I spread several more loads of compost from another pile on the garden and ripped it in.

I’ve got another garden area to spread compost on and to work up. If we don’t get much of the rain that’s possible tomorrow, I’ll see about doing that later this week.

Keeping raccoons out of the corn

The corn that survived the crows in our small field has grown quite well. It started to tassel a couple of weeks ago. I know that the raccoons would want to eat the corn (they always do), but I didn’t expect them so soon. They were in the field a few nights ago checking it out and tearing down plants. They don’t seem to realize that I’m not growing the corn for them to eat.

So, yesterday, the boys and I put up an electric fence to keep the raccoons out. My grandpa used to use an electric fence about 5 or 6 inches off the ground to keep raccoons out of his corn. I’ve used this method successfully in the past.

We set posts around the field and ran two strands of electric wire. The lower wire is just above ground level and the second one is about 6 inches above the first one. I’ll have to keep the grass and weeds out of the fence so it doesn’t short out and lose it’s ability to work.

The idea is that the varmints will put their noses on the fence trying to get to the corn. The shock they receive will be enough to deter them. I’m sure they’ll look all the way around the field for an entry point, but as long as the fence is charged, they won’t gain access. They do have an uncanny knack for determining when/if the fence is not one or working properly.

Hopefully, we’ll keep the rascals out of the corn!  

The work of summer

There’s an amazing amount of work to be done every day. We keep plugging away. I’ve been devoting a lot of time to our house project. We’re making some good progress. You can check it out on my other blog, if you haven’t already.

The children and I have enjoyed swimming in the pond several times. They actually ask me if they can go in the pond nearly every day. Usually, there is no real reason not to. The pond isn’t holding water as I would like it to. Water seeps out in several places around the dam. I don’t know if this is something that will correct itself over time as the dam settles more, or not. It’s not a fast leak, but the water level has gone down a fair bit.

We’ve been enjoying some produce from the garden. I didn’t get in a hurry to get the garden planted this spring, so we’re not enjoying things like tomatoes and squash yet. But, those things won’t be too long. We’ve had some nice salads, and the sugar snap peas were awesome! We had new potatoes with our first picking of snap peas a couple of weeks ago. The asparagus did quite well this year, especially considering the small size of our asparagus bed. I think I need to set out about a 1,000 plants!

We’ve been eating fresh black raspberries for the last two weeks. We’re also getting blueberries off of our older plants. Soon, it will be time to begin picking blackberries. Some of the early ones are ripening.

Yesterday, we got the tomatoes staked up. I like to keep them mulched and hold them up off of the ground. I used to let our Roma tomatoes sprawl out, but now I stake them up, too. They are so much nicer to pick and do better this way.

I drove small posts in the ground and strung baling twine I took off of bales last winter between the posts to hold up the Romas. I’m trying a new method for the Mortgage Lifters: using livestock panels in an A-frame. I learned about this method from another individual who regularly uses it. It is certainly a quicker, easier way to stake up tomatoes.

We’re growing pole beans this year. Usually, I plant bush beans. I built a frame work using sycamore poles for the beans to climb on. I may add a few more poles. I have one more row to take care of. I’m thinking I’ll use the livestock panels that we had for the peas. I’m going to save the rest of the peas for next year’s seed. So, they are about done with the panels.

The boys have been working on mulching the plants in the garden. They mulched the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and squash so far. There are still some more sweet potatoes and tomatoes to mulch. Maybe this next week.

The children, dad, and I spent some time in our small corn field this week. The crows about ruined our corn crop by eating the corn out of the ground before it germinated. I replanted between what came up the first time that the crows didn’t get, but the stupid birds ate most of that, too. I don’t know how well it will produce, but there is some corn growing in the field. The weeds were threatening to take over, though. I tilled between the rows, and then we all worked in the rows with hoes. It was hot and sweaty work, but we got most of it done. I have 4 or 5 rows to do this coming week.

I was able to haul one load of manure and bedding from the sale barn last week. This is a slow time of year for them. Also, since they had to do a thorough cleaning a month or so ago after the flood, there’s been less need for cleaning out. When I can see myself clear to do so, I’m going to start hauling some of the old sawdust from the sawmill.

Gardening and house work

We’ve begun another week of work. It is a blessing to have the opportunity to labor on our own projects here on the homestead. It involves a lot of sweat, soreness, and tiredness at times, but there is a simple joy in such work. I think I often take for granted the situation we enjoy in which there is no one dictating my activities. Reporting for a “regular job” every day with a supervisor telling me what to do would not be nearly as enjoyable.

I’ve been working on our new house. You can read a little about my efforts on my Cedar Ridge Farm blog. It feels good to be making some visible progress on it.

While I’ve been devoting time to house-building (and more extreme composting soon), the children (all four of them) have been taking on more responsibility for the garden. They’ve been pulling a lot of weeds. The boys mulched some of the potatoes the last two days and will mulch more plants today. They also pick potato bugs off of the potato plants. I do pay them a little for removing the bugs as an incentive. We’ve found that if you pick them off and then keep up with them, the number of bugs is greatly lessened to where they aren’t much of a problem in a couple of weeks time.


Here is a photo of the field in which I planted the beans for dried beans. It also has squash, winter and summer, and several rows of popcorn that I just planted this week. I also planted a small plot of red indian corn near a compost pile in another place. The Wapsie Valley field corn that I replanted hasn’t come up yet, and the crows are actively picking the kernels out of the ground.

We have lots of roses blooming. There are some light pink and dark pink ones. The children love picking them and presenting their mother and mammaw with bouquets. These roses apparently were started in years past by the residents in the old cabin and have spread over time.

Random images on the homestead

 

 

I took these photos on Friday, July 24, 2009.

Field preparation

Besides the garden areas, I worked on preparing the soil in two small fields during the last couple of days. Each of these fields is about half of an acre in size. Our small corn field was in one of them last year while the other one lay fallow. Actually, I disked it and seeded it with spring wheat last year, but the spring wheat idea didn’t work too well. So, I just let the field lay. I bush hogged it and then had it limed last fall.

Last year’s corn field is near the alfalfa field, down past the pond. I was going to grow several different varieties of dried beans in it this year but decided not to after all so that I might have more time to devote to working on the house. I was undecided about what to plant in it until this week. I had bought some Austrian Winter Peas to plant a year or so ago, but did not get the chosen field worked and ready for them. I stored them in an old freezer in the barn which was supposed to keep the mice out. I say supposed to because they found a way in anyway. I did finally stop them – they were more interested in the corn I had in there than the peas, though. Three years ago I planted a half acre in peas and oats and made hay off of it. The goats love it. So, I decided to plant the field in peas and oats for this year.

To begin prepping the field, I sub-soiled it. Then, I disked it two times. I used the field cultivator on part of it to rake some of the corn debris to the sides of the field. Then, I broadcast 100 pounds of oats and about 85 pounds of peas over the field. Finally, I disked the seeds into the dirt. I wasn’t worried about having a perfectly prepared seedbed, just having the dirt loose enough for the seeds to be in good contact and lightly covered with it. I may not make hay off of it but, rather, may pasture the cows on it later and till in what’s left. Either way, I hope the peas will help add some nitrogen to the soil since they are legumes.

The other field behind the ridge is long an narrow. I didn’t want to plow it, but I did want to work it up a bit. We’ll grow corn along with winter squash and pumpkins in it this year. I began by sub-soiling this field and then disking it a couple of times. It actually worked quite nicely. Yesterday before taking back the equipment I borrowed from Gill, I decided to go ahead and run the field cultivator through. It worked great. In fact, the cultivator tried to go in deeper than my tractor could pull – the wheels would spin when it was too deep. This really broke the ground up nicely. I’ll let it sit for a few weeks now since we won’t plant corn until May. It should disk up quite nicely at that time.

It’s good to get some of the soil preparation work done now. I have so much to do on the house, but I need to be able to have other things done and out of the way so I can focus on it. This time of year and during the summer, there are so many things that need doing that I just don’t seem to get to some of them.

   

Say NO to genetically modified corn

Over time, corn has been a major food source for rural families, especially poor, rural families. Nowadays, the fields of corn often seen aren’t the little 2 or 3 acre family plots but hundred or thousand acre fields. Those growing it don’t generally develop their own varieties and save their seeds. Rather, they buy different hybrids designed to meet their needs which are available through seed distributors. What their needs are vary, of course, but usually one of the concerns is production. More is considered better.

When I was a teenager, I worked one summer detasseling corn. There were various seed corn companies that hired teenagers to work in their fields doing this job. In the fields, there were generally two rows of one corn variety alternating with six rows of another variety. By removing the tassels from the corn variety in the six rows, the remaining variety would pollinate them, creating a hybrid. The detasselers’ job was to remove the tassels that the machines missed. I spent another summer working for seed company that was trying to develop other corn and soybean hybrids. My job was cross-pollinating soybeans, a tedious process requiring a steady hand and a magnifying glass.

Developing a successful hybrid today involves the laboratory as much or more than the field. Genetic modification is big business. Most of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are the results of Monsanto’s efforts. The process involves injecting foreign genes into the DNA of the corn or soybean or whatever with the objective of producing some desired outcome, like resistance to Roundup herbicide or the creation of BT bacteria (among other things). So many things are today are genetically modified. Too much is unknown about the ramifications of genetic modification in terms of its effects on people’s health, how it affects other animals and plants, and the resulting genetic mutations it produces. It’s actually some pretty scary stuff when you take an in-depth look at it. Watch The World According to Monsanto if you want to learn more.

Our pursuit at New Kentucky Homestead is to grow as much of our own food as possible in a sustainable way. We don’t use chemical fertilizers or chemical herbicides or chemical pesticides. Much of the genetically modified hybrids require a certain level of chemical usage. They also aren’t sustainable; you can’t save seeds from what you grow and have the next year’s crop be true to type. This is the antithesis of what we are doing here. So, we do not use hybrids, let alone GMOs.

In 2006, we grew a half acre of field corn. We bought open-pollinated seed corn from Bunton’s Seed in Louisville, KY. The variety we purchased was Trucker’s Favorite, a white field corn also grown for roasting ears. The corn grew fairly well, although the soil in the field we planted it was less than ideal. Then, because of various other factors, we didn’t harvest all of it. What we did harvest was used for animal feed and to save seeds for another planting.

I didn’t get any corn planted for the summer of 2007, but last spring I was able to prepare a field for another corn crop. The preparation involved plowing and disking. We ended up with just over 1/4 of an acre of corn. It grew and produced fairly well, the biggest problem being from raccoons and deer who apparently thought it was being grown for them. The dryness of the season helped that which was knocked down to not just spoil like it would have if it had been wet.

Dad and I were able to harvest the corn this fall. Ramiah and Malchiah helped a little. I think they picked two rows together. Without a mechanical picker or combine, our method for harvesting involved pulling the ear off the stalk, s hucking it, putting the ear in a five-gallon bucket, stepping the stalk down to the ground, and moving on to the next one. When our buckets were filled, we dumped the corn into a small trailer we had at the edge of the field. We spent two days picking corn, and at the end of each we shoveled the corn from the trailer into the corn crib I built for it.

My corn crib is constructed of four, stout cedar poles I cut and set two feet into the grown. Onto these poles are attached pallets that a neighbor gave to us. It is one pallet wide and two pallets high. I put a metal shed roof on top and wrapped the structure with poultry netting. The netting is to keep raccoons from raiding the crib. The bottom of the crib sits about two feet off of the ground with each pole wrapped with pieces of aluminum siding that I took off of an old mobile home. The aluminum is to keep mice from climbing the legs and getting into the corn.

All together, we picked about 35 bushels of ear corn. The crib can hold 200 bushels, according to my calculations. Maybe we’ll have a really big harvest sometime in the future.

We’ve been using the corn for our own eating. We’ve had parched corn, grits, and corn bread, all of which we’ve enjoyed. For Thanksgiving I made some cornbread dressing using some of our corn and other ingredients that were all homegrown. It was excellent, if I say so myself.

It is possible that in the future corn will become one of our staple grains. It’s easy to grow and harvest, and we have a crib in which to store it and where it can finish drying after harvest. I’m pleased that we still have the option to grow a real, open-pollinated variety of corn and not the genetically modified hybrids that are commonly available for field corn.