Skip to main content

March Update, looks like we will be back in May!!

Well quite a bit going on since the last posting!  Looks like we will be heading back to the states a little earlier than planned.  It was planned Terri would go back in May anyway to start setting up the household, not it looks like I will be heading back to Washington DC in May as well to finish up my time in the Army, I need to get a little medical work done and none better then Walter Reed!  The other benefit with being in Washington DC is it make the possibly of long weekend trips to the farm possible.  That along with Alexis volunteering to work on the farm this summer in exchange for a little cash it means there is a few projects we will be able to start this year rather than waiting until next!

Turns out we will likely be able to get the bees going this year after all. However, that is still possibly on hold depending on what day I need to be DC.  Just all depends on how the scheduling works out.  The company we are looking at for bees have two dates open in May for delivery 10 and 17 May. Typically, in the army the reports dates are the 10th, meaning if I have a May 10 report date neither of those dates would work unless I signed in then went back on leave (a possibility).  Also, need to figure the time to put the hives together (two warre hives) and set up on location (near the pond on the homestead) before the bees arrive.

We are also going to set up the worm farm this summer in the garage, it sounds grander than it is LOL.  It is a worm composing bin you can get through amazon. Figured it was not a bad idea on multiple fronts, the casings will be fertilizer for starting plants next year when I am back, some of the worms will make their way out to the Chickens for winter protein snacks and some will make their way to fish hooks this summer I am sure!  On top of that once we get the aquarium (salt water) set up they will become snacks for those fish as well!

Terri had also decided she would like to add a pig this first year, knowing how intelligent pigs are and not wanting the one to get lonely I talked her into going with two rather than one!   They will be up on the north-west portion of the homestead so that means we have a lot of fencing to get fixed up in what used to be the corral. We will have to figure out a watering system to get them watered out there but thing this first year we may just go with a portable water tank. 

We also decided to add a pumpkin patch along with the sunflowers on the south-east corner.  This will give us extra winter feed for the chickens and give us something good to finish the pigs on before butchering, not to mention the possibility of a small cash crop for Halloween. 

This month been reading a lot of forest farming, some pretty good idea’s in there, unfortunately ideas are the one thing I am not short on.  Really like the idea of a lot of the forest farming however most of what I have available right now is poplar which is not really the best for a lot of those concepts, it will take many, many years to slowly develop that into hardwood stands, one idea would be to take that north-east corner of the 40 acers and start planting hardwoods on that area, was kind of the plan all along just have not yet fully decided on the makeup of it.  Right now I am thinking a mixture of Maple (if the ground is not too full of clay), some white and red oaks and maybe some beech as the canopy trees with some paw paw and nut trees in the understory along with American Ginsing and various berries and shade tolerant medicinals down below.  The mast from the trees should give a good place to finish off pigs down the road the month before butcher, if I can keep them from destroying the Ginseng that is.  And cannot forget mushrooms 😊   


Honestly the first Mushroom logs will probably be inoculated next spring if I can find the hard wood logs for it, maple is probably the best for Shiitake mushrooms.  Will use the area around the pond on the homestead as the laying yard.  You can get enough spawn for about 30 logs (each log is about 3-4 feet and 4 inches around) for less than $60.  You have to keep the logs moisture up for the first year as the spawn colonize the log so I will wait to do that until I get home.  Just another task on the never-ending task list for next year!  Since I would like to thin out the poplar in order to provide a better mix of trees, I will use some of the polar for Oyster mushrooms.  It is a little different procedure then for Shiitake mushrooms but it should allow me to thin out the poplar without the stumps going to waste as part of a forest management plan. Well this is plenty for now!  As always I look forward to your comments!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they cou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Long over due update! We added livestock (and poultry)!

Non-gas operated lawn mowers! It is hard to believe I am so far behind on my blog posts.   Spring is a busy time on the homestead, especially a first spring!   Two and a half inches of rain last night in about a two hour period has given me some time this morning to write as it is too wet to get much done!   So much has happened in the last two months, I will probably on touch on most of it in an attempt keep this post readable!   First, we lost our bee hive from last year, the bees ate the stores in the middle of the hive, all the way to the top, but did not eat the outermost combs.   From the looks of it they ended up starving themselves out because they moved too far from the edges for them to reach them with the cold weather.   We were able to salvage about 15 lbs of honey and a pound or so of wax out of the dead hive. We also managed to harvest a couple containers of virgin honey comb. This years honey harvest In this picture you can re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fruit Trees

Fruit Trees Well in the last three posts I have talked about some of the different livestock we will have on the homestead but it takes more then meat and eggs to keep us going (there is probably about half the members of my family who and having serious doubts that it is really me writing that!).  We have decided to plant fruit and nut trees for various reasons, as I mentioned in an earlier post I would like everything we do have multiple uses on the homestead.  The fruit and nut trees are no exception. I am going to go off subject here to tell you about the area where we are setting up our homestead but rest assured I will circle back around.  My wife's parents have a little less then 320 acres total. We will be getting a little less then 40 acres of that.   A lot of that land years ago was farm land but there is also somewhere about 60 acres that is native prairie and woodland.  The tract that we are planning on building the homestead on...
Post a Comment
Read more