This latest snowstorm gives us a great chance to talk compost.

It is almost May.  I repeat: it is almost May.  We don't like to complain about the weather here (unless it hails), but it's almost May already and it has been snowy and cold for weeks.  Ridiculous.  We already planted most of our early season crops during the last warm spell several weeks ago and they're all covered in straw to keep them from freezing to death.  We can't uncover them for at least a few more days because the weatherman says its supposed to get down to 20 or something.  Nuts.  We've got herbs piled in front of the patio doors waiting to go in the ground.  Once more: it is almost May.  This is just silly.



Green grass, blue sky... looks nice and warm, doesn't it?


Let us momentarily pretend that frozen water is not slowly drifting down from the sky and the chicken water bucket doesn't freeze if you leave it outside overnight.  Let's envision ourselves standing next to a large pile of light, fluffy decomposing organic matter.  It probably smells wonderful.  I say probably because we might have just dumped the kitchen compost bucket lately, yet amongst the wide range of horrible smells available in this world it can certainly get a lot worse than that. 

Speaking of the compost bucket, we divide our refuse into several general categories: chicken food, compost, recyclable, and garbage.  Between two adults we fill a 5 gallon pail in under two weeks with everything from egg shells to banana peels to coffee grounds (with filters - do yourself a favor and don't try to dump just the coffee grounds into the bucket like I did).   We also shred junk mail and newspapers and add it to the compost bucket.  The ink breaks down and doesn't hurt anything.  We are experimenting with composing animal waste like fish guts and butchered chicken carcasses - hopefully it isn't a total disgusting disaster.  I will report back on the results.




The most important ingredient in our compost piles is chicken manure.  It is the special stuff that makes the entire system of gardens function and the chickens worth the work.  Without it we would be forced to purchase organic compost and fertilizer in order to call our produce "organic", which would be very expensive.  The chickens produce all the fertilizer we need at a profit in meat and eggs, and they also offer some value in insect control.  Not to mention that they are surpassed only by hogs when it comes to being the pastoral version of the trash compactor.

When composted, all these ingredients supply everything a chemical fertilizer does, plus organic matter and valuable plant micronutrients like calcium (deficiency of which is the cause of blossom end rot in tomatoes), magnesium, and sulfur.  Many of these nutrients become nutrition for the eater of the finished tomato, pepper, or melon.  Not only does compost make your soil healthy for your plants, it makes the food grown with it more healthy for you.

This winter's chicken bedding (straw and pine shavings) on the left, fresh compost ready for the garden on the right.

Last year's compost is ready to be spread around our veggie seedlings whenever winter finally gives up and goes back into hibernation.  And as we do every spring, we cleaned out the winter accumulation of poop in the chicken coop and started another huge pile that will become prime black, fluffy organic compost by this fall.  The chickens poop, the veggies grow, and the cycle continues.

Chicken graduation party!

As chicks morph from cute, fluffy little peeps to semi-feathered awkward adolescents, they become significantly less endearing.  Sort of like people.  Gone is the steady, soothing "cheap cheap" call, and along with it the feeling that maybe I'm a bit stingy with my money.  It is replaced by something akin to the squawking sound of a teenage boy making the transition from child to man.  The soft layer of fuzz gives way to rudimentary feathers, and eventually to a fully feathered miniature rendition of a full grown chicken. 

Even though they lose the appeal of cuteness, they begin to make up for it with self-reliance.  They require no special care once they are introduced to the general population of chickens, freeing us from making several trips a day to the chicken brooder in the garage to fill feeders, clean the bedding out of waterers, and check on their general health.  The big question, though, is exactly when and how do you introduce them to the big birds?  If it has been a cold spring with more cold forecast for the future, like this year, another layer of complexity is added to the equation.  How cold can the chickens handle?  Do you ease them into it, or take them straight from the warm coziness of the brooder to the somewhat uncontrolled conditions of the chicken coop?

We decided to make the transition as easy on them as possible.  I fenced off a corner of the chicken coop to keep the big birds from picking (and pecking) on them.  Chickens quickly establish the pecking order when new birds are introduced, but sometimes it can border on brutality, so it helps to give the young and old chickens a chance to size each other up for awhile before they can actually get at one another.  I also hung a heat lamp from the ceiling of the coop to provide them with some warmth on the cold nights.  I turn it off during the day so they become acclimated to the cold weather.  They are fully feathered, so as long as the change from warmth to coldness isn't too much of a shock, they should be able to handle low temperatures without any harm done.



"Whoa... what the heck are those things?  They're like us, but smaller."






The answer to the question "How did they get poop on the SIDE of the waterer?"

 


Our most curious and friendly hen. 

  



"BA-GAWK!!!"



To till or not to till? Is that the question?

Recently we've been considering the purchase of a fancy, brand new tiller to work the soils in our gardens.  This seemed like a natural purchase considering we are in the process of starting a produce and egg business.  Upon further consideration, however, we may be able to save ourselves a good deal of labor and the cost of that fancy new tiller by implementing a no-till system.  Others have had success with similar systems, such as a successful no-till garden that is kept at the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Selfridge, ND.  They use Round Up, which isn't something we're interested in, but we will find other ways of controlling weeds.  Also, the Dakota Lakes Research Farm is just down the road from our place.  They have been experimenting with no-till agriculture and cover crops in soils like ours for many years with favorable results.  The manager there, Dwayne Beck, recently gave a colorful and insightful talk on soil health and implementing a no-till system for large scale agriculture that we think can be scaled down to what we're doing.

 If you take a look at nature, you will see that all of the myriad variety of plants that grow of their own accord are grown in a no-till system.  Grasslands are covered with grass without the aid of a gas powered tiller, trees fill lush forests without a single turning of the soil, and beautiful flowers bloom every year without a helping hand from anyone.  Modern methods of growing things tend to ignore the powerful examples of nature, but we try very hard to work with nature whenever possible instead of fighting her.  She usually wins.  The reason all these plants grow so well without the aid of tillage is simple: plants don't need the soil to be tilled in order to grow. 

In fact, turning the soil leads to all sorts of problems.  One problem with tilling is that seeds are brought to the surface.  Weed infestation can be greatly reduced by simply leaving the seeds buried where they won't sprout up and cause issues.  Another problem is that the organic matter component of the soil is lost when the old dead plants from last year are removed and the soil is turned.  Unless a healthy dose of organic matter is added, eventually the soils will either become clumpy clay, or a fine dusty powder.  Neither are examples of a healthy soil.  Also, the more organic matter you have, the more water your soils will absorb and hold.  This means a lot in places that don't get enough rain, like where we live in South Dakota.  Precipitation often comes all at once, and instead of running off, the rain will be absorbed and held by a soil with lots of organic material for plant use through the hot days of summer. 

One enormous benefit of not tilling your soil is that it preserves the network of micorrhizal fungi.  These networks of fungi run throughout your soil and help deliver nutrients to the roots of your plants.  When you till, this network is destroyed and roots are only able to get nutrients from the soil directly contacting it.  If you leave that network of fungi in place, nutrients can be delivered to those roots from a wider area. 

The most obvious benefit is the savings in time and money by eliminating a fairly large chore from the list of many that we must accomplish to successfully produce and harvest a crop.  This alone compels us to try a no-till method.  Another benefit is the long term sustainability of such a system.  Instead of scraping off the dead plants and piling them with chicken manure to compost and eventually be added back to the soil, we can simply knock the plants over onto the soil and let them compost right there.  And instead of adding composted chicken manure all over the garden, which is wasteful and fertilizes the weeds as much as our plants, we can applying it more precisely to the areas where only our plants draw their nutrition.  The entire system results in a more sustainable system with healthier soils for less work.  Sounds good to me. 

We will keep you posted on how things are going in our no-till gardens throughout the summer.  We plant to grow melons, tomatoes, and peppers with this system, and if successful we will do the same thing with our other crops. 

Early season crops and a blizzard

We like to get a crop of cold hardy crops in the ground in early April. Stuff like kale, brassicas, radishes, and salad greens. We plant our crop of napa cabbage for kimchi making at this time of year, also. This year we had a bit of a distraction due to the birth of our first child, and instead of doing the smart thing and checking the weather forecast before planting, I just went ahead and put 40 or so cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprout plants in the ground. Two days later we got a foot of snow and temps in the teens. Whoops.

Right before the snow hit I covered the plants in straw and wetted it down with the hose. The snow piled on top of the straw, providing additional insulation. For the next four days (up to and including today) temps ranged from the high teens to low 30s. I uncovered one plant to see how it was doing on an afternoon with above freezing temps. The brussel sprout plant looked happy and healthy, much to my relief and delight. Phew!

Out of an unfortunate screw up, we have learned an easy, cheap, and effective way to protect cold hardy plants when the weather doesn't respect our wishes.  Which, in South Dakota, is most of the time.  

Tomatoes are started!

We had a pretty decent blizzard roll through the region this week, so we were kept in doors more than normal.  Except for the routine trips to the chicken coop and to the garage to check on our crop of future egg layers.  Being cooped up (pun intended) gave us a great opportunity to get our tomato seeds started.  We had room under the grow lights because I foolhardedly (is that a word?) planted all of our cabbage and broccoli plants 2 days before the storm came, but that's another story.  Mental note: check the weather forecast before you plant early season crops.

We started 88 tomato plants!  This is easily a record number for us as we had previously only grown tomatoes for our own consumption, but with the goal of selling beautiful heirloom tomatoes at the market firmly in mind, we went all out.  Our varieties for this year:

Amish Paste: A Roma style Amish (hence the name) heirloom.  These are bigger than your typical Roma style tomato and have a richer, more pronounced tomato flavor.  Very meaty, these are great tomatoes for sauce, paste, salsa, or salads.

Rutgers: We have never grown this popular heirloom variety until this year, but our search for the best round, red, typical tomato for our area led us to give these a try. 

Super Sioux: This is another typical round, red tomato, but this variety is touted as being heat tolerant, which may provide it with an advantage in our hot and dry climate.  Like the Rutgers, we've never grown this tomato so I can't comment on eating and processing qualities until I actually eat one.

Brandywine (Sudduth's Strain): Brandywine is another Amish heirloom variety that is noted for its flavor, having won a great many taste tests.  With just the right balance of sweetness and acidity, this tomato is one of our favorites for practically any use.  However, they are not reliable producers so we are hoping for a favorable season.

Pineapple: This is probably my favorite tomato variety ever.  The pink on orange on yellow color mosaic and phenomenal flavor make this an appealing tomato.  My favorite for BLTs because of the large size and beautifully patterned slices, and also makes a fantastic orange tomato juice.  An orange beer or bloody mary is out of this world with a pineapple tomato. 

Black Krim: This dark red to purple variety is a reliable mid season producer with great flavor and texture.  Makes a great dark red marinara and is wonderful on a BLT.  Also adds interesting color to salads.

Cherokee Purple: Another consistent taste test winner, we are looking forward to growing this tomato for the first time.  I will be happy to report back on what we think of them, but I have a feeling that this tomato will live up to its reputation.

Sungold: This hybrid orange cherry variety is famed for its intense sweetness.  While not an heirloom like we prefer, we think you will enjoy this tasty little treat.  We plan to have a bowl of these sitting out at our table for you to sample whenever we are at the market.  If you like them, we will have small packages available for purchase.

Eggs in fancy new carton need a home

We recently stocked up on some fancy clear plastic egg cartons.  You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why plastic?  Cardboard is made from trees and is natural and whatnot..."  Well, the plastic cartons are a huge upgrade and here are the reasons why.

The biggest advantage is that we can wash them.  People often return egg cartons to us, but sometimes they place the egg shells back into the carton after cracking open the egg.  We can't re-use a carton that has egg on it, so we are unfortunately forced to toss those cartons.  With plastic, we can just wash them out. 

Another advantage is the larger space for a label.  This allows us to share more information about our eggs and why we think they're so great, and makes the egg carton more visually appealing.  It also doesn't hurt that you can see the pretty brown and green eggs through the carton, so people get a better look at the eggs before they buy them.  They look nice in the fridge, too.

Finally, we are hoping they will last longer.  The cardboard cartons survive for only a couple uses, and the extra large eggs from our older hens (older hens lay bigger eggs) often stretch the cartons to their limits. 

The only problem we're running into now is finding customers for our increasing supply of eggs.  We used to be able to sell our entire supply to co-workers and friends, but it seems the time has come to branch out and start advertising.