Lousy weather, winter preparation

Gray skies, cold rain blowing around.  Snow.  Though it is still fall, wintery conditions have descended upon our corner of the planet.  There isn't much left to look at that is green in the gardens, though some spinach, broccoli, and arugula plants cling to life.  We have fed the last of the leftover watermelons to the chickens, and the carrots, sweetened by the frost, are all in storage.  One would think there isn't much left to concern ourselves with out there in the cold, horizontal rain, and instead a person with any sense at all would cozy up inside for the winter.  One would be wrong, however. 

Thankfully, we have most of the really urgent tasks completed.  The first priority was getting the chicken coop windows sealed up so the girls didn't freeze to death.  I cut a few plywood boards to fit the windows and attached them with bolts and wing nuts for easy removal in the spring.  We also hooked up a light on a timer to extend the length of the day, which stimulates the hens to lay more eggs.  The chickens prefer that the light come on early in the morning rather than staying on for awhile after dark in the evening.  They have a hard time finding their roost 2x4's in the pitch dark, and chaos ensues in the coop, which is never a good thing.  We also shoveled all of the poopy bedding out of the coop.  We let it accumulate throughout the summer, constantly enriched by droppings, and then mix it with all the dead plants we remove from the gardens (except for the corn stalks) and let it compost.  The corn stalks are placed on the floor of the chicken coop and covered with a little bit of straw to be the base of their bedding for the winter.  We enjoy utilizing any organic matter we produce in the most efficient possible way, so using some of the plant matter as chicken bedding allows us to get a second use out of a material rather than just turning it straight into compost.

Removing all rest of the dead plants is a fairly thankless job.  The tomato plants are the worst - you get splattered rotten tomatoes and they squish under your feet as you walk through the garden.  It is a bit unsettling.  Adding to the work is the fact that we prefer to leave the roots of the plants in the ground as part of our efforts not to till the soil, so we cut the plants off at their base with a shears.  We're not quite done with that part yet, but the nice thing is that it doesn't necessarily have to be done right away.  We could leave it until spring if we had to, though that is not ideal. 

This spring we laid down landscaping fabric between the rows when thousands of tiny weeds plants began sprouting.  Hopefully this removed many of the seeds from those areas.  We would like to pull up the fabric before winter sets in.  We hope to not need the fabric in the future if we are able to reduce those pesky weed seeds with the use of cover crops and no-till.

We managed to get a few fall cover crops planted that will die when they encounter true winter conditions, but next year we would like to do more.  We experimented with planting a cover crop in mid October, but as of yet the seeds have not germinated and at this point I would be surprised if they did.  

There is plenty of work left if we look for it, but for the most part there is not much left to do but care for the chickens and plan for next year.  By the time next spring rolls around we'll be champing at the bit to do it all over again.