Farm Report

I’m experimenting with being self-sufficient food-wise. I’ve always loved to garden, and I love to make my own bread. The cost of a balanced diet has been rising, so I embarked on a plan to have the best garden ever this year. It’s coming along, but it all needs work. The war of the weeds is intense. I think they are winning, but I have some weapons – a shovel and hoe and lots of deep mulch. I am holding my own. Also, the chickens are growing. I have hopes for them.

Mid-July is a busy time here. The garden is in full swing. I plant in small plots four feet by four feet. It’s about the amount of ground I can turn and tend. I can reach across the plot and can walk all around it. I mulch a circle around the plot with old hay and horse bedding. It keeps the weeds down. The garden looks like a crazy patchwork quilt. I don’t plant in rows. I noticed my neighbor (the cranky one) staring at the chaos with a frown on her face. I’m sure she disapproves, but results speak loudest. I bring baskets of food out of my garden. It works for me. Every day I weed something, plant something and harvest something. I also spend at least a half hour with a pitchfork keeping the manure pile turned so it will become compost. I am getting pretty fit. I can wear my jeans! I have pots of fall vegetables started that need planting – beans and some squash and pumpkins. I need to fight the mosquitoes and get their plot ready. Mosquitoes are a plague this year. The spinach is finished and in the freezer as are the peas. Their spot is ready for me to plant some beets for greens. The chard is coming along. The tomatoes look awesome, but the peppers are just sitting there sulking. They are so temperamental. Today I will dig a few potatoes. I have never grown them before, so I don’t know what to expect. The plants look vigorous. Onions are looking good. I pulled some for stew. They are sweet and strong. My garlic is all pulled and dried. I braided it, but the braid looks awkward. I’m sure there’s a trick to it that I don’t know. There is at least a six month supply there – maybe more. I pulled some of the smaller cabbages that were planted too close together. They are waiting in the kitchen for me to make cabbage rolls and freezer slaw. I will eat maybe one or two cabbage rolls and Murphy will eat maybe one or two and the rest will go into the freezer. The lilies are blooming spectacularly. I need to weed the flower beds again. The iris never bloomed even though it has grown knee-high and looks strong. I can’t figure out why.

Every day there is what I call “chicken-tainment”. The chickens are a hoot. This is the first time I have ever had first-hand experience with them. It’s been fun watching them grow. I still have them in an empty horse stall in the barn. The chicken coop hasn’t materialized yet. They seem content where they are. I made a small pen in the grass behind the barn and put two of them out there as an experiment. I used whatever materials I could scrounge. It is the most hill-billy contraption you ever saw with old pallets, pieces of plywood and some wire all cobbled together. It took me all day and Murphy helped, too. Obviously, my coop-building skills need some improving. The chickens both escaped almost immediately. There is one red hen, the smallest of the lot, which is an escape artist. She runs around squawking for a while and then tries to get back into the stall with the others. Billy gets all excited and tries to herd her. Eventually she lets me catch her and sometimes I pet her and carry her around for a little while. I am surprised at how soft they are. I always thought chickens would be prickly. I plan to keep a few of the hens and one rooster. The rest will go into the freezer. They get all the kitchen refuse except meat. Billy gets that. I have picked out the rooster that will be the coop-master. The reason for the rooster is so there will be more of them next year for the freezer and I won’t have to buy them. He was the first to grow a comb, the first to “crow” (that’s really funny to watch) and he has a harem of hens that surround him all the time. He is protective of them. If Billy approaches, he runs at him. There is one other rooster that has two hens that follow him everywhere, and the other three roosters are just tolerated. They are going into the freezer. It’s a shame. They are all handsome fellows - all white with black necklaces and black pin-stripes on their wings with bright red combs that stand upright. The hens range from dark red to a paler pink and white on their body and darker red on their heads. I am told this variety is good both for broilers and for eggs. They will lay jumbo brown eggs. Of course, they are being fed all organic foods so there will be no antibiotics. I wanted to let them out to free-range, but I have a cranky neighbor. To let them out I will need a good chicken fence and that isn’t in my budget. I am saving my egg cartons. If six hens each lay about four eggs a week, then I will have – um – calculating . . .24 eggs a week.

I think that if one has a garden thirty by thirty and six hens and one rooster, then one can eat well most of the year.