Monday, March 26, 2007

Getting things together

I got all of the garden bed boxes finished on Saturday, and got started on shovelling the topsoil from the walkways into the beds. I couldn't believe the number of nightcrawlers and earthworms in that soil, every spadeful had about 10-20 worms in it. That's a good sign, I think. I'll take some pictures of the setup this week and get them posted here.

We went to the Krell farm yesterday to pick out our pigs for this year. We found four gilts with black-spotted rumps that look pretty good. Jack will be delivering them on April 14th, so we'll have a bit of a headstart on last year. I think we should have a contest to name them this year, the winner gets 2 pounds of bacon in October. All ideas are welcome.

All of the seedlings indoors are in good shape, the peppers are just now sprouting. My tomatoes are about 90% sprouted, as is the cabbage.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Starting the garden 2007

In the past week I've got my mini-greenhouses started. We now have seeds from 7 varieties of tomato and 5 of hot peppers started, as well as cabbage and broccoli. I might be starting a little bit early, but I think I'll be okay.

I don't think I need to start anything else inside, most of the other seeds will be sown in the garden just about a month from now. I hope to have all of the raised beds finished this weekend and then I'll start working in the compost.

Not much else happening. We have decided to have four pigs this year after all. I need to get to the feed mill and see when the owner is going to start ordering birds, I'd like to get the turkeys about 2 weeks sooner than we did last year. I also need to ask how much more feed prices are looking to be this year, corn prices are sky high with so much of it being used to make ethanol.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

The latest..

It looks like we'll be getting some above-freezing temperatures soon. That will be a welcome change, I'm getting a bit tired of winter.

I have been reviewing my gardening calendar and prepering to start some seeds indoors. I have a little better plan this year, I think, and should see an increase in the viability of my seedlings. Speaking of the garden, it looks like we have probably sold all of our CSA shares, now I just need to make sure we have plenty of veggies for our customers! I am not too concerned though, as I feel I was very conservative in estimating the number of customers we could support.

The number of pigs we will be purchasing seems to be up in the air again, as Nikki and I were comparing notes the other day and it looks like we already have 3.5 pigs spoken for in the fall! So we will have to sit down and talk about exactly what we want to do. We raised 2 hogs pretty easily, but unless my math is off, 4 pigs would be twice the work.

I had a phone conversation with a representative of Naturally Grown, and after a short interview, they agreed to proceed with our certification. We'll have an inspection sometime and then things should be complete. I'll add a link to them soon.