Well this winter has been anything but typical. None of the usual slow rainy days to catch up on everything.
The vegetable garden is looking wonderful, very few weeds and we've spent months improving the soil. I'll start planting spring crops over the next few weeks. We already have tomatoes started in the poly house but have had trouble with mice, so fingers crossed we'll get enough plants without having to replant. Our poultry are doing very well, we've been getting eggs most of winter, the geese are laying as are the ducks, even the pigeons have made an early start to the breeding season. We've been eating farm produced pork, chicken, goat, mutton and duck all winter. Not much in the way of vegetables from the garden as we were so behind in autumn, but we have been eating micro greens and some frozen summer veg. We have upgraded a lot of our butchering equipment, and are now set to make sausages. I just wish we had our dedicated food processing area and cool room finished. Plucking fingers are on their way from the US as I type, as soon as they get here we will start on our WIZZ BANG chicken plucker (look it up on youTube), it will make a huge difference to poultry proccessing. Got the oven of my dreams a few weeks ago, so now i can cook for a week in one morning without having to juggle ovens or turn trays. Hoping to add a pressure canner to the preserving tools this harvest, will let everyone know how it goes. I've started a course on canning vegetables and meats, should be fun and informative. With all the sun we've had I think I missed the window for spraying the peach trees, should have been a week earlier, so we still might have a problem with curl leaf this year. The rest of our little house orchard is looking great, lots of apples and apricots this year I hope. So nice to get some work done in the vineyard, youngberries are in, as well as half a row of rescued Shiraz (there should be enough plants left in the rest of the vineyard to fill the row). Some strawberries to soak up excess water at every second dripper on the berry rows and at least one row of raspberries still to go in this spring. We bought a grain field bin a few weeks ago, and with a bit of work and some weather proofing we will be able to buy grain straight out of the trucks at harvet time, enough for the following year, this will save Mike's back and many trips to our grain supplier. Now if we can just do the same with straw and lucerne, we may never leave the place........ Both Mike and I are having serious back problems and are struggling with some of the work that needs to be done. For the first time in my life I'm having trouble shoveling and mucking out pens, super frustrating. We are going to have to design most things on the farm with this in mind, as well as asking for help when we need it. Maybe I won't leave it so long until the next installment..... PZ.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorPatricia... tinkerer, tailor, survivalist. Archives
February 2014
CategoriesCopyright.
All recipes and processes in this blog and on this site are copyright, feel free to print, copy or send to friends with acknowledgement of authour. This does not allow for use for profit without written permission. |