Savoring the bounty

This month we began a new experiment in the greenhouse: a fodder system sprouting wheat into chicken food. We are turning a $13 bag of wheat (50 lbs) into weeks worth of nutritious greens for the birds. Next month we’ll try barley. Although the birds free-range on pasture each day, they still love this concentration of vitamins.

Thank goodness we had a WWOOFER this month to help with the harvesting and preservation! It’s amazing just how much food the food forest can pump out when the fruit trees are adding their bounty to the usual mix of veggies and herbs that our hugel beds create. Our evenings are spent slicing up the fruit for the freezer, dehydrator and (thanks to my creative wife) making pies.

It’s a good life.

Prepping for spring growth

Hugelkultur bed learning #49: I have created literally the perfect clubhouse for rats and mice. Woe to those whose hugel bed is right next to a pasture full of curious rodents. The full on war with the rats has begun. This month it’s traps; next month the outdoor hunting cats arrive. We shall give them epic Big Huntress type names.

Starting our annual “seedling shuffle” between the grow lights, the greenhouse, and the food forest beds.

Also excited to install our FLOW hive which you may have heard about via their crazy-successful IndieGoGo campaign. New bees arrive in a few weeks.

Blossoming

Highlight: tens of thousands of new buds on the fruit trees and berry bushes, all emerging at the same time. The food forest’s vibe has transitioned from its winter “retrenching” perspective to an open “come here” invitation with tiny spots of color throughout its branches.

Lowlight: coming back from travels to find 13 chickens gone in a single night via a coyote pack.

Millions of reasons to be happy

Two highlights to share this month as the hugelkulture bed becomes more populated with greenhouse transplants and the direct sow seeds begin popping up.

First highlight: the return of the bees. I’ve been checking on our new bees almost daily to see who’s winning a war with ants from the pasture.

Before installing the new colonies in the hives, we did a clean sweep (read: stomp) of the ants that had swarmed the dead hives over the winter and created a careful (will affect the bees as well if they land in it) perimeter barrier with dichotomous earth (DE).

After installing the bees, two of the colonies promptly kicked the remaining ants to the curb and went about their business of bee-ing. But one hive began what’s become an epic battle with the ants, who have them outnumbered by several millions.

We’ve assisted by tracing the ants back to their nest – not difficult given it is 4’ wide and 3’ tall – and bombed it to give the ants something else to focus on besides raiding the honey stores of our new colonies. The bombs made of DE + boric acid + cat food are designed to give the queen indigestion, and they seem to have helped.

We *do* want the ants around for their beneficial nature, but just need to distract them away from the hives while the bees build up their strength in numbers. It seems to be working as the reduced hive entrances now feature multiple bee guards and ants being challenged at every step as they try to regain access.

I’m thankful for the returning sound of thousands of bees over my head as I walk underneath our Japanese maples in early bloom. I can only imagine the sound of millions of these new life forms as they spread out on farms and backyards throughout the west coast of America and beyond. It’s the sound of life, the sound of balance, the sound of happiness, perhaps?

Second highlight: through work I met an interesting fellow with an amazing private collection of 100+ giant crystals and fossils, some of which have been dated to 500M years in age. Since they are in a private collection and not a museum (yet), you can interact with and lay hands directly on them. Something about touching an enormous 5’ crystal unearthed from three miles below the earth’s crust where it grew for 1/2 billion years puts your local problems into perspective. Amazing.

Only three lowlights, all relatively minor:

Turning on my fancy lawn irrigation controller that’s been repurposed to be a fancy food forest irrigation controller revealed multiple water line and electrical cable breaks caused by our solar installation this past winter. Bummer. And the detective work to find and make the repairs is always 24″ down, which means lots of shovel work (and guessing). Double bummer, but now fixed.

Second lowlight was the vigor with which bindweed surged forth from its hidden base in our rock retaining walls. I’ve recruited my elder child into helping me battle this back several times per week with a spray mixture of white vinegar + salt + dishwashing soap. If you pull it, the roots send out shoots, spreading it even faster.

The third lowlight involved most of the family. Imagine the loudest primal scream you’ve ever heard, an equal mix of rage, sadness, and surprise. Now imagine it’s originating from the vocal cords of a very strong, very motivated eight year old child. That sound brought me running to the back pasture, where I found my little girl and German Shepard tearing down the hill at full speed after a beautiful eagle which (unfortunately) had one of our chickens in its clutches.

After chasing it over an acre of pasture, screaming at the top of her lungs, the eagle had enough of this weirdness and dropped the chicken from a height of 40′. Amazingly, the chicken is alive and will fully heal. And we got a great up-close view of the eagle for ten minutes, as he watched me dig the chicken out from under a mess of stinging nettle and blackberry thorns. Gorgeous bird, but I imagine he was pretty frustrated with us.