How Does Your Garden Grow?

Oh goodness, I'm exhausted! It's been a crazy, mad dash to get the garden together and everything planted before it's too late in the season. Even so, I'm afraid that my short growing season will prevent me from harvesting some of what I've planted.

Remember this little low tunnel/hoop house that trucked along bravely through the entire winter?

I took the whole thing down to replace the hoops with ones made from 3/4" PVC. 

To make it look nicer, I've spray painted the PVC with Krylon Fusion paint. You know, so it doesn't look like a bunch of plumbing pipe.

The first color I tried was a brushed steel, but rejected it since it looked like metal conduit. Still looked like plumbing pipe. 

So I went with a hunter green.

Looks a lot better than the white PVC.

The next project was going to a rabbitry and an alpaca ranch to pick up poop to add to the garden. Both of those animals' poop will not burn plants so you don't have to compost it before you add it to the garden. You can just mix it right in.

I got about 300 pounds of rabbit poop. The lady who owned the rabbitry called them "Bunny Berries". She had it all neatly bagged up for me. Stunk to high heaven, though!

Bags o' Bunny Berries

Then it was on to the Silken Suri Alpaca Ranch.  This was a 'shovel your own' deal. 

I didn't even make a dent in the poop pile at the alpaca place. She has about sixty alpacas and the pile of poop was huge!  The lady invited me to come back any time to take more. 

After these two poop runs, the truck was a bit fragrant. A poo-pourri, if you will. 

I also added some store-bought compost to the planting mix. This one apparently thinks "no poop" is a big selling point.

 Makes me laugh...I just finished unloading two truckloads of it but this particular compost is poop free. Maybe there are people who don't want poop in their garden? Not even composted poop, which has no germs?

In between the poop runs and painting the PVC, I started planting.

Silver Queen sweet corn.

Some of the tomatoes and the eggplant safely sheltering in wall o' waters. The night I planted these, the temperature dropped to 32 degrees. The wall o' waters did their job and the plants are just fine.

A tomato plant inside it's wall o' water.

I also put in some carrots and a couple varieties of lettuce. 

Two days later, a deer discovered a hole in the deer netting and got into the bed where I'd planted all the lettuces, spinach and green onions. Once it was inside, I don't think it could figure out how to get out and panicked. It eventually got out, but between what it ate and what it tore up while trying to get out, the entire bed was devastated.

I replanted everything, patched the hole in the deer netting and am starting all over again. I'm kicking myself though because I knew that hole was there and put off repairing it. All my fault!

Over in the perennial garden things are coming right along.

The lilacs are in bud.

Iris

Columbines

Hollyhocks

Not sure what this is. Peony, maybe?

The whole valley is beautifully green!

Time to wrap this up. I'm pooped! (pun intended)  I've got to get up early and plant more sweet corn and two varieties of beans!  

G'night all!

Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere a chick-chick

I can't help but wonder at the strength and resilience of animals. Imagine chicks at a hatchery. Within a few hours of struggling mightily to break out of the egg, they're packed into a box and spend the next two days being shipped across country.

Newly hatched poultry still have an internal reserve from the egg yolk left in their system. It's enough to nourish them for three days. Pretty amazing, huh?

I ordered my chicks from Cackle Hatchery.  They offer a wide range of poultry species and breeds. I was looking for a specific breed of chicken and they were one of the few hatcheries that had what I was looking for and at the ship date I wanted.

This is a photo of an adult Golden Laced Cochin chicken.

I chose this breed of chicken for a few different reasons. First, I think they're beautiful. They aren't plain Jane looking chickens. Second, they are a tough breed suited for this cold climate. They have feathers on their feet which protect them from cold. And they have very small combs so there's less risk of them getting frostbite there. Third, they are a dual-purpose breed, which means they are good for both egg production and for meat. 

This is the chicken coop that came with our homestead. 

It's huge, but needs some repair work before I can put the chickens in it. The roof leaks, some of the boards on the walls need replaced and it's not predator-proof. This makes me guilty of putting the chicks before the coop. But it also gives me a strong incentive for hustling to get the coop repaired. 

The chicks are shipped via airmail to the local post office. When I got there to pick them up, as soon as I opened the door I could hear them peeping loudly. The post mistress was laughing because it was obvious the chicks were not happy!

Once they were home, they took up residence in a storage tub doing double duty as a brooder box. I've nicknamed it the "Little Deuce Coop". 

That's an infrared heat lamp over on the left. To help the chicks learn to eat, I scattered some chick starter crumbles on a paper towel on the floor of the box. And to help them bounce back from the stress of shipping, I mixed a tablespoon of sugar into a quart of water. They'll get the sugar water for the first few hours only. After that, it's replaced with plain fresh water. 

As I put each chick into the box, I dipped its beak into the water to help it learn how to drink. 

I'd ordered fifteen chicks. The hatchery sent an extra one to help offset any loss during shipping. Sadly, I did lose one chick within twelve hours of their arrival. Another died two days later. 

The fourteen that are left seem to be doing well. Here they are two weeks later. 

It's almost time to move them into a larger brooder box....the Coop deVille. And I need to get busy repairing  their permanent home!

It's a wild life out here!

Between wildlife and wild weather, every day out here is an adventure! 

Hail storms are common. This one lasted more than 20 minutes and left the ground looking like we had accumulating snow.

 The pea-size hail didn't damage any of the plants in the garden, luckily.  So far, all of the hail I've seen has been small like this. Anything larger and the garden would have been a total loss!

I'd been seeing this guy and his wife hunting in the yard and garden for a few days. I finally got a fuzzy photo. (I should learn to have the camera with me AT ALL TIMES) He's a Spotted Towhee.

I've looked for a nest, which is supposed to be largish and low to the ground, but haven't found it yet.

About a week ago, I had an amazing wildlife encounter. While working in the garden, I turned around to find a beautiful silver fox just 30 feet away. It was sniffing around in the grass right next to our deck. About the time I realized I didn't have the camera with me (of course!) a red fox came out of the trees. The two fox stared at each other for several seconds, then the silver one chased the red one away. 

Since then, I've seen the silver fox at a distance. Then a few days ago I saw it again and this time, I had the camera. Can you spot him in this photo?

It was hunting the squirrels that live in the old cabin. 

I love seeing the fox around. However, I am pretty sure my attitude towards it is going to change in a month or so. Why? Because I have fourteen baby Golden Laced Cochin chickens in a brooder box in the garage. Once they feather out, they'll be living in the chicken coop. That fox is going to do everything it can to make a meal out of them. 

The chickens? Oh yes, I forgot to tell you about the chickens.  I'll leave that for the next post. Come back tomorrow and I'll introduce you to them.

Don't fence me in!

Another HUGE project was replacing some fence in the east pasture. The existing fence was leaning badly.

It was leaning so much that we were afraid the horses would try to step over or through it and get hurt. We ran some temporary hot rope fencing and T-posts to make it safe to turn the boys out into the pasture.

With the help of our dear friend Richard, we set about replacing this whole 300 foot section of fence. Eventually, we'll replace all of our perimeter fencing. We'll do it one section at a time, because of the time and expense of installing a wood fence like we're doing. 

Here they are pulling up the old posts. The Bobcat sure makes the task easy! That's G.W. in the driver's seat and Richard on the ground. 

Wrap the chain around the post and pull!

Easy peasy...if you have a Bobcat and a couple of guys who know what they're doing.

Here is some video of the process.  

Richard setting the new posts...

We're using 6" x 6" eight foot long treated lumber posts. They're sunk three feet into the ground. Solid!

For the horizontals, we're using a unique material...lumber reclaimed from wooden snow fence. The good folks at Repurposed Materials in Denver carry it. By using this reclaimed material, we're keeping it out of a landfill and saving ourselves quite a bit of money over the cost of new lumber. It's a win-win situation!

I've mentioned Repurposed Materials here before. It's where I got the billboards I'm using to cover my hay bales. 

The wood pieces are eight feet long and probably an inch and a half to two inches thick. It's heavy, solid and perfect for our fence.

You can see the holes from the bolts from the snow fence as well as the sun bleaching on the wood. Neither of those things bother us. The wood has a nice gray weathered color which fits in perfectly with our old homestead outbuildings.

In this up-close photo, you can see both the holes and the bleaching. 

Here's a series of photos showing the progress G.W. and Richard made over two and a half days.

 Yes, I had a small part in this, too. My job was to check the reclaimed wood for any stray nails and then measure and sort the boards by length. I had several categories..."8 feet", "between 8' and 8' 1/4"", "between 8' 1/4" and 8' 1/2"" and "unusable for the fence". 

The wood we couldn't use for the fence because it might have had a split or been too short will be saved for other uses, like repairing the chicken coop. 

 And, four days after they started, here's the finished fence! 

They've even built in a section for a gate. (We'll do the gate at some point in the future). This fence line is on the border of our property and the public open space. It'll be nice to have a gate for easy access to ride the horses out into the open space, but we need to have a strong and lockable gate to keep people out.

The section on the left is for the gate.

We're very happy with the finished fence. The weathered boards make it look like it's been there for a long time. At five feet tall, it's safe for the horses and is very solid!  

It was extremely hard, dirty work! G.W. and Richard did an outstanding job.  And just think, guys, there's only about 2,000 feet more to replace!