around the homestead-cleaning critter crap

Phewwwww...Since I have the manthing home for a long weekend, we have beautiful weather and I am on a couple day break from school work it was an opportune time to clean the chicken coop today. Once that was done and we had a mid day snack we were on such a roll that I decided to get the goat shed done as well. After about 40 wheel barrow loads we got them both done! If I had to do that all by myself it would have taken me three to four days to finish it all. I have to say that I am pretty tired tonight and a wore out but sometimes its good to overwork a little bit just to keep up with things.
Several loads in the goat shed were nearly finished compost. Rather than mix it with the pile that needs to cook a good long while we piled it on a sheet of plastic and will finish it out there so we can then use it in the beds. Because of the way we bed in the chicken coop much of that was able to go directly to beds that will be planted this week.
This gives us a nice beginning to next years compost. Next on the agenda will be harvesting all the worm bins.

orchard update

While out working on some of the garden beds I took a wander through the orchard trees we put in. We have babies! The photo above is one of the plum trees. All three trees have a handful of tiny plums on them. The "contender"peach has so many babies on it I could not begin to count the numbers. The other peaches have a few too. The cherry, pear and apple are all doing well too but have no fruits that I could see. My puny currant bushes have also sprung to life and are getting their leaves so we should even see a few berries from them. The almond, that we had to trim majorly this season, looks much healthier and is putting out new branches. I do not know if it has almonds on it or not this year as they are tiny and much higher up than the other trees. The old peach has thus far made it, although, I do not know how well it will do. The bright side is, if it is too unhealthy we have got several (hundred) baby trees growing from all of the pits that fell to the ground last season. I cannot wait to be harvesting fruit from all the trees and am hoping to be able to get some dwarf citrus this year to add to the collection.

SIP- sub irrigation planters

We have come into a nice supply of pails. This is the first project we have done with them since we no longer feel bad about sacrificing ever handy buckets. I am hoping they work well so I can get some dwarf citrus and keep them in moveable planters.

silent sunday