What's in our organic garden

Well because this is our first year "on the farm" I tried my best to limit what we are growing so things wouldn’t get out of control. (Ok, my wife stopped my over enthusiasm so that we wouldn’t overwhelm ourselves our first year). With that said, we have three main goals this year:
#1 is homemade salsa and lots of it
#2 is homemade tomato sauce with fresh herbs of course
#3 is grow my own organic chicken feed, basically a supplement to normal feed winter rations (hence the “bird garden”).

We’re going to have a very busy fall around here. In the garden this year is lettuce, corn, celery, beans, carrots, 4-kinds of tomatoes, onion, Jalapeno, chilies, banana & bell peppers, muskmelon, watermelon, squash, cucumber, and Jack-o-lantern pumpkins for fall. ON top of all that do not forget the apple trees and pear trees asparagus, rhubarb, raspberries & concord grapes, that has been growing here for generations and I am now the steward of. (I think I’ll need 3 weeks off of work just for canning.)

Be careful what you wish for you just might get it. This spring was cooler than most so we really got a slow start growing, but so far so good there is still time left. I’m sure I will still be harvesting on Halloween, but that’s ok. I'll be singing “Here we go rejoicing bringing in the sheaves…” LOL

[These are sort of mid-season. I'll but current garden photos up soon so you can see the difference.]

Garden Boxes

~PJ Wife Here~
Some of you maybe wondering why we put boxes in the garden, after all, the whole garden is dirt. I read a few books (not as much as Daryl) and I gleaned information from all of them and then we devised our way of doing things.

We put boxes in to discourage crawly critters like slugs and to help make a border around our plants and the fence. The fence area with grass and wildflowers tends to be the place slugs and other bugs hide out, then at night they sneak from the long grass over to your lovely, tender, juice, just emerging plants and eat them before scurrying back at dawn. By having an inhospitable border between our plants and the fence discourages those late night snacking times. The boxes add additional barriers as well.

The Boxes also help define the garden. It will be easier to rotate the plants year after year (at least easier for me) and the other reason is because we will NOT be tilling every year. We tilled the ground up this year because it was very hard and needed to be mixed with the compost, manure and sand that we had. But every time you till your dirt you bring up weed seeds that have been sitting dormant for years and now you have a whole new batch to weed. It can take you years to weed out all the weeds and frankly, I’m too lazy to do that. The border around the boxes consists of hardpacked dirt, old grass clippings and sawdust. All biodegradable, comfortable to walk on and hard for weeds to get into.

Why do the hard work when God in His wisdom gave us creatures to do it for us? What are these amazing creatures that help fertilize your garden, can help draw your compost down into the soil near the roots, keep your soil aerated? Why it is the wonderful earthworm. Earthworm manure is the BEST manure in the world, so wouldn’t you want to draw them to your garden, I do. By not turning the dirt year after year… and instead adding the compost to the top of the dirt, you draw the worms up to take the compost down. And the best part, no weed seeds being brought to the top. After a year or two of weeding, we should have a fairly weed free garden. Yes there are the seeds that blow in the wind, but those few we can handle.

So now you know why we have the boxes. Of course this is our first year doing this. Stay tuned… maybe in 3 years we will change our mind… or maybe we will start a whole new craze.

Our first summer on the farm

There was still much to be done and I was no longer working the sales job with crazy hours. Now I could really get some things done around the farm. There was still the vegetable garden. It was without any fence at all, only half the chicken yard had fence around it and now my bestest best friend (my wife) decides she wants a flower garden ..."Ok honey" I said. I would start it right away. After all, if my wife wants a flower garden it was the least I could do. She has put up with me talking about chickens for the last seven months the least I could do was carve out a piece of land for a flower garden.















Next was the garden fencing and gate. I read a article on a make your own garden gate. The picture was cool and said to myself I could do that. Even better it would cost next to nothing. All the fencing and old post were piled up behind the barn so all I needed was a big hammer to pound them in place. Ok I really needed a post driver, but I had a big hammer instead. Visiting friend Toby (vacationing from Minneapolis) helped me make my gate. He was awesome! He helped me cut the tree branches to make the gate, helped me construct and hang it. And the best part... it was raining pretty much the whole time and he never once complained. (Thanks Toby for working so hard with me on your vacation)







My seedlings were growing well in the cold frame and the lettuce was doing fine. I was eager to transplant into my soil beds as soon as possible (weather permitting). Speaking of weather, at this time I was checking the weather forecast daily and getting very frustrated ~ this was a cold spring...

The apple and pear trees were in full bloom now, but it was too cold for the bees to come out of hibernation. We were getting worried that there would be no pollinating of our fruit trees. FINALLY the weather warmed up and we had bees for three days and all the blossoms fell off right after that, literally a 72 hour window. Look what those bees accomplished.

Ordering & Receiving Our Baby Chicks

The time had come I was now ready to place my order for chicks. My coop was in good shape. After hours and days of work, I had a clean, dry, draft free, predator free, warm coop for my day old chicks. I had done the research. I had read the catalog 16 times cover to cover. I wanted chickens for both meat and eggs.
The catalog is from Muarry McMurray Hatchery of Webster city, Iowa. (http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/) McMurray has been in the chicken business since 1917. Also Iowa is close to Wisconsin so my chicks would have a short trip through the U.S post office.
For my egg birds I choose 12 Rhode Island Reds. They lay brown eggs with the female mature weight at 6.5 lbs. Known as a “dual purpose bird”, meaning they can be used for stew & stock when they have matured to the molting stage. Molting stage is when they lose their feathers and stop laying eggs. At that point it becomes cost prohibitive to keep then longer. So they become stew chickens.


Then for my meat bird, I went with the Jumbo Cornish X Rock because they mature very fast. For the females it is at 9 weeks and then they are ready for the freezer or frying pan, now that’s fast.
So I called the 1-800-number to place a order they were very nice and friendly and knowledgeable. I got the order I wanted the only snag, was going to take a month longer than expected because their business was booming and all orders were behind. I knew I should have ordered sooner. {Note to self ~ order after Jan 1 when the new catalog comes out. Don’t wait} If you call them they will mail you a catalog for free.
My delivery date was May 26th, the day after Memorial day. I went to the post office a few days earlier and told them I was expecting a shipment of live chicks, like the catalog instructed, even gave then my cell#, everything. That morning came and I got in my car with my morning coffee, which I had to order online from Boca Raton, FL because once you start drinking fresh ground whole bean hand selected from the top 2% of the finest Arabica bean worldwide, it's kind hard to drink Folgers.
I get to the post office and inquire about my delivery and the postal worker says. "Nope, nothing here". I was almost in tears on the way home knowing my chicks were out there some where in the postal system and they needed me (and I was so disappointed). I went back to the coop to check the temperature. I needed 90 degrees under the brooder lamp which is raised just 12 to 14 inches from the floor. Good! Ok, I checked for possible security weakness. Just the day before I left the door opened and found a snake in the coop. And not just any snake, this was a Eastern Massasauga Rattler(http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/critter/reptile/massasauga.htm) a rare and endangered snake (though we didn’t know that at the time) "in my chicken coop". The first time I found it, my wife removed it and threw it in the grass outside. Now it was back and I had to act fast to neutralize the threat. I grabbed my trusty rock shovel, the one with a straight edge, and I decapitated the snake without hesitation. Sorry snake you only get one ‘get out of coop free’ pass. It was after this that we found out it was a rare snake and that we probably should have taken a picture of it and moved it further away.

That afternoon my mailperson knocked on my door and said, “We have chickens for you. The # we had for you didn’t work, but I told them I’d stop by and let you know”. I jumped in the car and was gone so fast I almost hit our mail lady. I got to the office and the postal worker said that they were peeping earlier, but that they must be sleeping cuz the box had been quiet. I set them in the passenger seat next to me and assured them everything was going to be ok now "Daddy's Here".

Why?

Hi, wife of PJ Farmer here. I'll be putting my two-cents in here and there.
So how does a girl who LOVES the city and LOVES the culture of Minneapolis end up raising chickens, growing a garden and living in the boonies...? Well it started about 3 years ago when we found out we were going to have a baby.
Babies make you think, at least I hope so. I knew out life was going to change, but I didn't know it meant leaving the city. In the last 5 years I've had 5 friends how have developed cancer (mostly breast cancer) and of those 5 ladies, 2 are no longer here and of those 5 only one of them was over the age of 35. Heck, I'm 36 now... I don't like those odds.

So I started asking "why?" There has to be a reason so many 30 year olds are developing cancer. Heck they won't even give you a mammogram till you’re in your forties. One friend found a lump in her breast by wiping some food that had fallen on her chest. The lump wasn't in a position that a self breast exam would have found. What is going on? You can’t tell me there is no reason. Now I am about to bring a baby into this world and I want to give my baby the best fighting chance I can. I know I have NO control over most of what is going to happen, but that which I can control… well I want to do right.

One of the biggest things I could (and would) control is the food my daughter eats. 30+ years ago was when foods with hormones really hit the shelves. Pesticides took on a life of there own and we killed EVERY bug that dared to even look crossed eyed at our food. Now here we are 30 years later and cancer is on the rise (as well as other issues), so we decided to go organic.

Now in Minneapolis getting organic isn’t really that hard. Super Target, Uptown Rainbow, and even Cub Foods have organic sections. There are even whole stores for organic food like the Coop on Lyndale, Whole Foods, and one of my favorites Fresh & Natural (they introduced me to grass feed beef and I’ll never go back). But even though it is easy to find the food it is still expensive. When Daryl lost his job after 4 years we felt it was time to move. I said, “Honey, I think God is kicking us out of the cities.” I LOVED my house in Mpls, but wasn’t crazy about the neighborhood. I also dreamed of a yard that my daughter could play in that I wouldn’t be fearful of a drive by or stray bullet. So we packed up and moved to the country.

Now organic food is so easy to find in Minneapolis… not so much here. And the small stuff we do find is very expensive. Grassway Foods in New Holstein is a great place and one of the first to offer organic eggs and raw organic milk, but again, not really in our price range for every day consumption.

Even before leaving the cities Daryl and I had talked about a “hobby farm”, but you k now that sounds good on paper, but who knew if that would really be what we wanted to do. So when we found a hobby farm that we could rent and give it a try I knew God was blessing us.

Trinity thought she was in heaven when she could just pick an apple off the tree anytime she wanted. There was prairie grass and wild flowers, a field for a horse maybe and lots of room for the dog to roam. I imagined Trinity making forts in the woods and being gone for hours playing in the summer time.
Steve is a great landlord for trusting us with his home and I only hope that when the time comes he will sell it to us, knowing that we will love it as much as his parents did.

Back to organic…. When we rented this place we knew immediately that we wanted to go organic. Yes, bugs can be pests, but without bugs our food doesn’t get pollinated, (it isn’t just bees that do that). Yes, I’m a little afraid of spiders or at least creeped out by them, but as long as they stay out of my house (where I use a Kleenex or the bottom of a shoe) I won’t kill them. I don’t want to spray for bugs and then have chickens eat those chemically dead bugs that then I eat… nope not doing that. So no bug chemicals.

Same with the veggies in the garden, whatever I put on those plants I’m then going to ingest and I don’t care what people say, washing isn’t going to get it all. So no garden chemicals. We aren’t trying to tell people that they are wrong or right, this is just the choice we have made. My father-in-law thinks we are crazy, but if I can maybe keep the excess processed food out of Trinity’s system (as well as my own and Daryl’s) and I can do something good for my environment (even if the environment is only our 80 acres) then it is my obligation as a parent and a human to do so. Ok, so I’m done for now. :-)

The Garden part 2

As I was establishing the plot’s soil and borders, I was germinating seeds indoors from seed I purchased online from SeedsofChange.com. Certified organic seed was chosen for several reasons one of those being I wanted to someday sell organic eggs from organic day range chickens and I wanted to grow my own chicken feed. Have you ever tried to buy 100lbs. of certified organic chicken feed? It's almost impossible! I live in farm country dairy land Wisconsin. I went to several local feed mills and farm stores nobody carries organic anything here. "What is this Or-gan-ick you speak of" or "we don't get to much call for that round here.” More on that later… back to the garden seeds.
The seeds were doing well considering we were not very well prepared for germinating several hundred seeds in our new farm house, but we made do with what we had. When it was warm during the day we put our seedlings outside in the cold frame I made from wood from my friend and neighbor with the saw mill and window from the barn. The temperature was 52 degrees outside and 73 degrees inside my cold frame It worked incredible well. Day after day bring the seedlings in and out and it and out. It finally warmed up enough so it was 50 or higher at night so my seedlings were safe.
I prepared my gardens and chicken yard as if there were roaming hordes of wild beasts seeking to invade and destroy every night. Most of my fencing material came from the barn. I used several dozen old fence post that were still solid and I found 200ft of heavy gage wire that was all rolled up, used but still good. I fenced the chicken yard first. I mean maximum overkill, triple layer fencing in some spots where I perceived a weakness in my defenses. I would go out at night to patrol border in search of the nocturnal predator that might be out there.
After several weeks of this I relaxed a little, this place was not as wild as I once thought it was. Looking up at the stares at night was so clear I could see distant galaxies… it was so quiet. The only sound was the frogs croaking around the waters edge. Breathing in a breath of fresh spring air, exhaling a huge sigh of relief I knew I was where I should be. My goal had been realized my family was safe and sound inside; my chicks were safe and warm sleeping under their lamp. This was true husbandry.....I sat down and cried....

The Garden

Now that the snow was gone we could start planning on the garden. The main plot was already there, but had not been used in a few years. I also had bigger plans that included a second and third plot. One we call the bird garden which is a bird food plot planted with a heirloom variety corn, Russian mammoth sun flower, pennyroya (a hardy ground cover with a strong menthol-mint aroma with insect repellent properties used since early Greek times), borage (an edible herb that chickens like to eat), and also Amaranth known for high protein seeds.

This required some real planning to accomplish. In the early spring I laid down a thick plastic tarp over the area to discourage grass from growing then a month later remove the tarp and did a controlled burn of area with garden hoses at the ready and my trusty wife by my side with a shovel. I lit the dead grass and started the burn carefully so it would not get out of control. I extinguished it several times and relit. (I once burned several hundred acres when I was 12 and was punished severely for it by my father and "The Belt" so I was really intense about this burn.)

It did not take long and I watered the area and watched long into the evening to make sure it would not flare up. The next step was some old fashioned sod busting with my new find from the barn my Murray 2hp rotor tiller. The soil was virgin and hard even after I attempted to soften with water. The wild grass and flowers that had owned the ground before were not going to give up their roots easily. It took several days, but once I got about five inches deep, I could start to add my soil amendments like sand and manure.

Nothing fancy, but the manure came from a friend who has a friend that owns a huge diary farm and they have a methane extraction facility there. The fresh manure is heated to 2,000 degrees and turned into energy. (It’s really cool.) This was not part of my research so I’m not that knowledgeable on the subject. I do know I got some of the finest manure I had ever had the pleasure of putting my hands in. I also learned that the farm was organic so the manure is too ~ BONUS!


<--- "Lower Garden"
The soil around the farm and area was brown clay so I needed to add sand and lots of it. I mentioned this to Steve one day. (I had looked into having several yards delivered from a local landscape business. The price was a full 2-week paycheck not an option.) So Steve said "oh you need sand I got sand" and walk up to the barn. I heard an engine start and out he comes with a skid loader/bobcat type machine and drove off into the woods way behind the barn. I just stood there with my tiller in my hand as the sound of the bobcat faded. Then as the engine sound got closer I saw that Steve had come back with a full yard and a half of pure sugar sand. I could not believe it!! "Where did you get that?" I asked. "Just behind the dump in the woods,” he says. And then he produced two more loads in a matter if a few minutes. I was happy as could be mixing my soil and manure and sand, the end result was one large plot 35x45 and two medium plots 25x30 (bird garden & lower garden) and a small herb garden. Total cost of soil prep $0.00.


"Main Garden" or "veggie garden"










"Bird Garden"

The Chicken Coop

During our cold arctic and snowy winter I spent a lot of time studying coop design and upkeep, & raising of organic birds. Lots of work needed to be done to the coop in order for it to house birds. It had not been used in many years. The 16X32 ft. building once held hogs then after a fire and a remodel it held hundreds of chickens back in the day. The windows were boarded up and falling apart, all three doors needed to be replaced. When spring came, the floor was flooded with water due to a negative drainage problem, the roof leaked in 14 different places and the inside was full of junk and extremely old poop from various animals. I talked to Steve about installing windows that came out of the barn. He said he would have his right hand man Kenny do it “‘cuz Kenny can do anything,” (Steve owns his own electric co. and has two employee - Kenny and Steve#2 of which we will see much of later in the story).

As soon as the snow started to melt I got to work on the coop. First thing I did was to remove all the storage junk inside and take down all the boards over the windows. One of the pleasures of living on the farm for me is having your own burning barrel. I pulled one metal barrel that looked to be in good shape out from behind the garage and started chiseling the top off (this took more determination than I expected). Then shoot holes in the bottom half with my trusty 45cal. pistol. Instant burning barrel! (I do recycle and take trash to a proper disposal site, but I also love to burn stuff.)

I had stopped at a few construction sites in my travels on sales route and picked up a good amount of leftover insulation from dumpsters used it to fill cracks and gaps in the windows and walls of the coop. Baby chicks can chill easily and die, so with the added insulation I got for free, I again saved tons of money while insuring my chicks stayed warm. With the spring rains I noticed some leaking in the roof. Once again everything I need was in the barn. I found big cans of black tar stuff and when the weather was right got on the roof and spread 2 galloons of tar over all the nail holes and that seemed to worked great. Cost of roof repair $0.


Next, I borrowed a power water sprayer from a friend and sprayed inside the coop for three hours removing all the old poop, spider webs and dirt from everything! And I mean everything… walls, ceiling and the floor. This was actually fun and will become a annual spring cleaning chore. One gallon of red barn & fence paint at $17 helped to paint the inside after my cleaning. Of course it was barn red. Also a 150Ft. of poultry fence, a box of good wood screws, tubes of window calking and expandable insulation foam for a total cost of $158.

Chickens need bedding on the floor of coop used much like cat litter three or four inches deep and needs to be change on a fairly regular basis, every three months is my personal preference. In my research I read of lots of ways to do this. Buying from the store would be the easy way, but costly because of the large size of my coop estimated cost per year $450. Not really a viable option for this farmer. So it turns out I have a neighbor that operates a old saw mill from the early 1900's powered by a tractor. It's really a site to see because I love all things wood. I needed to make friends with my new-found neighbor as he has something I need SAW DUST and lots of it. I noticed that he seemed to be home on Saturdays working his mill with two other guys. I stopped in one day asking if he would sell me some boards from a old weathered pile in his yard and his price was unbelievable low. I was happy to pay his price plus some extra so my new friend would remember me, when I was done loading all my boards and was about to leave I asked him about the huge pile of saw dust and said I would be interested a few truck loads, He said I could have as much as I needed for free just come and haul it away. On my way home I was pumping my fist and screaming some kind of victory cry. How could I get so excited about some pile of saw dust? What is happening to me?

Surviving the Winter

I was still working the crazy 12hr shifts to pay the rent, dreaming of spring, shoveling and blowing snow when I was not working or sleeping. My wife got a part-time job at a retail store; not much money, but better than nothing.

Our driveway was drifting like crazy in January. Steve the landlord was helpful and got the old tractor out of the barn to plow now and then, but we got our cars stuck in the drifting snow often and had to pay someone to plow several times.

Steve would come over and spend time in the barn which by the way we are not officially renting. The barn held all the junk that Steve’s parents had never thrown away. In the process of cleaning out the barn, I had the pleasure of sifting through the piles of farm junk, 65 years worth in fact. Steve’s parents lived through The Great Depression and never threw anything away if it had any possible use someday.

Here are a few of the things I discovered and got to keep: homemade chicken feeders and cool antique chicken waters made in the 1930's (worth hundreds of dollars to a collector). There were huge piles of scrap wood pieces of all kinds, every window that came out of the house over the last 65years (of which I used to make a cold frame). I also found 27 broom sticks of various kinds I used to make a chicken roost. Grain grinding mill, corn husker, poultry fence, tons of garden tools, old feed pails my wife turned into flower pots, and solid oak door I'm refinishing. The list goes on, we just could not believe how much was in the junk pile (not to mention how much we didn’t see). We wanted to keep everything but the buckets of rusty farm parts and I even kept some of those. I even found an old stair banister that I turned into a window box for the chicken coop.






I would often explore the barn when my daughter was having nap time. I found huge balls of fencing of different kinds, this saved me a ton of money. There was garden hoses, small garden tiller, several lawn mowers, & weed trimmers. Landlord kept saying "Don’t going buying anything cuz I probably have one in the barn." We’d smiled and say "OK!"

Our new house

Every day was something new to discover. We were now living on a real farm with eighty acres of land with barn, wood shed, work shed, garden plot, garage, fruit trees, and best of all a chicken coop. I could hardly believe it was real, our new friend Steve, the landlord, was very generous and agreed to let us do whatever we wanted with the place.
So we looked forward to spring, there was a lot of work to be done and plans to be made.
The basic idea was to raise organic chickens for meat and eggs and start a 100% organic garden with plans to make homemade salsa and tomato sauce. I spent months online and my wife brought books from the library researching various topics like, organic gardening, chickens, food processing, woodworking, birdhouse building, plants, pests, bio-security, worm farming, fencing, farmers almanac, weather patterns, soil testing, composting, manure, more chickens, how to build a cold frame, greenhouse, nest boxes, chicken roosting, raised garden beds, canning, wildflower growing and drying, organic fertilizer, egg processing and more....