Blowing out the found well

Last Friday we had the well blown out on the land near Alamosa.

Fuzzy footed chicks and steaming mulch

Baby Bantam white Silkie

I got six more baby chicks on Friday. Two are interesting and four are run of the mill layers--New Hampshire Reds. One is the tiniest Barred Rock Bantam Cochin and the other is a white Silkie, also a Bantam. The Silkie has got to be the cutest little ball of fluff I have ever seen. I have fallen in love with a chicken! The Cochin is the tiniest chick in my chicken crib (rubbermaid container), but the one with the most attitude, running over to peck at my fingers when I fill the food dish. Could this tiny critter be a rooster? The two bantams are straight run, so we won't know what sex they are until they mature into their teenage bodies.

Tiny Bantam Barred Rock Cochin

The Cochins and the Silkies have feathered feet and are just amusing. I have decided to add chickens that are fun to look at to my flock. I still fantasize about a peacock wandering around our small farm, but haven't been able to find one locally...yet. I'd like to get some Araucanas which lay blue and green eggs, and some heirloom chicken varieties too, which used to be the standard on old family farms before agribusiness started breeding chickens for profit and mass laying capabilities.

Our organic eggs are a big hit with the Canon Co-op (http://www.canonfoodco-op.com/) members. Thank you guys! We are selling a dozen for $3.50 which is a bargain when a dozen sells for $3.66 at City Market in town. How about that? We will have to see if our price is enough to cover the cost of the certified organic feed. I know our chickens are happy chickens and the eggs are big with bright yellow, firm yolks. Backyard chickens are the best. I recommend a flock for everyone.


 Richard had been spreading leaves and mulch like mad. We got our second drop of wood chips from the tree trimmers, and the pile was steaming as it was dumped from the truck. It makes Richard soooo happy.  He has been working on the new flower garden space and will eventually move to the upper garden, which he has laid out on paper...keyhole gardens connected by a central garden path and anchored by our big raised bed which now contains garlic and onions.

I'm thinking perhaps our wall on the road side should become a wooden privacy fence, which we can buy and work on in segments. Originally we wanted to build a wall out of rammed earth tires or earth bags and cover it all with an adobe finish. Very nice, but we are having trouble coming up with the materials to get it all done and we need a fence to keep the deer out of our garden and to keep the neighbors eyes off of the tire windbreak surrounding the greenhouse. The tires don't seem to be a big hit...aesthetically speaking, but they work great to protect the greenhouse.

Tire wall wind protection

Today we are expecting another mulch drop, and hopefully we can move injured Guinea into the greenhouse. I took off his foot splint and his wound is healing nicely--all pink and healthy looking. He's squawking more and more into the evening hours when the little kids are asleep, so he has to move back to the great outdoors. Richard also has plans to either go into town and pickup the leftover grape squeezings (to make compost) from the Abby's wine making or to go to the alpaca ranch for a load of alpaca poop for our sheet mulch project. Maybe we can do both.

Saturday we went to a small farm in Florence that had llama poop for free and met the nicest family. The man may let me adopt a female llama to put in with our goats as a livestock guardian. He says he has too many and wants to find approved homes for some of them. We will wait and see. Wouldn't it be exciting to have more llama wool?

Oh, looks like the big orange truck is here with the wood chips....

Happiness is...a truck full of leaves and a yard full of mulch

Leaves of Fall. Falling leaves. Lots of leaves. Bags of leaves, by the side of the road. This week we collected leaves on Richard's days off, filling the truck several times over several days. At first I was a little embarrassed to be cruising the neighborhoods, stalking the leaves, but after a while it becomes old news, and the kids are still in the back seat screaming and fighting, lending a moment of normalcy to this strange farm life. I'm more concerned about what the old lady walking her dog thinks of my out-of-control kids than the strange man (i.e. Richard) picking up the neighbors' trash, and really, people only ask occasionally what we are up to, and most nod in understanding when we tell them.

truck o' leaves

You see, we have no soil at our house in the high desert land. No workable soil. No dark, rich, plant-able soil. Being big fans of the Permaculture movement, and like knowledgeable gardeners and farmers everywhere, we know we have to build our soil. It isn't going to make itself out of nothing, so we have to find organic materials to compost into beautiful, nutrient rich soil that will become the basis of our gardens. We sheet mulch. We compost. We prepare for next Spring, when our flower beds and garden beds of leaves and mulch will have composted down into lovely, workable soil.

There are so many wonderful books on composting that will tell you how to create a basic compost pile, and the main ingredient is "stuff" like leaves, grass, hay, or any other plant materials. We mix anything we can find, including plant kitchen scraps, with goat or llama poop and hay, weeds, wood chips, whatever, into compost piles located strategically around our small farm.

Compost bin made of pallets

The piles take about a year to decompose into something resembling soil, and it might be faster if we dedicated more time to watering and turning our piles, but even our unworked piles eventually turn into soil, which is a vast improvement over the desert hard pan we have in our yard.

So, it is the season for leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. We plan on creating a size-able sheet mulch project in our new upper garden space.

seeding the chicken yard

When Richard went to get hay this week, he came back with a big bag of Rye grass seed. Enough for an acre. When we moved the chicken yard to the other side of the coop, the plan was to plant the old yard and the old garden.

So, out went the leaves, followed by a good dose of water, then the seed was spread, old rotting hay was applied and the sprinkler was put on again.  Always water in the layers. The seed was spread in the tomato field as well, and we hope to move the llamas to a new pasture and seed their cactus filled pen with the Rye grass. It is a start, and hopefully a winter cover crop that will improve the soil.

leaves and bamboo

It was a bountiful few days with  leaves and bamboo stalks, but it got better when the local tree trimmer dumped a load of mulch in our driveway. Crazy. Epic yet? No, Richard assures me, it has not reached epic proportions yet. I'm not sure I have ever seen him look so happy as when that big orange truck dumped a mass of wood chips right behind his pile of bagged leaves.

wood chips

The chips were gone in a day, spread out onto our pathways to prepare for the snow and the winter mud that comes with it. Next load will go into the upper garden

And, while picking up the bamboo stalks in a trash pile, Richard scored some live bamboo from the man who was unfortunately not composting his leaves and garden detritus, but was willing to sell us bamboo if we dug it. Sounded too good to be true.$5 for a big bucket that planted windscreen/privacy barriers on the two western corners of our house.

I have now come up with a layout for my cut flower garden, bordered by the fast growing and very tall (7-10 feet) bamboo that was planted somewhere around what we suspect is the leach field for our septic tank. No edibles over there, but plenty of pretty flowers to gaze at and cut to sell at the farmer's market next year. Now all I need is some sheet mulch for my new flower garden--more leaves and more wood chips. Next week we are hooking up old "Lucky" (the horse trailer) to the back of the truck so when we cruise for leaves, we can bring home three times as much.

It is a strange little farming and gardening community we have immersed ourselves in. On a trip to pick up cow manure (for our sheet mulching projects), we came across an acquaintance who was filling her truck with bags of leaves, and so happy for our windfall of compost-able materials, she was almost cheering. Only a fellow gardener would understand. In addition, Richard has been nominated for a board position with the Canon Co-op, http://www.canonfoodco-op.com/. Only been here a year and a couple of months and I feel like we have fallen into the right place. Synchronicity in action. It is a wonderful thing.