Swale Results

Just wanted to show the differences between the orchard with swales, and my neighbor's land without. I've grazed the cows through a half dozen times or so for 6-8 hours each time. The difference is pretty great.

Now only 9 more acres to dig in... :-)

Getting Ready for 100 Trees

So today I dug 35 holes as the weather looks to be breaking this week. These trees (black locust, honey locust, seedlings from a local thorny locust, and mimosas) will serve as a windscreen, privacy screen, nitrogen fixers, bee fodder, and future fence posts.

The rest of the seedlings will go in as nitrogen fixers in the orchard. Within a couple of years they'll be coppiced and supporting the fruit trees.

Snowpacolypse 2015

So we had several peach trees, nectarine trees, and one cherry tree in bloom when Mother Nature decided to break my heart and freeze those early blossoms. I was planning on heavily thinning each tree this first year to encourage maximum growth, but it still just killed me. The trees will be fine, and thankfully there's always next year.

On the positive side, all the mint, thyme, and rosemary seemed to make it through covered just fine. The Swiss Chard and strawberries though uncovered seemed none the worse for wear. Only time will tell. :-)

Belted Galloways for the Small Homestead

After reading, and reading, and reading about what breed of cattle would work best for our little farm we honed in on the Belted Galloway. They're highly adaptable from their original Scottish wet and cold to Texas heat. They're very efficient (just behind the Longhorn) in converting marginal pasture into weight gain. The final thing they had going for them was that their meat, even when fully finished on grass is highly marbled.                                                          
From the Joel Salatin school of farming we'll be paddock shifting the ladies and doing our best to repair the pasture and ultimately improve the soil itself. Full grown they'll tip the scales around 1000 pounds, roughly half of most modern beef cattle. As time progresses we should have about 1.5 beeves to sell, hopefully by early 2018.

Onion sets

I dug in a shallow trench for asparagus, put them in, and then covered them in 3 bags of soil and 2 bags of Miracle-Gro. 40 sweet onion sets and 40 red onion sets went in around the asparagus along with 6 strawberry plants. The strawberries didn't survive first contact with the free range chicken, but as of 21 February a good number of the onions are starting to peek through. Hopefully the harvest wil be bountiful.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Getting ready for another cow to be added to the herd, and if things go well she'll be calving shortly after she gets here and we want to keep her and the calf safe. I'm planning to set up a paddock shift system after the calf is born to help manage the pasture (preven over grazing) and repair the damage that was done to the pasture in the past.

The Mighty Turnip

In the fall of 2014, after planting all the trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes there was quite a bit of bare soil to cover. I went to the Co-Op over in Mertens and noticed a big bag of turnip seed on the shelf, and if memory serves, it was about $8. Brought it home and handbroadcast the seeds onto the open dirt, no muss, no fuss, no raking, no watering, a couple of weeks later turnips popping up everywhere. Great ground cover, great soil penetration, and lots of bio-mass to pile up in the swales in the spring, or so I assumed. Fast foward a few months (and a mild winter) and the biennial nature of the turnip had other plans. 

When I think Turnips, I think Russian peasants, and finally growing Turnips made me better understand why the Turnip was so important to so many. The greens can be plucked and eaten early, though they do taste like turnips... :-) The root crop is winter hardy, the mild Texas winter never even touched the greens, they grew taller and fuller until beginning to bloom in early February. I had no idea what was to follow, bee heaven. Today was the 21st of February, and walking through the Turnip flowers today I was surrounded by 1000's of bees happily working and hopefully they'll remember where we're at when the fruit trees start blooming. 

Bob Wells Nursery

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.