What have we done since our last blog entry on February 1? Lots of projects inside and outside…as well as the endless projects.
Winter left some time in March. The plastic walls I had put up to keep the pond protected over winter world well but they were very noisy. The strong winds also tore a few grommets so I’ll have to add some more supports next year. Overall the water stayed a comfortable temperature for the koi and warmed up quickly with the warmer temperatures.I usually complete a round of broad spectrum disease treatment in the spring. While I don’t have any evidence, I feel that it might kill a few heebie-jeebies and give the koi a head start against any potential problem bacteria. So far we are doing very well except for the shiro utsuri with the lump on her side. It’s not very pretty but she does not seem bothered by it.We are eating wheat germ koi food a few times a day. The smaller fish seem hungrier than the larger koi.The activity level is up with spring temperatures.We did not go to the All American Koi Show this year. It really is a fun event with beautiful koi and koi show drama. I did enter two koi into the show with no expectation of winning. The winners are all pretty high end koi. However, I was pleasantly surprised to scroll through the winner’s list a few days later and saw my sumizakura from Mystic Koi/Shawn McHenry had placed well. There are some pretty serious koi keepers who really go all out to win. Mikki Hernandez Swanson of DemiKoi shared a conversation that she and Devin Swanson had with a japanese breeder about some controversy with this year’s show. The breeder asked “How can you lose at a koi show?” – a reminder that just because you didn’t win, that doesn’t mean you lost. Kind of a good maxim for a lot of things in life.Bouncing around on the timeline, while I was judging at the San Diego Koi Show, the tree planter started the permanent chicken run. We had a cheap, temporary run that worked but wanted something larger for our flock.This project took a few weeks. We’re pleased with how it came out and the chickens love it. We are now putting back in some plants to spruce up the area. We have even planted some bamboo not too far from the run since they enjoy sitting under bamboo.Happy chickens = lots of eggs. Egg production has been up and we are so close to an 18 egg day. I have 18 hens that should be laying eggs but some of the hens lay less than 7 eggs/week. We really don’t need 18 eggs each day, in fact we struggle with surplus when they are laying one dozen eggs each day. My hay farmer purchases most of the eggs.Our plan is to buy a set of chicks each year to supplement the flock. We’ll move some of the older hens along and always have hens that are at their peak egg production years. About four weeks ago, I purchased four starlight green eggers (green eggs) and two rustic rock (brown eggs). Very skittish bunch. They are finally brave enough to eat some dried worms that are fed to them by hand.Now I really didn’t need any more chicks but the tree planter happened to see ameracauna chicks at Rural King. I’m a little leery of chicks from this store because we have had several that died of some mysterious illness. However, I have always wanted the blue egg layers and it was Easter weekend. So four little chicks came home a few days ago. They seem to be hardy and I am crossing my fingers they will survive.We now have chickland in the the garage. The larger chicks will join the flock in July and the new chicks will join the flock in August. We always ensure they join as a group of four or more young hens to give them some strength in numbers. The older hens will most likely bully the newcomers.I started my seedlings pretty much on time this year. I set up shelves in the bathroom this year which made it very easy to water. Some of my seedling containers came with their own LED lights in the lid.You can see some tomatoes are out in the garden and today I sowed some cucumbers (yes a little late, but I’ve been busy). The garden is pretty weedy and this task is always at the bottom of the list. It has gotten to the point that I can’t avoid it. I have some cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower but it might get too hot for them. I really should consider a shade for them in the hopes they will thrive.Blackberries, blueberries and strawberries are doing fine in this garden. The raspberries transplanted last fall look questionable.Other spring signs are peonies, bamboo shoots, the turkeys, dogwood flowers, all sorts of flowering fruit trees and ramps! My little ramp patch continues to remain little. Twelve plants returned. I may need to try a ramp patch somewhere else. At the farmers’ market I asked one of the vendors about ramps and the patches are usually well kept secrets. Harvesting is often limited to 10% of the patch.The japanese maples are a delight all spring. From the first lovely green, green with pink, pink, red, purple leaf – every day is a fun surprise to see something different. The spring show is still small because many of my trees are young but I can that each year will be filled with visual interest. The nice thing is that the show goes on for weeks. The japanese maple dealer went on a spring tree hunting trip and I stuck to ordering a few trees only. I do hope to get a larger tree this fall – acer palmatum ‘Octopus’. It’s kind of a large, wild, unruly japanese maple that has some asymmetrical arms like an octopus. Not really favored among homeowners with tidy landscaping needs but perfect for my backyard.We have thrown in the towel when it comes to growing grass in this area. We have hired a professional to put in sod around the pond this year and rockscape the entire side slope of the pond area. We always have good intentions for this area but just lose steam.Another project that has been languishing but I am determined to complete by July 4th…the dry river bed and maple tree islands.The bamboo is really thriving and was recently trimmed back. Bamboo shoots will grow 12-18 inches a day! The tree planter goes through and cuts back the bamboo that are rather old and does some control of the runners. The new bamboo is coming in thicker and we should be able to harvest large sticks in a few years to make interesting things.Visitors to the farm are also assigned projects. Over Easter weekend we had three energetic children (7 years, 5 years and 4 years old) make a new hobbit bridge for us.We also have some very random projects. Why have stump grinder come out when you can spend weeks burning out a large tree stump? A black walnut stump is pretty hard to burn. We do see this technique used a lot around here and I’m sure it satisfies the pyromaniac within.Weeding is a most un-fun project. There is just no way to stay ahead of it. The brush mower is our best friend but I still work on creating these large weed piles.This was a really exciting event. I have been wanting a solar powered water well in the small pasture for some time. Step one was to drill a well and it took about two days. Water zones were found at 95 feet, 250 feet and 320 feet. We opted to have the well depth be 405 feet, yielding 5 gallons per minute.A few weeks later, they returned to install a pump, run the electrical, and install a ground hydrant. The solar plan was abandoned due to cost. This new ground hydrant changes so many things in this pasture. We now have a constant waterer for the chickens and I am able to water the fruit trees and my new flower garden easily.We recycled the old chicken rug into a netted flower garden. I am hoping that having a large source of flowers will help this year’s bees.The most exciting thing about this new well is the opportunity to do more fun agricultural projects. The tree planter wants to try out growing some vegetables on a larger scale. This sounds good but I’m wondering about preserving/giving away surplus. This winter, we will start on building the outdoor garden of my dreams. The vegetable garden by the barn will be taken down and our new garden will be built where the red star is located on the photo. I’m thinking Tik Tok worthy design.While we had a lot going on outside, inside was managed chaos as well. We got through a kitchen renovation. some painting projects — and we’re still not done indoors 😂Today we had some shingles delivered. It’s always annoying to look at the koi pond and the house does not match. So, we’re changing the roof color of the house to black and we’ll need to have the house painted, hopefully later this year.
So that’s around the farm in 80 days. We think that we should be getting ahead to have some loaf around time but that’s not happening. Good thing we like doing most of these projects.😂
You must be logged in to post a comment.