The other 2

2 of our girls

Our new Suburban farm

Thanks to Meg's Eggs we got four two years old hens last night. Three Wyandotte chickens (two gold and one silver) and a pretty Rhode Island Red, all still within the reasonable age making them good laying hens. Meg is a nice little farmer girl with a Phd. in some useful science, 85 chickens, about half a dozen goats, and some assorted turkeys. She had a good attitude toward sustainable living and grows nearly all of her own food on a few acres out near Milano, Oregon. She will probably miss her four girls, but probably knows we mean them no harm. It may take a few days for the dogs to quiet down and the hens to start producing, but it will happen.

Part of our plan to sell a micro farm in a sub-urban town near Intel.

We got a nice coop from Costco a week or so back. The manufacturer had marked them down from $660 to $295, so we snatched one up. The watering and feeding containers were less than thirty dollars at Coastal Farm, the feed is inexpensive too.

The chickens add a nice protein to the diet that the suburban farm proposes. Each chicken should give something like 200 eggs a year, making four chickens plenty of chickens for a small family. If the new owners don't want them, they come with us to our Creekside Farm in about two months.

Our garden is a neat little low maintenance design which might easily be expanded. It should yield about three weeks of produce a year, spread over a season, a has peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, Onions, little potatoes, strawberries, lettuces, peas, cucumbers, and beans, all in the ground and doing pretty well. I put a watering system together and covered the beds with weed blocking "plastic mulch" to keep things easy. I made the isles between the rows wide enough so that the plants can spill over a bit without making work difficult. 

Another Farm goal achieved, two yesterday alone. So things are starting to move pretty quickly, in a relative sort of way. We had planned on doing this when we decided our back yard last year, but it took a while due to weather and budget restrictions. I covered over the entire back yard with 6 mil black plastic to exhaust the seed bank in the soil and kill off as much of the grasses as I could. Then roto-tilled the rows neatly, keeping the soil packed in between. We should get a good harvest this year.

But this is not about the house and its little farm, this is about the Farm and its big dreams.

Tiny house project update

We have done the demolition on the trailer.  Doesn't seem like much,  but it took a whole day.

Next up is buying three Balance of the parts. This happens tomorrow and then construction begins.

After this comes another.

Life will go forward.

We have an awfully large compost pile at the Farm. It has been building, and shrinking (due to breakdown) for nearly a year now. Stuff we put there comes from my landscape maintenance business and includes some live plants as well as grass clippings and leaves.

In one place there seems to have been some Bearded Iris which has taken hold and given us flowers.

In two weeks we will have Tractor Day #6 and will turn our compost pile over to let it cook down some more. I expect the compost will eventually feed many of our first plantings. So maybe we should collect up the Iris and put it to good use.