Keepin' it rural........

Race has gone back to work, and so have we. The slave labor force was immediately called into action to help get things back into maintainable state, here on our 13 acre bit o' earth.

I am currently super-jazzed about the still small, grass roots trend across this country toward sustainable agriculture. So, in between baseball or music, or theater, the kids have been forced into supporting my move to become more self sustaining, here on the hard, rocky, unforgiving mountainous land that we have. (Of course they are also directly FED by this as well, so there is SOME motivation. ;-) )


Here you will see part of the unskilled labor force painting our newly resurrected chicken house.(Thank-you G.W) It has a simple, but very sturdy construction: chicken wire floor, plywood walls, and a metal roof with a sky light.

The next day we built the run. Austin and Jackson dug all the postholes and set the posts in a bit of quickcrete, and Savannah and I were in charge of the poultry wire and the staple gun and the Lowe's runs.
I used the Big Saw for the first time and I am no longer afraid to do so. Raw power, man....Raw Power!
When I took this picture, we hadn't hung the door on it's hinges yet. (Because SOMEONE forgot to get them on her 2nd trip to Lowe's that day!)
The girls will stay in their run all summer until my gardening is done , and then they will be able to forage to their hearts content.

Here are the girls in their new home. They are quite happy little pullets, and had already scratched in a bunch of leaves from outside the door. The girls are fed a diet that consists largely of vegetable scraps. The idea is this: The wire floor is covered with about 4-6 inches of wood shavings. the girls constantly scratch and turn these shavings under. CONSTANTLY.The wood shavings and chicken manure make awesome compost. After the summer, we will shovel this all out onto the compost heap, which will go onto the garden. And then we will replace the floor with fresh shavings. No waste! And we replenish the soil for the next season.

This is our other project. I expanded our garden this year, and this is the newest part. You are looking at broccoli, peppers, and potatoes. (Even though you can't really see the potatoes!)

This is one of the raised beds that we built this year right beside the house. We have already eaten alot of the lettuce out of this, but you get the idea. And I planted broccoli here as well. I really like the raised beds, because as long as you pay attention to the soil, you can really grow a lot in a very small space.

And this is the rest of the garden. The brown container is planted with carrots. The other things in the picture are strawberries,blueberries, cabbage,peppers, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and cucumbers.

I also planted tomatoes and squash up near the house, just outside the kitchen.

I love this stuff, and I am thinking hard about the whole concept of sustainable agriculture,which is nothing new, but was actually quite commonplace before Big Brother got involved in our food supply.

So that's what we've been up to! I already wish that I had tilled up an even bigger garden, and I am wondering how well crops would grow on a mountainside.

Cheers!

melissa