Every summer, around the 4th of July, my brother and his family come down for a visit. My sisters, who live around here, also come out and we spend several days hanging out and catching up. This year, just like every year, was jam packed with all sorts of fun! The first day we celebrated Miley’s 8th birthday…
Here it is July already and I’m just now getting around to doing an update on what all has been happening in my garden in June. Oh well, better late than never, right?
When I started out the year, I had two goals I wanted to work towards. My first goal was to have a neater garden. I’ve always dreamed of having one that’s more appealing to the eyes, you know… with neat little walk ways and flowers growing, bees buzzing and butterflies fluttering around. One that when you walk into it, gives you a calm, relaxed feeling…
But then I walk into my garden and reality hits…
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When we started out with our first flock of chicks, we really didn’t have any plans on adding any other type of fowl to our flock. But then one day, when we stopped into the feed store to get some more chick feed, we saw that they had baby turkeys for sale. And well, one thing led to another and we ended up bring a few of them home. Assuming they’d do just fine living with the chickens, we put them in the coop with the chicks. They got along fine and we just figured they’d all coexist happily.
A few days later, I started doing a little research on raising turkeys. I know, I should have done that before we got them, but it didn’t happen. Lesson learned. So I came across an article that said that turkeys and chickens shouldn’t be raised together. I started doing more research on it and found the same info all over the internet. In fact, I found very little on raising them together successfully.
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Over the years that I’ve had a garden, I haven’t ever been that interested in companion planting. I’ve always liked everything to have its own space in neat little rows, or semi-neat crooked rows in my case. Planting certain plants together to benefit each other never really crossed my mind, up until last year. I was having problems with bugs invading some crops in my garden so I started researching organic ways to control them and ran across an article on companion planting. I found it really interesting and wanted to try it to see if it would really work. Since I had already planted my garden, I mostly focused on planting various flowers and herbs that would help to control the bugs. The kids really got into it and had so much fun buying different herbs and flowers and then researching too find the best companions to plant them next to.
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Remember the alfalfa patch we planted last fall? Well, week before last we had it swathed for the first time.
Lately things have been a little busy around here… actually more like a lot busy. There have been lots of things happening and I have so much to write about but I’ve just been lacking the time to get it all done. This week things should calm down so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get caught up here. Look for new posts to come soon!
One thing for sure, aside from it being busy here, is it’s finally summer!!!
YAY!
As cool as it’s been I didn’t know if summer would ever come.
But it did.
And I’m so glad.
It just puts you in such a happy mood you just have to kick up your heels and celebrate!
Happy first day of summer!
When we first moved here, we burned down an old chicken coop that was falling down. There was a cement foundation under it and as soon as we cleared out all the debris we instantly decided it would make a perfect strawberry bed. Due to lack of time, resources and other projects taking priority over it, our strawberry patch ended up growing weeds and was used as a place to store tomato cages.
This year all that changed because our compost pile was finally ready to use so we were able to fill it up with compost and dirt without having to buy any.
Before we started raising chickens, I never realized that there were different types of them. To me a chicken was a chicken, whether it laid eggs or was used for meat, I figured they were all the same. It wasn’t until I started doing research on the different types that I learned the differences between meat birds and layers. Even then, I still didn’t really believe there would be that much difference between the two when it came to using them for meat. It wasn’t until we tried butchering a couple of laying breed roosters along with some meat birds that I finally realized the difference.
The layer breed turned out rubbery and tough… so rubbery in fact; it was almost rubberier than a rubber chicken, if you can imagine that…
Each year, when deciding how many meat birds we want to raise, we start out excited and look forward to raising a new flock… and each time we order, we get a little more ambitious and want to try a few more than we had previously… and then each time butchering time comes around we say “UGH” and wonder “what we were thinking?”
So the other day when we checked the chickens and decided butchering day was getting close, we all said “UGH” at the same time. Really, butchering isn’t all that bad, it’s just one of those things we dread and put off, mostly because it’s a lot of work. But once we get started, we really don’t mind doing it.
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It’s always an exciting time when you get your first harvest from the garden. All the hard work and effort finally starts to pay off and you can finally start to enjoy all your efforts!
Well the other day we got our first harvest…
Humble Little Homestead 