Implements

We finally started building our mulch layer. The mulch layer should allow us to keep our produce growing without using chemicals to keep the weeds down. We have another couple of hours work to put into it to get it completed.
We're receiving our 5000 asparagus plants tomorrow! The weather this week is pretty wet and cold, so we won't be able to get them in the ground for a while. The asparagus farm that we purchased the asparagus crowns from said that they will keep in a cool place for about a week. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we can get them in the ground in the next week or less. We've been working on a design to make an implement to create the asparagus furrows that are spaced so that we can use the same cultivator for mechanical weeding that we use for sweet corn. To make the furrow implement we're trying to use the tool bar from an old cultivator that we've pulled all of the sweeps off of and then attached 2 large sweeps that will make our trenches to drop the crowns in. This work is being done over at my brother's shop so that we can work out of the weather. Now that the asparagus is on the way the priority has shifted to completing this implement. The math required to place the rows, the sweeps, and the plants has been a good exercise to teach the kids why you need to learn math... or why you need someone like Sharon around to work with.

Alfalfa Asparagus Transplanting

The alfalfa planting is finally finished! I followed up with the HUGE field roller. Getting it from the implement dealer where I rented it to home was an adventure. It closed with giant hydraulic cylinders that raised the two outside sections high into the air. Even closed into transport mode it hung over into the on coming lane and because it was so heavy, running on gravel was tough. It looked like a child's robotic toy scaled up to an enormous size. It did the job though. Rolled the ground pretty flat. The attached image shows what it looked like from behind my tractor.
The asparagus ground was disked for the first time in 6 years. The asparagus area had alfalfa on it for the past 5 years. We didn't spray to kill off the alfalfa in an effort to keep the produce areas as free of chemicals as possible, but I can see that that alfalfa will be hanging on for many sessions of cultivation before it finally gives up to our mechanical means of "weed" control.

Alfalfa

The alfalfa planting is underway. We have someone drilling the alfalfa and an oat nurse crop for us. We expect the planting to be completed today. I'll follow up with a HUGE field roller to make sure everything is pressed in an there is the best soil to seed contact we can get. It is supposed to rain on Friday night, to the timing should be just about perfect.

Pasture Moves

This weekend we finished the egg-mobile, the portable chicken coop, and the chickens have been moved to the pasture in their new mobile home. We checked on them last night and about 10 of the chickens were perched on the running gear under the coop after the sun went down. We put them inside and found out this morning that there were 2 that must have perched somewhere else and we didn't see them in the dark.
We also finished the fence work and moved all of the cows onto pasture. The cows will be moved to the outside rotational grazing area until June 15th. This allows the cool season grasses to be eaten short by the cows until the prairie grasses are ready to grow. Prairie grasses are warm season grasses, so the cows are used as a management tool to maximize our native prairie grasses for wildlife cover over the winter.

Fence Repairs

The dirt work for our new hoop building was completed on Thursday. During the construction the contractor was pulling a pan to scrape up clay from one part of the farm and move it to the construction site and they hit a cattle gate which pulled down the post and and destroyed the gate. So today's work will be to go to town to buy a new gate and to fix all of the fences. The other issue with the fence is that the pan hung too low some times and broke the wires that run underground between the gates to feed electric past the gate openings. These have to be dug by hand and have new wires put back in. Since bulldozers and giant equipment were running back and forth through the gates, digging the wires in should be a chore, but hopefully we get it done before the rain comes that they are calling for today.

Field Work

The weather has been so nice here at Mulberry Grove Family Farm that we started doing field work. Last years soybean field has been 3/4 disked. I expect to complete the disking today with the expectation of planting alfalfa next week. I am a little worried that I disked when the soil is still too wet. With the price of fertilizer and seed it is hard to feel comfortable with even a little mistake like poor soil preparation.

Coop, Hoop, and Chicks

We are still working on the movable coop. It's a good thing we're using this old hay rack as a coop. I fell through one of the boards while working on the coop and if I had been throwing a 40lb bale of hay when the board broke, it could have been a lot more painful that it was. It will be another few days of work before we're ready to move the hens to the pasture in their new movable coop.
Our newest chicks are going to the pasture this weekend. They'll be put in one of the Salatin huts and moved around the pasture. The older hens have been roaming around the yard every afternoon, enjoying the green grasses that are starting to come up, eating the occasional worm or bug that is about, and eating corn that was dropped while carring corn from the gravity wagon for feeding our corn stove all winter.
The hoop building that we'll be using to store our hay in is finally underway. We cleaned out the old fences and iron that was in part of the grove where the new building will sit, and we will have a dozer brought in to clear the area of trees in the next couple of days. Sharon is broken hearted over losing the trees but once we plant lower growing trees and other plants around the new building I'm sure we'll learn to like it... I hope.

Germination

We moved the second set of tomatoes to the growing rack. There is a 15 day separation between the first set and this second set. The cotyledons had just started to spread out on this set when I moved them. The move was a little earlier this time in hopes of keeping the plants even more stocky and under light earlier. Its a bit warmer in the basement where the growing rack is, even with the cold snap we have just encountered. There are so many variables that it will be hard to say in the end, but the hope is that we have a couple sets of plants that have a 15 day delay in maturity.

Chicken Coop

We're building a new movable chicken coop for our pastured laying chickens. It's being built on an old hay rack, which is a flat rack with wheels used in this part of the country for hauling hay bales or might have been for tobacco if you were in MD's tobacco country. The coop frame has turned out to be taller than I had anticipated. Here in our part of Iowa, everything that you build for animal housing that is to be placed in the open field needs to be built with wind in mind. 45mph wind is not that unusual here. If its too high or not heavy enough based on its height, it will blow away and be destroyed. We had 2 Salatin type mobile chicken huts last year. They were both low to the ground and leight. One was lower than the other. It survived. The other is a heap of twisted metal and lumber in a ravine at the back of the farm. The lesson we learned is that all things equal, wind is our dominant design factor. So the mobile chicken coop is a little high, but I'm making it wide and heavy. We'll know by the end of the season if it was too high... I'm concentrating on the layer boxes today. We'll have 12 layer boxes in the mobile chicken coop. We've found that chickens actually seem to prefer to lay in the same boxes along with everyone else. So even though we'll have 12, we know that there will be some boxes that will be seldom used. We hope to have the coop finished this week. The new chicks are getting big and we will be moving them all out to their summer pastures soon.

Sprouts and Snow

The tomatoes have just about all germinated. The peppers have started to germinate today. The tomatoes will be moved to the light rack tomorrow to keep them from getting leggy. We had several inches of snow last night. Nice to be able to look at the new green sprouts to remind us that it's spring even if its white outside.