I can't believe it has been so long since I posted on the blog. Needless to say, farming is work especially when you work! The summer has been a tough one with a major grasshopper invasion that isn't quite over and moderate drought conditions. We are praying that Hurricane Miriam and the cold front have a nice collision tomorrow and bring some much needed rain.
One of my favorite finds this month is this
website. It is a site for farm girls and has been fantastic. I joined and can't wait to get started on earning badges. Sort of like girls scouts but we do things that help us learn more about all kinds of things related to farming and so forth. I am looking forward to learning more about the organization.
Garden
The garden was definitely a favorite place for the grasshoppers and I waged a valiant war against them. Of course, we strive to be organic and natural with minimal pesticide use. I am happy to say that even though, I lost more than half my crops, we only used pesticide on the few surviving pumpkin plants. They will be ornamental for us and I refused to let the nasty buggers have them all. I lost all my peaches, cilantro, cucumbers, corn, beans , watermelon, and eventually my onions to hoppers. They got the purple hull peas after we got a good couple of pickings. We could have gotten so many more but did at least get 12 quarts.
The best crops were figs, lettuce, some spinach, radishes, onions (until the hoppers discovered them), patty pan squash, zucchini squash, peppers, cantaloupe, and okra. The okra is still producing pretty well despite being punished by ants and grasshoppers. The cherry tomatoes have done fairly well all season but none of the other tomatoes survived the pests. The figs were outstanding. I probably picked over 100 pounds just off my mature tree. Despite being chewed to pieces at the top by the grasshoppers, the tree is surviving well in the lower branches and putting out more fruit. I am working to keep the hoppers off of it. We also planted 4 small fig trees this spring and look forward to them producing as well. I made fig newtons, fig honey orange jam, strawberry fig jam, peach fig with thyme jam, and my favorite was fresh fig pound cake.
Thankfully, the grasshoppers have shown no interest in strawberry and blackberry plants. Those have been our biggest investment and we hope for a good crop next year. We are very happy that they have survived the summer.
We used Neem Oil, garlic spray, Garrett juice, and NoLo bait on the garden and fig trees. I think I put out about 60-70 pounds of NoLo Bait. I will start putting it out at the first sign of a hopper next year. It has long-term effects and infects the general hopper population. So, even though we haven't seen the NoLo effect this year, it should reduce the invasion next year. I first found it in a local greenery for about $20 a pound. Then I was fortunate enough to find it
here for a huge discount if you buy 5, 10, or 25 pounds. No doubt, I needed more than one pound so this was a great find.
I planted my fall garden on Labor Day, which was late but it was hard to time with the waves of grasshoppers. I used seeds from Johnny's Seeds and I planted lettuce, spinach, brocolli, cabbage, cucumbers, radishes, and carrots. Oddly enough, not one single plant has come up. I haven't lost hope, though. The okra took forever to come up and is almost indestructible now. I am even wondering if it will come back next year if I just leave it alone. Some of the trunks are 3-4 inches wide.
We plan to put in a cover crop soon of field peas. When we get ready to plant in the spring we will have prepped the soil by mowing and plowing the cover crop into the soil. The peas are a legume and will replenish nitrogen in the soil.
Chickens
I cannot say enough, how I love my chickens. One year ago, we lived in our old house in town with one dog and each other. Less than one year later, we are on our farm with 23 animals! I got my chicks in May as one-day old chicks. I ordered them with my neighbor. In addition to the other birds I ordered, we also ordered 13 Americaunas together. She got 10 and I got 3. I picked mine out with absolutely no rhyme or reason. They all looked the same. I ended up with one beautiful marbled beige/brown/black and green tail feather rooster and one red, and one cream with a red head. I think all of the neighbor's Americaunas are reddish. No way could we have known that I would get the three that looked different and a rooster to boot. All of the chicks were supposed to be hens! Imagine my surprise when I am going to the coop early one morning and I hear three cock-a-doodle-ooooo's! He sounded like a 12 year-old boy whose voice was changing. I had called him "Amelia" when I thought he was a she because he/she flew the coop the first chance he/she got as a young chick. His name is now Mel.
Ronny built an amazing chicken coop. It is 10X10 with 8 nesting boxes. It is so cute and cozy and they love their home. They free-range and know that is the place to go at sunset. We transitioned them into the coop from their little chick box and let them stay in there for several weeks before letting them out into the big old world. I check the nesting boxes daily but haven't seen anything but the four golf balls we put in there to show them where to lay.
The flock is beautiful. I have already described the Americaunas. I have 3 big white Delawares with black tipped feathers, 3 friendly brown/white/black Speckled Sussex and their 3 pals the Rhode Island Reds, and 3 black and white barred Plymouth Rocks. Don't you love their names? One of the Sussex hens had a severe leg injury this summer. It was either broken or just severely wounded. It got caught in a pile of steel beams. It was limp and sheared at the joint. Well, needless to say, I was heart-broken because we thought she was a goner. We cleaned and dressed the wound and splinted it with a clothespin. I checked on the internet and found great advice to put a sock over her head while we attended to her. She laid on her back and didn't move or make a peep. We kept her in the house in a small kennel for a day or so, then transitioned her out to the coop in the kennel so that she wouldn't be isolated. When she could start to bear weight on it, we transitioned her to the chicken tractor. It took about 3 weeks to heal. Even though she mostly used one leg, we finally decided it was time to see if she could range. As soon as I took her out of the tractor, Amelia (aka Mel) attacked. Of course, I didn't know Amelia was Mel and just thought she was the bossy top bird. So, I put her/him in chicken time out for over a week. He/she was spitting mad. I also looked this up on the internet. Assuming that Mel was Amelia, you settle the aggressive hen down by isolating her and taking her out of the pecking order. Otherwise, she picks on new and/or weaker birds. Despite the fact that Amelia was really Mel, it worked. He/she came out and was much nicer and less agressive toward his/her own flock. Are you lost yet?
Madagascar
I made a second trip to Madagascar in July to do mission work. What an honor and privilege! We are going back next year. This year's trip was my second trip there. One of the things I am anxious to learn more about is their farming methods. They have the most amazing farms and it is very organic. They plant around rice paddies and use a lot of small plot gardening and terracing in the hilly landscape. The rice paddies grow fish and rice. Once the rice is harvested, the fields are drained and bricks are cut from the dried silt. The paddies are flooded the following season and the silt is replenished and restocked with fish and rice.
I am so disappointed that I am unable to upload pictures tonight. They won't upload here or into an album on FaceBook. I will try tomorrow and will post them in a new blog. You will love seeing all the changes. So, I will bid you goodnight. I have so much more to tell you but this is already long enough! Happy Farming and good night!
