BABY PEACOCKS ARE HERE

I have 2 india blue peahens and an india blue blackshoulder peacock. Last year the hens hatched out 6 eggs combined. All of the babies they hatched died. They were driving me crazy with how terrible they were as mothers. The chickens hatched out pea eggs last year and they had 2 survive. So I was pretty sure it was the hens who sucked. This year I took all but 2 eggs from the peahens. I did let them brood them until we saw they were peeping, then we took 6 from the one peahen and put them in the incubator.

hatching peas

They began hatching out immediately. (Note that I had chicken eggs in the incubator already.)

All 6 hatched.

albino with siblings

One chick has spradle leg and we have it taped up. We will see if the chick recovers. You might also notice something a bit….odd.

Albino albino 3 albino 2

Albino?????

Water harvesting in mini Kraters

Our mini Kraters are doing well. In fact we haven’t had to water yet. The cover crop seeds are coming up. The bushes are flourishing. The trees are coming out of dormancy. It is an exciting time!

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Every single Krater had standing water in the bottom of it. This will dry up fairly quickly but it is an AMAZING water source!

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I did water the bushes after planting. They were leafed out on delivery and I didn’t bother to harden them off, thus they needed water.

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So much water in the kraters that you can see it from a distance.

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This is a plum tree that is doing amazingly well. Very happy with it! I did have a fair amount of death over the winter. I blame myself, I pretty much killed them all.

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The good news is the rootstocks are alive. So I’m letting the rootstocks grow to be re-grafted later.

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The unintentional pond was pumped dry but it has since refilled a bit.

 

A complete yard reboot

We have never paid much attention to the state of our front and back yard. The front has been mostly unused and the back is where the dogs are kept when we aren’t home. Simple as that. At least it used to be. Now we have kids and our space has taken on new meaning. I have been excited to create a playground for our children. It has been going quite well and I’m happy with the results of my labor. Unfortunately the grass and weeds have been a large problem in accessing this playground equipment. We have a mower but it attaches to our tractor and is quite large. Keeping the grass and weeds short around the toys is difficult at best. So we took drastic action.

Back Yard Before
Back Yard Before
Back Yard After
Back Yard After

We rented a tiller, took a day off and tilled the front and back yard. As you can tell, our back yard is humongous. We did make it for the dogs and we figured we might as well go all the way to the barn with the fence. Most of this space is underutilized, except by said dogs. So we decided to cut a part of the back of this yard off and put the cider orchard there. So on top of tilling we also did a small swale in the back section.

Seeds

I ordered a large variety of seeds. I picked subterranean clover for around the toys and where we walk the most. This clover grows thick and short, we should never have to mow it. Then I ordered multiple species of clover: persian, rose, arrowleaf and ladino are what I remember off the top of my head. This went in the less traveled areas and in the cider orchard. The third bucket is full of wild flowers and vetch. This I sprinkled all along the fence line and in the very back of the cider orchard area. We do have trees in the area already, planted before we moved here. Since they will be too large to put a fruit tree near I have no problem spreading lots of flowers and tall vetch around them. It should be a beautiful location when everything grows!

Of course I was racing to get this done. There was a storm coming and I wanted that rain on my newly seeded yard areas. I made it just in time.

raining

And boy did it rain a ton!

My current plant and tree sources

I have bought many, many plants for our property from many different sources. I thought I would recommend a few here.

Starkbros.com

This is where I bought my very first fruit and nut trees. I ordered in July, and had them sent to me immediately; all of my trees arrived well packaged, alive and grew amazingly well. I am very satisfied with all of my interactions with this company and have spent far too much money buying all of the amazing trees they advertise. Every time I go to their site I’m like a kid in a candy store. Someone, please, help!

This year’s order was extremely large and I had some mild complaints. It was nothing they could control, the weather was freaky bad and many people had nursery plants struggling. Stark took some of the plants I had ordered off as they were not up to standards. I hated that but I understood the reasoning.

Arberfoyle.org

I bought my first 10 grape vines from this amazing website. I bought 5 Frontenac and 5 Valiant. The grapes arrived in perfect condition and even held over while I wasted time preparing the ground for them. These grapes did  not survive though. I do believe that is more of my user error than the grapes themselves. I had a huge problem with mold and fungus and I don’t believe I was watering enough. Then I transplanted them and yeah, bad.

Oikostreecrops.com

This was recommended by someone on Permies.com, so I clicked over and began perusing the various offerings. The trees are sent much smaller than those bought on Starkbros but they are also much cheaper with a different selection. I bought an apricot, some persimmons and various nut trees from this site. They all arrived in great condition and have been doing very well outside.

Cold Stream Farm

I loved this nursery for bulk orders. I ordered a bunch of hazelnut, black locust, oak, mulberry and maple from them. I also ordered a witch hazel which is beautiful. I have to get more!

Gurneys.com

I bought 10 Reliance grapes from Gurneys. They arrived and I planted immediately. They are coming out of dormancy now and all appear alive. I was very pleased about the size of the roots on these.

Greencoverseed.com

This is where I bought a variety of cover crop seeds. I loved their selection. It was kind of addicting looking at the selections. I did have problems ordering but again, it was me, not them. Shipping is expensive but it is everywhere. I had some pretty big orders and they all arrived well packaged and labeled. The seeds are coming up and I’m very pleased with them.

Circle S Seeds

This company sent us our Delaney Sainfoin. We planted it and it sprouted and is coming up all over in a week’s timeframe. In fact, if you heard how we planted it you’d be shaking your head. We simply took the grader-scraper to the soil and then broadcast seeded. I’m really happy with these seeds!

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

I bought a fair amount of kitchen garden seeds from them. Time will tell how they do but I think they were pretty great.

Ebay

I did a lot of shopping on Ebay. What can’t you find on Ebay? I bought bamboo, Russian almond, pomegranate, mulberries, grape cuttings, pineberry seeds, grape seeds, kiwi plants and on and on. I made sure to check the sellers rating before buying but I am really happy with how it all turned out. You can see a lot of those plants in my “Gardening in Winter” post.

 

 

NONE of these are affiliate links of any sort. This is simply my experience stated for your benefit.

A brief tire hill slide update

Tire Slide

The tire hill slide is perfect. The grass I planted on it is filling in well and I am very happy with the results. Obviously the grass on this is a month old and I need to fill in lots of patches before it looks as lush as I want it to be.

However, I thought I would share a few pictures of it.

Steps up slide

This is a view of the steps up to the top of the slide.

 

Slide

Front of the slide. I’m not including pics of the terraced area because it needs a bit of work still and I’m not happy with it. I’ve planted spreading plants there and I hope they take over as right now it is more dirt than grass on that side.

Slide from afar

The hill slide looks like a jewel when surrounded by nothing but dirt. Of course, we did plant clover everywhere so soon this will all look lush and green! The clover planting will come in a later post.

 

Our Kitchen Garden

Making a kitchen garden

Last year I had a raised bed made from old fencing, 4 tire beds and 2 pallets. Oh, can’t forget the failed straw bale gardening experiment. This year I went bigger. I now have 4 raised beds, loads of tires next to the fence for vining plants (gourds, cantelope and cucumber), a lettuce bed and a carrot tire. I think I’ll get a few more tires. Some things did rather well in them. I’ll make more raised beds as I have time and resources. All of the things I use in my kitchen garden are free.

Oh, can’t forget the other part of the kitchen garden, the sunken corn hugel. See the linked post for more on that.

I started with cardboard, lots of it. And tires, lots of them.

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This is the lettuce bed. I laid out cardboard and then put compost over it. I also have cardboard under and compost in all the tires.

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The lettuce is already coming up. I had to chase a chicken out of it. Chased her all the way around the house. Then I fenced it like I should have to begin with.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I am not the best at planned design. So I simply cut all the wood in half. The new raised beds are as large as the wood would allow and that’s that.

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I have cucumber and leeks in the big one, eggplant in another and okra in the last one. I have cardboard going around and in between the raised beds. Dirt is on it to keep it from blowing away. When I get it done enough I’ll be putting a nice layer of straw/hay to help with the ease of walking and to suppress weeds. Last year the surrounding plants made it almost impossible to reach the garden. I’m planning for that this year!

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Here is a shot of Son’s photo bomb and asparagus in last years raised bed. Daughter is in the backpack which she loves. Oddly she’s not much for the outdoors and doesn’t like to walk much. Our ground is rather uneven and she horribly takes after my side of the family in the grace department.

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I started some of the gourds inside. I have birdhouse gourds, apple gourds, giant gourds and cantaloupe. I’m hoping to make some birdhouses out of all the varieties- minus the cantaloupe.

 

This is pretty much it. We do have squash planted all over on the berms and potatoes as well. I think we are almost ready for growing!