Here’s what’s happening the first week in April 2017:
Temps continue to behave erratically…Low 66 overnight and high yesterday and today will be in the 90’s!! no Spring again…crazy
Beginning Year 4 at Bent PIne, we are still working through the soil-building stage, setting up the infrastructure. We have the food forest almost all set to “grow”:
ROMEO FOOD FOREST
Banana Rowe – Florida friendly bananas: Ice Cream, Williams, Gran N, California Gold, Seminole and Dwarf Cavendish in the greenhouse.
Asian Persimmon – finally starting to green up
Plum
Apples – Florida friendly: Anna and Fiji
Goji Berry
Paw Paw – these grow wild around the property. You have to be ready when they flower and fruit, because the the fruit turns to pod very quickly.
Blueberry – getting nervous about the birds…we need to cover with the leftover batting cage netting
Olive Trees – nothing yet
Raspberry
Blackberry
Mulberry
Satsuma Mandarin Orange
Chaya
Juju Berries
TEA GARDEN FOOD FOREST
Pear
Peach
Lowquat
American Persimmon
Nectarine
Avocado
The apricots have come back from the dead and are finally beginning to green up in the Shade Garden.
VINEYARD
Muscadine grape vines are greening up and taking off.
GREENHOUSE/HOOP HOUSE/SHADE GARDEN
Fodder – You have to keep up with the fodder production on a daily basis or it gets ahead of you and you run out. Soak the seeds (barley) overnight before you set them out in trays. Don’t overwater the trays or they will grow mold. Keep the orchids and any other warm weather lovers inside until the last frost has passed.
Hoop House was set up and covered with plastic against the last bit of frosty weather. In March the temps turned south twice but we managed to escape with minimum damage.
Shade Garden is under a canopy of oaks next to Pole Barn 2. We keep the Christmas Cactus, Burrows Tails, Jade trees, Amazon Lily and begonias here. Also, the herbs rosemary, oregano, bay tree, lavender, parsley, stevia and creeping thyme like the shade.
WEST VEGGIE GARDEN
We’re starting tomatoes, banana peppers, and beans in 90 degree daytime temps! Beans were eaten by some critter, can’t figure out what is getting over the electric fence all of a sudden. The broccoli from Winter Garden continue to put out leaves which we feed to the livestock, mainly the rabbits. Spinach is still going so far, Kiwi is vining but no fruit yet. Carrots as always are ferny and lovely. They do much better size wise when thinned. The Danvers half-carrots do well.
HILLTOP GARDEN
…continues to be the best place for potatoes (white, red, and sweet), corn, and cover crops (Austrian Winter Peas – in winter and Cow Peas – our own in summer). We are still dealing with a varmint strawberry eater, but have caught the culprit on video, so at least we know what we are dealing with…a huge rabbit, like “Grommet” in the movie…remember him? We will have to add another row of electric fencing, but since the strawberries are almost finished, may wait on that. We successfully fed this monster for several months. Should I add him to our Livestock collection?
CHICKEN TRACTOR worked well with 3 resident orpingtons. They have cleaned out all the potato fields, scratching and nibbling bugs to prepare for the composting of chicken, goat and rabbit manure. The manure sits for several days at the end of a row before being spread, planted and topped with mulch.
PASTURES – The East Pasture has been divided into fourths, growing three sections and grazing the third. Seeded with Blue Top Millet from Hancock Seed in Dade City…but no rain!! Uugh!
LIVESTOCK
Ducks – We have six Pekin Ducks – 4 females, so 4 eggs a day.
Geese – We have 4 adult Embden Geese: Lucy, Tululah, and Bruce are the originals and Silly is Tululah’s. There are 10 goslings…Goldy being the oldest, then Ozzy. The rest are unnamed in anticipation of either selling or butchering them in the next couple of months.
Chickens – We are down to 1 of the original 12 Red Stars. She lays sporadically. She was keeping the other 9 egg layers (6 Isa Browns and 3 new Red STars) from eating so we moved her in with the baby geese. There is also a small pen where we keep the Orpington Rooster. There are 3 Orpington hens in the Tractor ONE mobile chicken coop in the Hillside Gardn.
Goats – Dwarf Nubian Nigerian Cross, the originals are Emma who twinned in May 2016 to give us KatyToo and Half and Half. Those three were joined by Baby and Cow. Half sired eight baby goats, born late February through mid March. We put the eight babies on Craig’s list. Baby’s two sold on April 2nd along with one of Emma’s second set of twins.
Hogs – We bartered 4 American Guinea Hogs in Dec 2016. Cheerio is due to have a litter any day now (Apr 4). She will be moved out of the pen with Alex and given her own new space 16×16. Gestation for pigs is 3mos, 3weeks, and 3days. She’s really dragging the ground at this point.
Rabbits – New Zealand White and California White. Bred Fluffy and one of her offspring and ended up with 13 kits. We were feeding them all greens only, which we figured out may be why we lost 7 of them. Started giving them pellets and hay along with the greens; that seemed to fix the problem. We have 6 left that we are selling on the Website.
Tilapia – Put up two new hard sided pools to replace the soft sided ones, main and breeding. Have harvested approx 30 fish from the original 100. Two fillets from each, …delicious!
Happy Homesteading,
T.
…tilapia pool needed a bigger filter to keep the water clear. Took the one out of the Duck pond and the waters seems to have cleared a bit. Tilapia are getting so big now they jump out when you go near the pool to feed them. We’re going to put some in the Duck Pond and let the grandkids fish for them!
Need to clear up the water in the pond first…going to try a spillway approach this time. The pond filter got hit by lightning and blew out the ultraviolet light for killing the algae…one lesson learned and another not yet.
