Official Poll : What project are you planning to start this 2016?

[Mini Horses]

Yes!! ALL home grown.

I was considering trip bucks to butcher last yr -- one day I found myself saying I could sell them, at a feed store, and some guy bought them! He picked them up about an hr later....I was sort of relieved in an odd way and pocketed the $$$.

This year I was blessed with 7 bucklings. One I plan to keep...cute little 5th gen mini nub. But, one set of bucklings are full Nub and are just BIG. 3 months & look 6. Since I have found a private owned slaughter house fairly close, I am thinking this will be the year I butcher. Other 4 will be sold. The 4 doelings are here and will remain for a "while".....


Now I need to collect goat meat recipes. Used to eat rabbit, squirrel & venison but, not in a while. I have a real hard time with processing the rabbits....cuteness thing. Can do chickens. 2 hens sitting so will prob be having a processing session this summer. Been a long time.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Merry Christmas all! I already do a lot of what's on the list - except soap making. I think I'd like to give that a try.

 

[goatgurl]

like FEM i already do a lot of these things. i want to try to make some $ selling the things that i do produce. and keep on doing the things that i started years ago.

 

[Denim Deb]

I need to come up w/a way to generate income for myself for just in case. Some is going to be SS related, some is going to be doing nature lessons-I hope.

 

[Mini Horses]

So true -- our minds just chug out the work ideas!! I make a list of what I need to do, want to do...(my late husband is looking down & laughing as I used to make fun of his lists)...then try to cross off some item each day.

I just don't want to stop thinking -- dementia is a bad thing and I enjoy good health, so do not want brain to stop!!

I read where a lady used tubes of the material that you lay on ground, under mulch, to help keep weeds down. You can buy it in area where they sell drainage tubes -- it's used for covering pipes to prevent dirt filling them & for ballasts at construction sites to keep drains clear. she filled with straw and formed into size she wanted for bed, added dirt in center. Less expensive than wood. You could use the strips like for a garden, staple into a tube.

 

[Support]

It's really fun reading all your comments. Keep them coming guys!

 

[Mini Horses]

Well, most gardening can be learned -- but, if the garden doesn't do really well, chickens don't care as they eat it anyway! Of course, their favorite "pickins" seem to be those new plants you just stuck out there AND scratching out the others looking for worms in the newly tilled areas.

City folk don't understand why we fence the gardens!!

 

[ChickenMomma91]

Last year was a bust for me. All I got was a good amount of cayenne peppers and my chickens started laying (right now they're free-loading molters). So this year were gonna try straw bale gardening. Oh and for those who knew we were trying, WE SIGNED ON THE HOUSE IN AUGUST!!!

And we're gonna start some permanent fruits in the backyard

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I've got American Guinea Hogs. We've raised typical feeders hogs before...mostly hamp crosses and they grew well on lots of feed, but the guinea hogs are supposed to be able to grow and mature, albeit slower, on pasture.

I bought two young males and then found a sow with two babies (one male, one female), so I have 5 right now. Plan will be to eat one of the males and either sell or eat the other extra male leaving myself with a breeding trio.

 

[Beekissed]

"Also going to plan for and plant for a four season harvest this coming garden season...that's something I've never really done but am going to try."

Can you explain this a little more? Thanks.

PS...Sorry about the quote formatting. I did click "quote", but nothing happened.

To use the quote function here, just click the quote as per usual and then, when you go to the box to write your message, you'll see a button on the bottom left that says "insert quote" and hit it. Should put your quote right in your post.

A four season harvest refers to planting cold hardy crops in Aug/Sept so they can reach maturity during the fall, then protecting them from freezing during the winter time by using high or low tunnels, field houses, row covers, etc. It's sort of using the garden all winter as a big crisper drawer for fresh greens, root crops and some brassicas.

So, as you are harvesting your regular crops in the garden in the summer time, you're also planting crops to harvest in the winter months. In the early spring you are planting the same cold hardy crops for a late spring harvest of the same. Then the summer crops planted in spring start to bear, then you just keep that going indefinitely. That way your garden is being used for growing/storing fresh food all year round.

I've never gone that far in my gardening but plan to do so this year. Usually I just plant early spring crops, then the regular crops of veggies that are not cold hardy and finish by fall.