No till tilling

While we did decide to till the garden last year, we are not going to do it ever again.

There are things one can do to avoid tilling, and the long term effects of tilling are actually quite detrimental to the soil. Most people will tell you that they till to avoid weeds and enrich the soil.  The first year you till your land, it will produce an incredibly rich and bountiful crop.  In subsequent years, however, things won't be so great without a lot of amendments -- tilling exposes the precious topsoil resulting in topsoil loss and nutrient depletion.  As far as weeds go, there are lots of dormant weed seeds in the soil, and tilling simply brings them to to surface giving them the sun and air they need to grow.  They should thank us!

I'm not implying that tilling is some evil empire of agricultural practices, but for us, it isn't something we want to do.  For larger scale operations, it may be unavoidable, but on our scale, we're trying to avoid it. As I mentioned before, if you till, you'll need to add amendments to maintain fertile land, so why not skip the extra step and simply build soil from the ground up.

Many people claim that no-dig practices don't work and you end up with compacted soil.  This parsnip grew at a friend's house in Maine -- clearly there's no compaction there!  She's been building the soil without digging or tilling for years, and look at this bounty!  Credit: Lisa Fernandes.

Our plan is to use permaculture techniques to build soil that will get better every year.  Why simply go for sustainable (status quo) when you can make something better than how you found it?

One of the techniques we're using to improve our soil involves letting our chickens to the "tilling" work. :)  The jury is still out for us on whether or not we are going to get organic certified, so we can still do this.  If we go the organic certification route, we can't put our chickens directly on our veggie bed, but for now we're happy to have them eat weed seeds, spread manure, and generally stir things around.

In order for them to do this, they need a temporary and mobile home -- enter the chicken tractor.  It's a mobile home that we built for them that we'll move around the field.  And now, a photo montage…

Cheapo bike tires that are going to make our tractor mobile.  We ended up replacing the tubes and tires because they didn't hold air for crap.  

The bottom frame -- we struggled with how to attach the tires, but you'll see below that we figured it out quite nicely.

Oliver is always on hand for scale. :)  Bike tires need two points of attachment or they wobble all over the place.  With this setup, they are pretty secure and sturdy.

Dr. Trafton thinks it is a really good idea to ride the frame down the hill into our field.  I made her wear the helmet.

Dr. Knapp, however, thinks this is a supremely bad idea since there are no breaks and no ability to steer.  Here's what happened...

We have a floor, people.  Olive and Oliver were clearly more interested in a squirrel than being scale models.

Wall frames are up!  

…and we have a chicken door!  

We started building this in the fall, and this was our beautiful view.  Not too shabby!

Walls, big door, and more.  All we need now is a roof!

Here's the inside -- roosts and the nest boxes will go on the top ledge there.  Clearly, we built this entire thing from scrap wood we had lying around.

I heard a lot of flapping coming from the chicken yard, and this is what I found.  Wing clipping followed shortly thereafter.  Don't worry, it is just like cutting a fingernail, there is no pain involved.

Fast forward to now -- we got a corrugated plastic roof, and Dr. Trafton put it on.  Add some temporary fencing with a solar powered electric charger to keep dogs and other animals out, and the ladies are enjoying their first days on the veggie bed.  Naturally, we had to observe them for a little bit to make sure they weren't going to jump out or the dogs weren't going to try to get in.  The only dog to attempt getting in thus far is Baxter….shocker.  He learned his lesson and won't be trying it again any time soon.  Oliver is, obviously, on hand for supervising and keeping everyone in line.

Here's a better view of everything from our deck.  They worked the bed like champs, and we have since moved them to the perimeter of the bed where they're eating weed seeds.  We're going to swap out chickens for ducks once the seedlings are in the ground so they can work slug patrol.  

This is what was happening during our supervising.  This guy is such a snuggler, it is borderline ridiculous.  Please note his little smile. :)

…and then we attempted a family portrait...

So, we're really pleased with how quickly the chickens can work things over.  We're hoping to try to keep moving them around the field, especially where we've planted fruit trees.  It is our hope that we won't have to mow these areas, and we can keep to only mowing the very lower part of the field where we have no trees around which we'd have to navigate.

Stay tuned for how it works...

The bridge to somewhere - part 1

Trail maintenance and creation is one of the many things on our winter list of projects (and general all season to do list).  The winter is when we do the most walking, skiing, snowshoeing, etc., so we notice when the trails need some help.

The Grouse Trail (named so because we almost always flush a grouse on the trail) is a short 20 minute loop that starts and ends at our house.  We commonly use it for a quick 'get the dogs outside' walk if we're in a hurry or feeling particularly lazy.  It is also just a nice way to start or end the day.  The one problem with the trail is that it gets really wet and swampy near the field, regardless of the season.  So we decided we should build a bridge over the small 'ravine' to circumvent the muddy area.

When we moved into our house, there were several telephone poles between the house and the river as a small building down by the dock used to have power (for oyster farming).  The poles have long since been disconnected from any power source, but they were still dotting the landscape (and our view).  I looked quickly, but I couldn't find a photo of our field with them still in it.  The short of it is that we spent a day cutting down the poles and removing all the old cables.  We then realized that we had the perfect bridge material -- they're straight, sturdy, and they sure won't rot any time soon.

The difficulty with building a bridge here is that it requires the tractor since the poles are heavy….but….the reason for the bridge is that it is always wet and muddy.  Using the tractor in this location is very much less than ideal because it makes huge ruts in the mud that just don't go away on their own.

Enter polar vortex.

This super cold, snowy winter has provided us with the perfect conditions for driving our tractor through what is normally a muddy mess.

Charlotte's booty in the late winter sun….I mean, the stream bed across which we're building our bridge.  The goal was to use the winch to pull the poles across the bed and let them rest there until the snow melts and we can get them into their final locations.

Two poles chained up and ready to be pulled across.

In the interest of full disclosure, it didn't go as smoothly as this leads you to believe.  We were thwarted first by the tree just to Anna's right of the pole and had to drive the tractor back to the field, pull the poles back a bit, drive the tractor back to where it is in the picture above, and re-pull the pole across.  It pretty much landed right where we want it, though.  We only finagled it a little bit with the peavey.  Also, Baxter is trying REALLY hard to get Oliver to play with him.  Oliver is nonplussed.

Both poles in!  We're going to let them stay there until the snow melts and they settle down -- and, NO, there is no chance they're going to settle into the stream bed….none whatsoever.  Really….ok, I'll admit there's an EXTREMELY small chance.

Even though it's all blurry, there is something I really like about this photo so I'm including it.  Maybe it's the juxtaposition of the dogs, the tools, the light….I don't know.  I just like it.

The plan for after the snow melts is to get the poles secured using stones so they don't settle into the stream bed with shifting seasons.  After that, we'll cut and secure boards all along the top to make a mighty fine bridge.  We'll save that part for part deux of the bridge building endeavor.

Clearly, we made some ruts, but it was MUCH less than it would have been if it wasn't cold and snowy.  And apparently, Baxter really enjoys mud.

New tractor day!

Not that I want to glorify acquiring material things, but......today was new tractor day!  When we moved here, there was a tractor already here that we would use for logging, mowing, tilling, etc.  Recently, however, Anna's dad mentioned that he'd like his tractor back so we were in the market for a new tractor.  This is actually a good thing since we'll have the ability to grow with our tractor, learning all it's quirks, idiosyncrasies, etc.  After a lot of research and a steep learning curve of tractor knowledge and lingo, we settled on the John Deer 5075E - it is just about the same size as the tractor we've been using, and it has enough power to do what we need it to do.  It's a mighty fine looking tractor, if I do say so myself -- she hasn't revealed her name to us yet, but she's definitely a chick. :)

The farm manager oversees the tractor's arrival.

Anna's really excited for tractor delivery -- Oliver's nonplussed.

After an afternoon of tractor learning (hauling wood and chipping wood), no better way to celebrate than delicious Costa Rican rum in the sun.  More details on the pending duck pond that created Anna's mud-caked Carhartts in an upcoming post. We may just have the best life ever. :)