A New Worm Bin

I had some free time today and some scrap plywood left over from a previous project so I decided to expand my worms a little.

What I made was a very simple box, about 3'x1.5'x1.5'. To increase aeration in the wormery, I cut a piece of 1" PVC pipe about 4" longer than the box and drilled holes along its length. To hold it in place and prevent worm escape (or anything else climbing in), I placed some old window screen over the end of the PVC and added a 1" coupling on each side.

Once it was done, I added some pre-composted grass and kitchen scraps from our compost bin As I cleaned out the bottom bin of my Worm Factory 360, I moved the lazy worms who had not made the pilgrimage upward to the newer bins over to my new box. I topped it all off with a large layer of dead leaves for a little bit of insulation and protection.

Strawberries

This is way too good to be something I built!

I have been wanting to plant strawberries for a while. I LOVE fresh strawberries - not including the very tasteless and sour ones you buy at the grocery store. While searching for a place to buy strawberry plugs, I saw this really cool planting tower here at this link. This seemed like a great way to plant 50 or so plants and save some space.

I thought to myself, "I can make that! It's only a strawberry tower... how hard can it be?" You'll see that "how hard can it be?" question asked often around the Red Clay Farm. Usually, I find out it's a little harder than I expected.

So I just bought a bunch of wood, garden soil and screws and I am ready to start creating.  I'll keep you informed on my progress (and how hard it really was).

The Chickens are Here!

The chickens we ordered back in October are finally here! I got a call from Monica at the Post Office at 6 am today - it sounded like she was in the hatchery. She told me I should come and get them as soon as I can. Wouldn't you know they would come on one of the coldest days, wettest days we've had all year!

When I got to the post office, all I could hear were chicks. I was amazed that my 10 chickens would make that much noise! Turns out, they didn't. My 10 chicks were barely peeping. It was the other 1500 going to another farm that were making all the noise.

I got my chicks home and into the plastic tub brooder I set up in the dining room (The wife is thrilled!) They were well packaged in a small cardboard box with a thick coconut coir liner with a heating pad underneath. Meyer Hatchery did a great job getting them to me alive and exactly on time! The rest is up to me, I guess...

Our First Compost

This is not our compost but looks very similar

Almost a year after I made our big compost corral, we finally got some good compost from it. I dug out about a cubic yard of deep, dark compost and put it in our garden today.

It was a mix of manure from our horses, our kitchen scraps and a whole bunch of bad fruits and veggies from our local grocery store (Last fall I made a deal to make a daily pick-up of the store's bad produce for about a month). The result was a deep dark compost that looked like black dirt. It had hundreds of volunteer worms in it and a few very juicy grubs. I picked all the grubs I saw out of the compost and let the worms make the short trip to the garden where I hope they'll stay.

We got enough compost out of the bin to put a 3" layer across a 4'x12' area. I didn't mix it in to the dirt, but just left in sitting on top, and planted our fall lettuce/spinach crop right in the compost.  As I think about it, that may not have been a good call. I probably should have mixed the compost into the soil a little, but now the seeds are down and I hate to waste them. We'll see what happens...

New Blood for the Herd!

Moe and Curly a few days before joining the Red Clay Farm staff

It's hard to grow the herd when it's just a pack of girls. Goats are not like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. We made the decision to take our original buck to the sale last Dec because we were having a hard time keeping him separate from his daughters. I have been looking for a good boy since I returned from overseas. The problem was every pygmy buck I found was too young. Of course, they would have matured in the time it took me to find one in the age range I was looking for.

I finally found a couple bucks in the Saluda, SC area so after some email conversations with the self-proclaimed "Goat Lady," I drove the 85 miles west to pick them up.

When I finally found the place, way out in the middle of nowhere, I met the goat lady. She was very passionate about her goats and I learned a lot from her as she prepped the boys (two brothers from the same birth) to make the trip back to the Red Clay Farm.

When I got the boys back and released them into the pasture they were completely ignored by the girls and they are keeping their distance from the girls. I wonder how long this will last?