No.510: 100 Days on the Farm // The First 30 Days

One of my favorite Youtube homesteaders, Justin Rhodes, often says that working on your farm each day, getting better just 1% at a time, eventually leads to big results.  After a tiny trial run last year with the garden, we’re excited to ramp up our efforts. But how intimidating! How overwhelming! We don’t know what we’re doing! But as another favorite, Joel Salatin, says: You can’t Google experience.  So we’re jumping in!

Because I love a challenge, we are committing to 100 days (with Sundays off) of intentionally working on our homestead.  We officially started on March 10, the day our first batch of broiler chicks arrived.  I want to document these days for accountability as well as a way to tangibly see the progress we make.  Here are a few of the highlights from the first 30 days (March 10 to April 13):

+ The chicks arrived a day early and we were not prepared!  We had set up the wire play pens in the garage, but I hadn’t finished securing them before excited children started dipping beaks in the water and letting the chicks free.  The scene was seriously out of an I Love Lucy episode: some of us were trying to tape cardboard boxes around the outside, kids were dipping beaks, chicks were easily pushing themselves through the wire and running free through the garage.  It was chaos, but we can laugh about it now.

+ We fixed the garden door and gave the whole fence a fresh coat of paint.

+ We learned so much about chick care: dealing with pasty butt (so gross), adding a little apple cider vinegar to their water once a week, and being in complete awe of how much little chicks can eat!  We learned that you should lift feeders and waterers up on blocks (thank you, Rosie!) and that they go crazy for salad scraps.

+ We transplanted broccoli, brussels sprouts and two types of cabbage from seedlings started under the grow light.  I also direct sowed a few types of lettuce, spinach, carrots, onion starts and peas.

+ We started a bunch of flower seeds indoors.

+ Mark and I went on a quick date to the garden center and came home with two more blueberry plants, a lavender and a rosemary.  I’m thankful we have tons of seeds because those plants are not cheap!

+ We tilled two in-ground beds and filled them with compost.  They looked so beautiful and pure!  We then promptly “ruined” one of them by trenching three rows and planting two types of potatoes.  We had horrible luck with potatoes last year, so we followed these directions this time.  Praying for better results!

+ The kids helped me set up the new squash tunnel.  It’s huge!

+ Mark and the older boys built moveable tractors to keep the broilers on pasture.  (I painted them so they’d be functional and a bit more pretty.)  We moved them out on April 6 and the chickens seemed so happy to be out in the fresh air.  We planned to electrify a line around the bottom of the tractors, but had to wait for a specific part….and six days later, disaster struck.  We woke up to two gnarly rips on the side of the tractors and chickens walking all over the yard!  After talking with a farmer friend, we think a racoon managed to rip the plastic sheeting off and got six chickens in the process.  We felt a little defeated that day, but quickly moved to fence off (and electrify!) until we can proceed with the original plan.  So far, so good.

+ We cut up some trees that fell around the property this winter and the boys chopped them into firewood.

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PRODUCTS I’M USING AND LOVING

+ Gurney’s Seed Starting Kit and Grow Light
+ The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner by Ann Larkin Hansen
+ All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
+ Behr Barn & Fence Paint in Barn White
+ Chick Stands from Premier1