Monday, April 19, 2010

We Finished Another Productive Week....

The weekend went by so quick that I still feel like I'm missing something. I started out Saturday helping Pastor Brent with the Sow Good garden that he has started this year at the Senoia Vineyard Community Church. Pastor Brent is on the cusp of something great at his church and God has definitely got big plans for this.


I went back to the farm around lunch and started on the sweet potato rows. We received our transplants on Friday and we were anxious to get them in the ground. This requires taking more compost over to the other side of the farm in a wheelbarrow some 350 ft away. Needless to say, you really don't need to work out after you’re finished. After lining the rows up with compost, I tilled it in and Nicole and I ran the irrigation and dropped in the sweet potatoes.


Next, up to the chickens we went to move the Eggstream. I love moving the Chickens to fresh pasture. You can just see their excitement when they have new plants and insects to devour. Moving the Eggstream is just a small part of the process while we are there. It takes much longer now because they drink more water and eat more food.


While we are in the paddock, Maddux always needs to have a fresh bowl of water and enough food to last until the afternoon. Right now, poor Maddux has his food stolen from him by the ducks. They will wait until he is laying in the shade and gorge as much dog food as they can before he notices. This may not end well for the ducks as Maddux is usually not happy when he sees them in his dog house and will chase them away.


Nicole and her parents finished up the flower bed that has now turned into a garden (mostly) bed with a few flowers. They worked very hard putting it all together and it shows. (Nice and level, which I may not have thought of if I had done it.) We had some extra Swiss chard, tomatillos, beets, nasturtium and cilantro we put in and it looks fantastic.

Duck Tractor....

Over the next few weeks we will be looking for another solution for the ducks. Right now, they are with the chickens, in poultry netting, and sleep under the Eggstream at night. The problem is, when the ducks start laying, we will have one heck of a time collecting the eggs. Plus, I think it will be extremely tempting for Maddux to see eggs on the ground and not want to eat them. That boy loves eggs.

We will build something that allows the ducks to be ducks and still make it easy for us to collect the eggs. I want to build something that is easy to move but secure enough to stop predators. I am certainly open for suggestions if you have any.

4 comments:

  1. What a great weekend you had! I look forward to seeing what you do with the ducks. I'm expecting 10 ducks next month (along with 61 chicks) and am setting up a duck area now. I hope it will work for them but won't really know until they are here and using it.

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  2. We'll definitely blog and post pictures of what we come up with.

    Are you getting layer ducks?

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  3. Yes. Khaki Campbells. I ordered straight run since I'm not opposed to eating ducks either (and actually looking forward to it). The hope, of course, is to have 5 females and keep one male to winter over and let them do their natural thing. I put up a new blog post on what we've been doing the last few weeks and it shows the beginnings of the duck house if you would like to look at it. http://thinkingoutloud09.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-progress-report.html
    I'm so excited (and a bit over-whelmed) with it all :-)

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  4. When life slows down a bit and you can, would you share more about the Sow Good garden project? Is there a link?

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