Pigs!

Pig pen is ready.
The guys wrapped the tarp down over the straw bales and I forgot to get another picture of it...
They've got quite a view!

Potatoes!

A 14 tire U surrounding a mixture of layered horse manure, wood chips, goat lot cleaning, straw, small branches, pine cones...and the chickens are making their contribution as well...
When the pile is finished, we'll close it with 6 more tires, stacked 2 high...then it will be time to fill the tires with soil! :)
Ordered 12.5 pounds of seed potatoes. When we piece them out we should have 50 2 Oz pieces. We will plant 2-3 per tire stack and go from there! :)

Baby Goats!

Emily Elizabeth surprised us with 2 baby goats this evening. One little boy, Pete, and one little girl, Maddie.

Compost is Cooking!

Building compost so that we have enriched soil to grow produce! 

50-ish degrees today and our compost is 162! smile emoticon

Btw-i don't still use this as a cheese thermometer!

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Chicken Garden on Contour

The first of our terraces, built on contour, for our chicken feed garden... :)

We will be planting mulberry, rye grass, amaranth, squash, oats, etc...for our chickens to free range through.

Terraces on contour

Built one of these to help lay out our garden terraces.

This is awesome!

We were able to stake out our chicken food forest terraces on contour using this A-frame surveying tool.

Building compost

On top of last year's pig pen, we have piled horse manure, chicken coop cleaning, goat and sheep barn cleaning, pine cones, small branches, yucca, pine needles, bark, leaves, and sawdust.

Pile is about 5 x 5 x 3, on top of the hog wallow and hog manure.

We are not watering the pile today. The materials from the horse lot are very, very wet. We will check moisture tomorrow.

Temperature today is in the 50s, and has been 40s through 60s for a few weeks. We know it isn't spring yet, but hopefully the pile is large enough to keep that warmth, make it's own heat, and encourage the breakdown of materials.