Shade Cloth and Micro Sprinklers

Got a good rain yesterday. Planted and set up about 2 dozen micro-sprinklers.

All four beds with shade cloth were uncovered during the rains. Hopefully this will help germination of lettuces, mustards, chard, tomatillos and flowers. 

Chicken Tractors

 We have five chicken tractors with a total of eighteen layers in them combined.

A chicken tractor is named so because of its ability to replace a traditional tractor by tilling, weeding, mulching, fertilizing and so on. 

Sprouted Grains as Poultry Feed

Wheat berries after 2 days sprouting.

Soaking on day 1

Broccoli Harvest

Farming For the Future

Blue Flax and Orange Poppy

We got this 125 watt panel to power our 12 volt water pump for irrigating.

Broccoli and Lettuce and Beets under shade cloth,, carrots and scallions and more lettuce to the right.

Calendula

Snake in the Chicken Shack

This snake was making a meal of our eggs.

Pastured Poultry in Drylands

These hens have been getting moved on our native drylands pasture at least twice a day ,,,,sometimes four or five!

Hens on a diet of leafy greens, sprouted wheat berries and barley, and organic scratch, no soy whatsoever. 

These three hen tractors can on a good day produce three eggs each!

Growing

Purple Basil in the ground... no transplanting needed

Tomato plant in the same bed 

Yarrow on it's second year

Chives

Pastured Hens and Cover Crops

Right now we have nine hens pasturing in three of these tractors.

A planting of rye and buckwheat where we grew a bed of greens and carrots last year. This fall we will plant garlic here after the chickens scratch through a few plantings like this.

Growing Food with Water Catchment

This is a February planting of beets, broccoli and lettuce.

Second cutting is going to be great on this patch.

New expanded beds all set up with irrigation from the cistern... Growing here now are potatoes , chard, lettuces, kales, cabbages,  radishes, beets, broccoli, mustards and soon sunflowers down the middle bed with the chamisa at the end. 

Inside view of the far left hoop.

Red Russian Kale 

Potatoes

Early Corn Planting

Blue Corn

Blue Corn plot to be a Three Sisters Garden across the driveway, next to perennial herb garden.

Second Blue Corn plot, also slated to become a Three Sisters Garden

Farming in the Rocky Mountains

Tomatoes getting their first true leaves.

Blue Flax Flower

Hot Peppers: Habanero, Jalapeño, Cayenne