Raised bed in December

          Although I swore not to do any yard work in December, I could not stop myself when I woke up to a clear, bright, cold morning. Digging in the rain is vile—and counterproductive to soil structure—but tossing leaf mulch and weeding the fig tree on a sunny day is a different story.

            I started by turning over the soil in the two beds that had been chicken tractored already. The first, most recently occupied, bed had a layer of chicken straw and poop over the winter’s leaf mulch. It needed to be turned. The leaves, straw, spilled food, and poop will compact and turn anaerobic if left untouched all winter.  It smells nasty and nothing will grow in it come spring. But, if I give the whole bed a rough toss, mixing soil into the organic matter, it will all break down, slowly in January and February and quickly by April.  I turned the first bed and then gave the older bed, which had just a layer of leaves untouched a toss as well. All the while, the chickens were having a discussion; they wanted to dig around in the beds themselves. Before I moved on, I let them out.

      

      The second project involved prepping a bed for the coop. There were still a few top-less beets (Thank you, Bunzilla), a leek, and some parsnips hanging out in the soil. The beets and leek were harvested quickly, but the parsnips were a challenge. Several were huge, reaching down into the clay subsoil under the good garden dirt. I dig and scrambled and tugged until they came out.  Two required the pitchfork. Kayli the fluffy cat walked the fence line, calling me over to scratch behind her ears. I stopped to oblige, then gave the final bed a quick toss and went in for lunch.

      

      After lunch, I returned to clean up the hedgerow on the north side of the house. Our fig tree has been slowly growing in the strip of land between our house and the neighbor’s driveway, which is nice because it is an excellent screen in the summer. But, it also collects weed seeds and vines. I grubbed out small hazelnuts, a holly, several armloads of wild clematis, a nasty vine that was once a rose but is now a wiry green  thing with thorns, and some nightshades, filling a garbage can with rough compostables. I did NOT start to prune out the suckers, although I was tempted, because, after all, it is still December and I will not work in the yard during December.

           

           

     

Crop Rotation with Chickens

   

        It’s not easy to plan a large veg garden around a chicken tractor. When we first acquired two hens, we had three 4 by 10 foot beds and they could settle in by November if need be and stay until late March. Now we have nine beds, mostly 10 by 4 but several 8 by 4, and it has grown more complicated. The key is to remember your harvest dates, rather than trying to rotate the cole crops every three years. This year, the arrangement looks something like this:

Bed A: dried beans, probably Indian Woman, and some edamane beans

Bed B: Spring crops—mustard, peas, lettuce, radishes, kale, broccoli. All of which will be eaten by July (or August, if the kale lasts that long).

Bed C: Garlic and ceremonial wheat, to be replaced by sprouting broccoli and fall cabbage.

Bed D and E: potatoes.

Bed F: pole beans and yellow wax beans

Turn the corner and move up the other side, to….

Bed G: vines—zucchini, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers

Bed H: Summer crops—chard, lettuce, beets, collards, fennel bulbs, and more broccoli

Bed I: Alliums and roots—scallions, leeks, beets, carrots, parsnips (if they sprout).

Tomatoes and peppers grow out front  where the driveway used to be in black tubs.

Next year, each shifts over bed, so garlic is planted where the potatoes were this year, etc.

The chicken coop will be placed on the spring crop bed in early September, when I go back to school and they can no longer run all over the yard anyways. A month later, all of the beds will be covered in leaves for the winter.

This system works well for us because it leaves beds free at predictable times. When I tried to plant by crop, there were always a few random plants still producing right when the bed needed to be chicken  tractored.

Weekend Breakfasts….

Pancakes—from the 1955 Betty Crocker’s cookbook

1.5 cups of flour—half wheat, half low gluten white

1 t BP

.5 t BS

.5 t  salt

1.25 cups of buttermilk

1 egg

2T oil

Add berries from the freezer….This is just enough for two people, at least in our house.

Waffles—from Molly Katsen’s Sunlight Café

 PREHEAT THE WAFFLE IRON!

1 c rolled oats

1 c flour (I sometimes use half whole wheat)

.5 c oat bran

.75 t salt

1 t BP

.25 t BS

2 T sugar

1.5 c buttermilk

.5 c water or milk

2 eggs

3 T oil

Once again, add berries from the freezer to the batter, esp. raspberries.