This week on the farm we had warm temps. in the upper 60′s which sprouted radishes, broccoli, lettuce, onions, peas, leeks, kohlrabi, swiss chard, nasturtiums, marigolds, and mustards to name a few! We prepared the raised beds for the potato planting next week and continued weeding the strawberries. In the greenhouse we discovered a creeping bent grass matt and we had to spend all day removing it by hand. It’s almost warm enough to seed carrots and transplant the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants from the hot house into the cold frame greenhouse.
We’ve started using the bokashi cycle fermentation system to aid our on-farm composting process. We’ve had some pests like crows and mice getting into our compost lately and the bokashi cycle will deter them. The bokashi cycle is made of rice bran and beneficial microorganisms and it pickles the food scraps so insects, rodents, and other pests are no longer interested! Effective microorganisms or “beneficial microorganisms” are comprised of phototrophic bacteria, yeast, and lactic acid bacteria. The bokashi cycle encourages them to work together to pickle the food scraps quickly and when it’s placed in the garden, the soil microbes do their part by continuing the process leaving a highly nutrient soil base that plants love. The bokashi cycle ferments all food scraps, including waxy vegetable skins and meat scraps. Using it means we are lowering the amount of waste we’d normally send to the landfill which significantly reduces our carbon footprint!
The layer chicks are growing quickly and soon they’ll have enough feathers to move outside of their brooding house into the chicken tractor where they will enjoy green grass and crunchy bugs. The cornish cross meat chicks have already gained weight even though they’re only 10 days old. We feed them certified organic chicken feed comprised mainly of corn and soy beans and when they’re feathered out we’ll put them on pasture too. Our Irish Dexter bull, Toro, has been really frisky lately so we’ve had a lot of fence to fix but he’s loving the new pasture grass and even snacks on the Douglas fir needle tips!
Warmer weather means our biogas digester is starting to work again. We’ll do a test run in a few days- stay tuned…….
