The Farm is a homesteading experiment. Mistakes and corrections are based on the movement of seasons, not bandwidth.

   Everything from the 2023 garden season has been stored or eaten. The mixed lettuces, salad greens, and cilantros growing in the unheated and unlit greenhouses are still providing but starting to seed. The 2024 gardening season is starting. The daffodils are blooming, the hucklberries flowering, bumblebees are visiting the garden.

We are about to fence the garden from wind; this is going to create a micro climate for the 1/4 acre garden area. We ordered the wood from a family operated sawmill locally. We are excited about the change and ready to build. A small wave of lettuce starts are looking strong in the greenhouse. By the spring equinox, we'll have the first wave of seeds in soil. Peas are planted directly in the beds. The cabbages and kale will be planted both directly and started in the greenhouse. The greens, carrots, and culinary herbs are still providing from the winter garden but the greens are seeding while carrots start to grow small root hairs however still tender. Garlic is mostly doing well from the November planting. Just finished feeding the berry beds, now approaching 200 strawberry plants. All 20 garden beds (3 ft. wide by 20 ft. long) are just weeded again. Flatweed, chickweed, and a variety of grasses also grow all winter and migrate into the fallow winter beds; the weeding never ends.

    Pests are controlled through plant rotation, intentional plantings, and other plant based methods. We also have used two chickens in a small cage (chicken tractor) moved along the bed before planting to scratch out weeds and eat grubs, root maggots, and earwigs. We have a continuing population of voles and had a new wave of slugs. Slugs are managed under control with frequent weeding, and plant inspections at dusk. Voles are underground. Spraying the ground with a castor oil and water mix moves most of them out of the garden, but we haven't been able to move out the colonies. We would use 3 gallons of castor oil a year if we sprayed it every six weeks. Voles harvest our asparagus roots. We also don't plant beets or turnips because these voles eat them. They disturbed our carrots this year and we lost 1/3 of our winter to spring crop. Otherwise, bugs are currently under control; we think the crop rotation and inspections manage that.

    Bees, we need to introduce some mason bees in the old stumps in the garden fthis summer as an experiment to increase plant yields.

    Soil, we use bulk compost made from our barnyard poop cleanup and mix it with autumn's dried fallen leaves. We feed growing plants with NPK regularly mixing dried compost, langbeinite, green sand, and bone meal. Plant rotations in sequences by plant families also help maintain an exchange of nutrients in the soil. We don't till our beds, we use a broadfork.

   A solar, off-grid, small electric system runs the fans in our greenhouses and provides a remote power source.