With this year's "impossible garden," we now know we need more nutrients in the ground if Jamie wants to have a decent harvest next year. Preparing for next year starts right now. The area we chose for our compost station is near a water supply, near the woods for an endless supply of "browns," near a hard drivable surface so the tractor can be utilized, and in a mostly shaded area.
Another reason to choose this area is that it forces us to clean out a huge section of clutter. Admittedly, a small amount of the clutter just got relocated to clutter up another location, but most of it was organized and placed in more long-term appropriate locations.
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I'm not sure what time it is this morning. It's still kind of early,
and so I kind of got out here before the sun was going to beat down on me.
So my goal today is before the sun gets too hot and it's too hot to work out here,
is to get all of this leaf matter and wood chip matter that we put in here in this side,
what was supposed to be a flower garden for pollinators that failed. Let's just say that it
failed. But I'm going to use this material and make me some more compost for a garden for next
year in a different location that's actually going to be more for like fruits and vegetables,
honestly, more vegetables than anything. Look how rich that is. Can you see how black it is?
Oh, there's a breeze. It's small, but it's there. I'm going to be doing that
when I unload this in the sun. I'm not sure how long that took me. The thing on here says
five minutes, but I feel like I've started it a couple of times. But regardless, a lot for the
effort. So this here, I don't know if you can recognize it on the property, but this used to be
where one of our first piles of logs were. And this has already got a bunch of bark and all
kinds of other stuff down here from where the trees were that has fallen off when I moved them.
So we're going to use this as kind of our ground layer. I'm just going to pile it just right there
and just see what happens. And it's kind of going to be close to the shop. Maybe not the most ideal,
but it's kind of like we need it in an area that can be useful because eventually the big garden
will be there. My impossible garden is there. And then we think we're going to do something
on this side of the shop and stuff with maybe some raised beds or whatnot. And so if we do that,
then this would be a good location as far as not having to move it crazy across the property.
We'll just have to be careful when we get that manure put here that we contain the smell of.
It's super smelly. We're not going to probably drop the manure right here. Probably going to
drop it that direction some. And then just add as needed so we can contain the smell if needed.
But we'll just have to figure out that as we go and stuff. So we're so new at so much of this,
we're just got the basics of this is how it should be done. And let's take our shot at it and see
what happens. We have an opportunistic change of plans today, change of plans due to an
opportunity. And that is Jamie's uncle has provided us with basically a bale of hay and a half round
bales of last year's hay. So they're doing another round of cutting hay this past week.
And this is last year's leftovers. So we got it for compost. We're starting to do some compost. So
all right, well, we'll take it. That's going to be part of the compost. Where's the compost
going to go? Well, it's going to go up against this entire wall over here, this line of trees,
where we've just got junk and implements stored. So I need to move all the implements.
Jamie's going to help me move all the stuff that she can move. And we're going to turn this into
our compost area. It's mostly shaded. Gracie, Grace, Grace. Yeah, calm down, girl. Today's
Grace's first day back to normal from getting spayed. And still a little still a little
apprehensive about her being crazy. All right. So we've got a lot of browns in the ground right
here due to the logs that were right here. Makes sense to start a good compost area.
And by compost area, I mean a huge compost area. I want this to be as much compost as we can get
because we've realized the first year of planting and whatnot that
we got to do better with soil quality and nutrients in the ground and whatnot. So
small stuff that Jamie can move, she's going to move. I'm going to move the bigger stuff
with the tractor as much as I can and reorganize this metal blah over to there, somewhere over
there. This log yard organization is really just really motivating. It's really encouraging
to get things organized in big picture or big piles like this. So I've got my stack of metal
over there in the orchard. I need to pick that up and put it on two log runners over there out in
the open where I can easily access it because in the not too distant future, I need to make a
chicken tractor and realize what metal I have to utilize as part of the design and whatnot. So
anyway, we've got to get a handle on this space.
