I dream of adding more to these posts one day but for now, the images will have to suffice. Parenting and gardening take up all the waking hours and both are equally rewarding, frustrating, heartbreaking and beautiful. First year growing garlic. It’s simple enough but curious to see how well they keep being stored in the barn.
The kids, the berries and the veggies continue to grow.
First blueberry harvest
Our first year of harvesting! We got about 80lbs from the field this year which is perfect for us. We had a bumper crop of apples so Gavin opted to make cider. We also framed in the Hügelkultur beds and spent lots of time at the river. And weeding… did I mention the weeding?
Year 2 of the Hügelkultur beds and blueberry update
The garden has been amazing this year! So many eggs and so much fresh food. It truly feels like we are living the dream. Only downside…. so much weeding. It’s never ending.
We have stripped all the blossoms off the berries again this year. One more year of doing that to establish strong roots.
Hügelkultur garden beds and new chicken coop
After hearing about hügelkultur I knew exactly what we could do with all the old rotting logs on our property. I decided to dig them in rather than having traditional hills. The new coop will allow us to expand from five hens right next to the house to fifty out by the barn. Best investment on the new coop: automatic chicken doors!
Planting in
And so it begins… 300 blueberries in 15 neat rows. 5 rows of Blue Crop, 5 rows of Duke and 5 rows of Reka.
STARTING A BLUEBERRY FARM WHEN YOU HAVE NO SOIL.
We had some tough choices when it came to our land and what we were going to grow. The best spot in terms of sun had no soil (the previous owners pushed the top soil onto the adjacent land and put in a gravel riding ring). The best spot for soil was completely treed and at the back of our property. It was going to cost the same to prepare both spots so we decided to bring in the soil rather than cut down trees.
Our next step was to prepare the field for the soil. Because the ground was hard packed from years of horse riding, covered in gravel and only a few inches up from the hard pan we brought in a machine to claw up the ground and then had a front end loader with a rock sifter go through the field and take out the larger rocks.
After that we were ready for our soil. It was peaty, black, acidic soil. Exactly what we needed for our future bushes. We paid for a soil test to be sure it had all the essential elements and then bit the bullet and ordered 10 truckloads. I won’t tell you how much it cost (mostly trucking fees) but I will say these berries better produce!
We laid out 15 one foot high mounds with 10 feet between the rows and when that was done we ordered our blueberry plants.
