My Mountain Homestead

Okay, so I can’t really call my place a homestead but I can dream.  I would love to have a couple acres to have a few more farm critters than just chickens but with my life I am sure that is not even practical. 

I shall content myself with what I have now.  Saturday afternoon we had lovely sunshine.  I spent it tidying the greenhouse and getting more seeds started. Like Brandywine tomatoes, Vallecito peppers, baby broccoli, purple brussel sprouts and lots of lettuce.

  The sun now hits the greenhouse more and it warms up well. The longer day light hours will also help the seedlings once they pop up.  It was 80 degrees inside the greenhouse all afternoon as I worked, I had to strip down to my tank top.

I do have auxiliary lighting along with bottom heat but I must be careful, if it is a very sunny day I have to be sure to turn off the bottom heat or the seedlings will get too hot and cook. 

I moved my strawberries to the left side so to make room for the newly sprouted seeds and my pelargoniums I moved from inside our home where I overwintered them.

I started all the pelargoniums (also known as zonal geraniums) from seed last year and to make sure they made it, brought them in the house for winter.  Some are still in the studio but I will move them into the greenhouse soon as well.  All the gallon jugs of water I use as heat sinks.  When the sunshine shines on them the water heats up and releases that heat  as the air cools around them protecting the tender plants from cold snaps that can strike any night.

I also started the lettuce in the window boxes on the floor of the greenhouse.  We will eat the baby lettuce as I thin them and some will be transplanted out in the raised beds when the snow melts.

These are what my raised beds look like right now.

Barely a corner showing..sigh!

Still a lot of snow to melt.  I will content myself with my seed starting in the greenhouse and pop the starts into the ground as soon as it is workable.
My repurposed pallet composter is finally clearing of snow, and it looks like all the garden debris mixed with the chicken litter has composted down quite well.  Plant debris was heaped past the top and now it has cooked down to lovely black compost.  All that lovely black richness will go far in feeding my garden this summer. It is most likely squirming full of worms as we speak!

I also spent some time with the ladies.  I made sure to give them some alfalfa to munch on and scratch thru.  With all this snow on the ground they are lacking access to any greens, other than the veggies scraps I give them.   They love the alfalfa, this bale I bought has been especially full of leaves and flowers, a very lush crop.  The egg yokes I get now are orange and nearly impossible to whip into the whites, from what I have read that is from the chlorophyll in the alfalfa (or fresh grass if they have access to it). You can see the alfalfa on the ground with the straw I toss into the pen.

They look fat and sassy, don’t they! 

They dig down to the dry soil underneath and make themselves a dirt bath tub. You can see a Speckled Sussex wallowing around and kicking the dust on herself.   She kinda looks dead in this shot but trust me, she was just having a good ol time.  The Columbian hens are waiting for their turn.

And the other ladies come rushing out of the hen house wondering what all the fuss is about.

All in all, a very relaxing day, but then I even enjoy raking out the hen house.  Does that qualify me as a farm girl??  Until next post....Ta

Pamela