More Good Times

Our drive down to Raleigh from Red Oak, VA was very pleasant, stopping at antique and junque stores along the way.  Southern States Farm and Feed Store is (almost) replacing Walmart.  Now we compare prices on goat feed, chicken feed and fencing.  Who woulda thought?

Anyhow, we arrived in Raleigh with hugs and kisses to the daughter, Mandy and family.  Ainsley was turning 7 on Saturday and Granny (Gary's mom) was turning 91 on the 17th.  Saturday was a busy day with Jack (10) looking good at his second football game of the season.

Cute redhead fourth from right

 Ainsley had a million little giggly girls at the gymnastics facility for her birthday right after the game. 

Big smile for the camera

That night we had dinner with our dear friends, Dick and Diane at their home.  Fabulous meal, thanks, guys!  Seeing them is like we never left Raleigh.  Such good friends!

But work awaits.  We left Monday morning for Lake City and it rained the whole way down.  Ugh.  During our vaca, I often check the radar in LC to keep tabs on the weather.  Because of the great big green, yellow and red spots over our area day after day, I was hoping our house would still be standing on its original foundation.  It turned out we had 7 inches or more in a couple days, but fortunately everything was just very wet.  We did have a new pond down by the road which will recede, but it was 'unusually heavy rain', says the locals.  That makes two:  'unusually cold winter' and 'unusually heavy rain'.  We are just hoping no 'unusually bad hurricanes' show up this season...

We found a guy with some straw bales and drove over to pickup 13 bales (all that would fit in the truck).  I've never had a garden, so this is trial and error, folks.  Get ready for anything...  

He understood what I was trying to do, and wished us luck.  

Feeling 'farmerish'

 This is how one makes a Strawbale Garden. First the foundation:  newspapers, which I watered to keep them in place.   

Then a layer of weed barrier landscape fabric (kindly left by previous owner)  topped with flattened cardboard boxes (saved from our move).

Place the bales cut side up and string side on the sides squished together.

OK, it's not the straightest garden, but I did it myself and those bales are HEAVY!.  Call it a free-form garden.

Now comes the conditioning.  First you water and water.  The rain helped with that step.  Then you spread fertilizer over the tops and water it in with a fireman's type nozzle for deep penetration.  The idea is to get that fertilizer into the middle of the bales.  I want my garden to be as organic as possible, so I used Milorganite (also called poop in a bag).

What is Milorganite?

Milorganite fertilizer is one of the oldest branded fertilizers on the market today.  It is composed of heat-dried microbes that have digested the organic matter in wastewater.  Milorganite is manufactured by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.  The District captures wastewater from the metropolitan Milwaukee area.  This water is then treated with microbes to digest nutrients that are found in it, and cleaned water is returned to Lake Michigan.  The resulting microbes are then dried, becoming Milorganite fertilizers.  The Milorganite program is one of the world’s largest recycling efforts.

 Cool, eh? 

It will take 15 days to pretreat the bales until planting time with a specific routine that includes watering and adding more fertilizer.  Slowly the inside of the bales heat up to nearly 160 degrees, composting enough that the bacteria inside is activated and begins to digest the straw, making the nitrogen and other good stuff ready for the little plants.

I've also begun my non-GMO seeds (a little late, but you can't go away after planting baby seeds and leave them unattended). 

We have babies!

I used half peat moss and vermiculite and stuffed cutup paper towel and toiletpaper rolls (that have been collected for months).  Right now I'm doing cool weather crops: Kale, Parsley, Egg Yolk tomatoes and Roma tomatoes that will be transplanted when the bales are ready.  And I just noticed we have babies:  the Kale and Romas are awake and growing!

The rest of the seeds will be direct sown when the bales are ready. Lake City and Fort White have a seed exchange policy.  You can order free seeds, and hopefully be able to return some at your harvest!  I must have ordered twenty different veggie and flower seeds from them, and with some luck, some may produce.  

Our home faces south, and I love to look out the kitchen windows at our front yard, but with the sun's lower angle now, it can be quite intense.  So I made some kitchen curtains from old lace.  We can still see out, but it is a pretty, cottage-like, sun dappled light now.  Poetic, huh?

 

Gary is happy playing homeowner: trimming trees, altering pipe locations, cutting grass, and being healthy.  We went to the Mayo Clinic to get his new contact lens, and so far it is working great.  We will have a followup appointment in a couple weeks just to make sure everything is OK.  We like going to Jax as we get to see the beach, too.  

Next on our list is to get a tree-trimming guy out and a fence estimate.  Gotta get fence before goaties!  

Research, research, research!  Fun, Fun and Fun!

Life is SOOOO Good!