March 12, 2021: Picture Dump and Friday Progress!

nateonsteemit (66)in Natural Medicine • 3 years ago

I got home this morning and got to work. Big day, and lots of projects, most of which weren't planned at all! I was talking with my favorite Bulgarian permaculturist, @bobydimitrov overnight. The talks continued after I got home too. Another perk of working nights is that Bobby and I are awake at the same time. Seriously, I love that guy.

Texroyal peach flower

Homestead peach flower

The peaches are blooming now. It's a bit earlier than I expected, I thought there'd be another week, but okay. I'll take it.

There's far too many blooms, so I am working on pinching a bunch of them off. This'll help each tree better direct it's energy. I think that's part of my problem from last year: I let it try and develop everything, and that's poor management. Picking the flowers is giving me awesome insight into my pruning regimen for the year. It's basically a harvest, so I'm seeing which branches have to go, either for my convenience or for the tree's health. Finally planning for a harvest is great, and getting to practice said harvest seems a real treat.

I left only one of these ten-ish flowers

First flowers for this plum tree 💚

New elderberry sucker. One of many!

The leafing of the sambucci!

The young things on the homestead are coming along great. We have two litters of rabbits growing right now, for a total of eighteen live rabbits at the moment. We're harvesting two tomorrow as part of a man scouts festival.

Not only are we working with young rabbits and chickens, but we have young plants coming up strong inside. I actually picked up a grow light this year, something I've never looked into. Likely one reason I've been so awful at seed starting.

My favorite little bun so far. I get to snuggle him a lot, even before he's my favorite 2% of a blanket.

Seedlings!

While we were out working, the prime truck showed up with some things I bought with blog earnings. Currently I'm pouring this money into homestead and garden things to help the whole system run a little smoother. This time, it's an automatic waterer for the rabbits. It'll take some significant rearranging of the rabbitry to make efficient use of everything, but I'm not shy from such projects. That'll be something to do Saturday morning before my friend's bachelor party, and possibly into Sunday after I get my first tattoo.

Kiddos getting packages from the prime guy

Rabbit waterer equipment, all bought with crypto earned through the blog

After opening the goodies for a proof pic, we set out planting. I didn't get to Lowe's before Melissa went to meet her sister, so I didn't work on the fence. I worked on the garden. The plan is to grow a bunch of squash for feeding to the critters too, so we're getting that started. We planted prolific yellow straightneck summer squash, black beauty zucchini, and marketmore 76 cucumbers. Of we have a super late frost, which isn't in the extended forecast, we'll replant. We have plenty of seeds, so a practice run won't hurt, and an early start won't do anything but help.

The plan is running smoothly. Our process for planting in the thick mulch I laid down is as follows:

Dig a hole in the mulch, down to the soil.
Fill the hole halfway with worm castings, and place a seed.
Fill in the hole the rest of the way with worm castings.
Top dress with rabbit poop.
Cover back over with mulch.

We'll see how it goes. My thinking is to give the seeds something lush to grow in, then having the rabbit poop break down over time into more lasting goodies. I think I got this idea from back to Eden gardening, where they use a whole lot of mulch. Talking with Melissa this morning, she said we're supposedly under drought conditions right now. You wouldn't be able to tell from my green trees and the soil under the mulch in my beds. Everything here is perfectly moist and teeming with life.

Little bit of worm poop, then a seed

Worm poop on top of seed!

Bunny poop on top of worm poop

I got a couple pictures of bug sign here this morning too. I love seeing bugs in my garden because either they're good bugs or they're food for good bugs.

Homestead spiders!