Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Haaaaaappy Wednesdaaaay!

Man, I slept great today. Being on night shift, and having kiddos, I've had to adjust my sleep style a bit. I sleep with a beanie on to cover my eyes, and earplugs in to drown out the wild hilarity of the homeschooled rapscallions. I like it a lot, but it makes my ears a little itchy when I first get up.

This morning I missed my target bedtime by only half an hour. In bed by 10AM, which is really good. I turned out the chickens, fed the rabbits, and got to work prepping a bed for a big corn planting.

Corn rows

Of course, I consulted the Oracle, @bobydimitrov before doing anything. I wanted his input because I haven't ever planted corn with copious amounts of mulch like this. Consensus was to dig rows and fill em with worm castings, planting at the usual depth of 6-8" and spacing a few seeds per hole about a foot apart. In a twelve foot (4m) bed, with eight rows, that's ninety six holes to fill with three seeds each. That's a slight variance from how I planted here last year, hopefully leaning towards higher production. The plan is to plant squashes around it to keep the weeds a little farther off of the mulch mound, and maybe plant dry pole beans and winter squash on the inside. That way the inner densely planted bits can all be left alone except to water or fertilize with rabbit poop until fall harvest. We'll see how it goes. The corn here will be Hopi blue corn. This weekend I'll plant it and drastically prune the privets. Privet poles will be used to prop and support the corn like last year.

Tomato sprouts sprouting tomatoes!

The seed starts are going well so far, with Brandywine tomatoes leading the charge! There's a local plant sale here soon where we'll pick up some other starts as well. No much of course, we have a good bit already, but a few plants that are farther along won't hurt anything. I need to learn how to prune tomatoes this year. Supposedly that's a thing.

Huddlebun closeup

Tomorrow morning we're stopping for a bit of scavenging action. Road crews have been trimming trees and leaving piles of mulch on my drive home, so my friend and I are going to fill our truck beds on the way home tomorrow. Good stuff that'll be used in the pig pen this year. I'll be working more on the front fence this weekend too, I didn't work on it last weekend because we were so busy with other things.

Melissa and I Had a couple good planning talks today about budgeting and scheduling. We're getting back on the debt busting track after being derailed last year by the repairs. Setting plans for the fall when we start with the homeschooling co-op as well. It's officially been a year since Melissa started schooling at home, and I couldn't be more proud of my little family unit.

New Mombun and some Huddlebuns

The rabbits are coming along nicely. The three new does aren't ready to breed yet, but I've been trying daily. I can't afford to miss a beat with them if I'm gonna get out five more litters by May. Other Mombun is about ready to pop, I'm really hoping she does well with this litter. It'll be her fourth, and she's failed to take care of any of them. If it doesn't work, she's going in the stew pot. I can't afford to be feeding a bun that's not feeding me, but I really don't want to cull her. Oh well I guess. Such is the homestead life.

I'm gonna go resume my normal workday shenanigans now. Thanks for checking in, reading, and upvoting! More to come soon with what we're getting done with the proceeds :)

Love from Texas

Nate 💚