Spring 2012
Fruit Trees:
We arrived with 5 fruit tree's - 1 apricot, 1 pear, 1 plum, and 2 unknowns.
In March I bought 24 tree's from Walmart -
6 apple
6 peach
6 pear
4 cherry
2 dwarf plum
The tree's all had buds and/or had leafed out by the time I got them planted, so I did not prune most of them. I did cut back two of the cherry tree's.
Berries:
8 grapes
9 blueberries
Raised beds:
Columbus made 7 raised beds -
Strawberries
Asparagus
The Garden:
Herbs:
Animals:
We arrived with -
2 dogs - Elsinore, a German Shepherd, 6 years old. Happy, a rescued (in Oct. 2010) Beagle.
3 cats - Gassy and Tiger. Tiger has gone missing. And Butterworth.
3 ducks - 1 Mallard, Mr. Mallard. 2 Pekins, Elvis & Eugene.
4 Roosters - Big Boy, and 3 that we hatched at the end of last summer, crosses of RIR and Dominicker.
9 hens - 1 RIR (she hid so well when I sold all of my RIR last summer that we missed her), the other 8 are a mix of Dominickers that I got for free last summer, and some that we hatched - Dominicker/RIR crossed with Big Boy.
Summer 2012
Fruit Tree's: They have done well, but I didn't get them pruned. By the time I got them and planted them they were too leafed out, so I decided to wait until winter to prune them.
We had to dig up several of them to make a path for the new mobile, we put their roots in dirt and mulch and they are still waiting to be replanted.
Berries: I'm not sure how many of these made it. I should have waited to buy and plant them until we had more of a garden plan, but I was eager to get some in the ground and rushed it. Without running water, or very limited water many of them seemed to struggle during the hottest part of the summer.
Raised Beds: I planted strawberries in three raised beds - they did well and have spread. Hopefully we will get a few berries next year.
The herbs I planted did fantastic!!! We had pesto from the basil plants many times over the summer. We also got a ton of peppers!! I want to focus on herbs more next spring, and I also want to dry some, which I planned to do this year but got sidetracked. We never did get the asparagus planted - it is still in buckets.
The Garden: We had no idea what to expect from the garden. The soil here is mostly clay, and never having planted in it before we weren't sure how it would turn out, so we tried to keep our garden on the small side to test things out. We added manure (just the junk manure from Walmart) and lime when we first planted, and then later in the season I spread another bag of lime. I bought a couple of boxes of fertilizer and spread those too - I think I only did that twice the whole summer. Everything GREW!! and it grew well. Our tomatoes plants were HUGE. We didn't get many tomatoes until very late in the summer, but I think that maybe because we planted a late variety? We got tons and tons of bell peppers, and our artichoke plants finally started growing and our now nice and big - hopefully we will get some of those too next summer. The corn was pitiful. It barely grew and when the ears came in they were scrawny and tasted terrible. Sugar King really wants some homegrown corn, so we will have to try again next year but put in more of an effort to grow GOOD corn. We also got several big watermelons. I've never had good luck growing those, so I was pretty impressed with them, as were the kids.
Animals:
Dogs: We added a Pyrenees, Blanco. She was 6 months old when we got her. she has been with the other animals and is protective. We got her to keep watch over our other animals. She does not come inside the house, which is a first for us. Our animals are always part of the family and they have always come and gone as they pleased, but it was really important to me to have a dog outside at night keeping an eye on things. So far she does not seem to mind and hasn't even tried to come in the house.
Ducks: We lost our beloved Mr. Mallard. He just went missing on night. We added four more Mallards to our flock - not that we needed them, but the kids really enjoy the ducks. It is almost Nov. 1 and they are still here, so I imagine they will stay with us through the winter:)
Roosters: We are down to one rooster - Big Boy. We had two get in a cock fight over the summer - it was brutal and they would NOT stop, so we shot both of them. We lost the other rooster one day shortly after we had started letting them free range again (we had them fenced after we planted the garden and they wouldn't stay out of it) - I think that he choked to death. He was fine one minute and then the next he was bouncing around in distress, and then I laid down and died.
Hens: we added several of them. We bought some chicks at Tractor supply and one of ours hatched some here.
Meat birds: we tried it. You can read all about it here in my chicken butchering post.
We got eight Ginny's, but none of them made it. Once they were big enough to go outside it was a matter of days before they were gone. It is a mountaintop rumor that a neighbors dog ate them, but we never saw it happen and when we asked the neighbor they of course knew nothing about it.
Goats: we added three Boer goats. You can read about the day we got them, and how I got them for FREE in this post.
Boer goats are meat goats, and what I really want our dairy goats, the only reason I took them is because I've wanted goats for a few years now and since they were free it was a way for me to try them out and see if I really wanted to be a goat owner before I went and spent any money. We all really loved the goats - they are a lot of fun to have around and we enjoy their personality. You could say that we got more attached to them than we thought we would, but it is time for them to go. Mostly, with the meat goats, because we don't plan to eat goat right now, I see mouths to feed, along with other expenses and time that we are both short on. Though, one of the males, Picky, was, well - picky when he was a baby. We couldn't get him to take a bottle and there were a couple of times I thought he wasn't going to make it. He ended up only taking a bottle from Einstein, who grew rather attached to him, so for right now we are planning to keep him, but the other two need to go.
