Fall is, in general, a less exciting time for blog posts.  I haul water and feed to the three coops each morning before dawn, Daughter #2 feeds and gathers eggs in the afternoon, and we move the one moveable coop three times a week, weather permitting.  The chicken tweens are in a permanent chicken yard for now, until spring comes.  We keep the yard and coop filled with straw and feed the, scraps for interest.

I am dreaming about what I will plant next spring.  Almost all of our seeds are old enough that I’m starting over, and I’m trying hard to be realistic about what we can and will care for.

Fall is a time for using up.  We have sweet potatoes to sell or eat, and I’m on a mission to use up all the odds and ends in the pantry and freezers.  It makes me sad to waste food through neglect, so before we raise chickens and turkeys again, I’d like to use all the meat in the freezers.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It’s Purgatory Ranch.

Classic Fall Days

Today, it's 34 F and raining slowly, an unpleasant combination for any outdoor work.  It's a good thing we watch the weather and worked hard yesterday to be ready for today!

Our smaller coop of chickens has been moved to the old strawberry bed.  We made the decision to pull all the drip hose, mow down the patch, and return it to grass/pasture.  Too many strawberries were lost when I couldn't weed this spring, and we need to move the patch somewhere else.  James finished driving Tposts last night as well as dragging the coop up the hill from the "bowl," where Spunky and I had been moving them every other day by hand.  I'll put up the fence in the next week so we can let the chickens have the range of the entire area, for the winter.  They can scratch, eat weed seeds, and fertilize all winter.  Next year, we'll plant seeds.

Inside, I've been busy as well.  I cooked up the last bag of last year's tomatoes into a sauce for lasagna, moved straw into the chick run, moved the other chicken coop, made soap, rearranged the storage room, found myriad uses for the damaged sweet potatoes that can't be stored for long, and generally washed and washed laundry.

I need to learn more about pasture growth.  I see henbit and dandelions taking over the property, and I think it's because we need to reseed.  Reseed with what, and fertilize with what?  I have research to do!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.