Spring Farm Updates

Spring is sure arriving in full force now! Despite that extremely early start (the daffodils were in bloom in early April) things seem to have slowed down a bit and everything seems to be a little bit closer to average right now. There are a ton of farm projects that I'll tell you about as I get the chance, the biggest ones are the new greenhouse, the new yurt and of course all the seed expansion. I'm planting a bigger area than ever for seeds this year, two of the three garden areas on the farm have been greatly expanded. I just came in from seeding all 16 cereal grain varieties for this year, and the 35 new lettuces we planted last week are all sprouting in the loamy Nictaux soil (lettuce seeds were big this year so I'm growing as many as I can for 2011). The peas are all in now too, I've got almost 100 varieties on the go including some extremely rare ones like Monster, Prince Edward and Gravedigger. Now we just need some rain...

The other week we tilled, leveled, seeded and rolled two new hay meadows. One was seeded last year but the ground was so lumpy from the plowing work that we had to re-do it this spring (otherwise mowing would be nearly impossible), we had a tractor in to have it tilled then by hand we raked flat all the furrows and rolled the seeds in with a borrowed push-roller (thanks to our wwoofer Greg for the many hours of rolling!). It's looking nice and primed to start sprouting now, I really can't wait until we can start scything up there.

The house is full of seedlings in various states of growth and the new greenhouse is slowly coming along to provide some much needed extra space. The anchor posts are all set but I haven't had the time yet to move on to assembling the frame, updates to come!

As you can see from the photos the yurt frame is totally finished now too. I've just spent a couple of days over at Little Foot Yurts getting all the angles and dimensions right, it's so exciting to see it finally coming together! The canvas will be ready for it on Sunday, I'll have more photos and details real soon...

Brush Walls

I first learned of brush walls; loosely woven heaps of branches, stumps and other organic debris often planted with a living cover of vines, from Windhorse Farm. They use them throughout their forest, fields and gardens to provide cover and habitat to all kind of wildlife, as well as to define boundaries. In addition to their ecological role, what we've discovered is that they make really great livestock fencing!

Last winter we began fencing our pastures using this technique. We made our first brush wall while we were clearing a corner of our field to make a pasture in an area that was previously logged, and therefore covered in brush and debris. This of course was perfect building material so we got straight to work. The building technique is almost totally foolproof, just throw and stack the brush into a wall roughly 3-4 feet high and equally wide, keeping in mind that the material will eventually settle. I tend to put the smaller material on the bottom and use the large branches to weigh down the top. So far this has provided a perfectly adequate barrier for our cow. I found that I could quite easily construct 40-50 feet of brush wall in a day (that's a lot faster than sinking posts and nailing rails) while at the same time it should last much longer than a conventional fence without significant maintenance. All you might have to do is add more material to the top as it settles and begins to decompose over the years.

Over half the fencing around our pastures now consists of brush walls, and I'm sure that percentage will increase now that we've realized what an impressive method of fencing it is. The next step for us now is to plant Virginia creepers, grapes, hardy kiwi and other vines to cover the walls and provide even more wildlife shelter and, in the case of those last two, a great source of fruit.




Bessie ruminating on escape from her secure, totally sustainably fenced pasture.