Multi-Task Friday

When Phil moves the sheep each day (and he's getting faster every time), they have eaten down a huge amount of the weed load. The line across the photo is the line where they grazed down. (The sheep are grazing in the far right: they're hard to see until they eat more.)

One of the innovations he learned at his grazing class was not to cut down the residue after the sheep go past. Instead, leave it standing upright. I think this is similar to the advice we had that, if we want a tree we cut down to actually die from the roots, to cut it off about three feet high. The roots will spend so much effort to get sap up those three feet, it will grow exhausted quickly. Whereas if you cut it off at the base, the roots have plenty of oomph to get the growth restarted. By leaving the weeds tall but stark, they will have a harder job of resprouting.

Phil is very pleased: it all looks like what he learned about, even down to the mashed down weeds where the sheep lay down.

Phil is also trying to move the laying hens more frequently. As soon as the ground around him begins to look bare or abused,

he moves their pen a bit further on, so they have a delicious feast of flowers and greens.

Phil is in the uncomfortable position of having only three things on his plate: fencing the perimeter so we can graze the cows, putting up the greenhouse, and putting up the metal building. Every one a huge project. Fencing has priority, so he is working to get the electric line hooked up. That requires putting up two more corner braces along the road.

The first one he did makes the entrance to our property look more open than it did before, with the cattle panels. I like it.

I planted the last of the raspberries, along the base of a hazelnut-planted swale. That meant I had to face my hazelnut disappointment square on. Of the 114 plants we put in the ground while my Mom and sister were here, 41 have green buds or leaves. That's a really disappointing survival rate. (The ones I planted first came through at about 100%. I'm guessing my failure to heel them in properly made a huge difference. Again, disappointing to receive healthy plants and not care for them well.)

I also planted squash and watermelon transplants. These ones had just started to reach the borders of their soil blocks (for the most part), so I'm hoping they will do well and grow happily (a few, on transplanting, simply keeled over. Those may have been held a bit too long). There are four rows of squash and melons, and I planted corn between in five rows (like a hand: the fingers are the corn, the spaces are the squash). Soon I'll plant bean seeds next to the corn, and have a three sisters patch. Hopefully surrounded by sunflowers, so it will be a four sisters patch, which, I've heard, is more accurate.

The globe amaranth has more blooms, each about the size of a marble. A stunning hot pink and white combo is my current favorite.

But there's also dark orange, light orange and light pink (from the same plant). They are the earliest of my intentional flowers, and I appreciate them.

Joe is walking next to the strawflowers, planted next to tomatoes. The strawflowers have shot up, but no blooms yet.

One or two of the borage, planted in the tomato beds to hopefully repel bad bugs have started to bloom. I had hoped for a good many more, but I had a miserable germination rate: 15% or less.

The surprising food for me is cucumbers. The plants just keep producing. I pick them daily for our salads, and think I've got them all, and I go the next day and find more. It's amazing! I didn't think I was a cuke person, but I like these ones.