Swales!

We have taken advantage of the nice weather in January to build some swales.  The first one was to both clean out the catchment area at the bottom of our driveway ditch and to redirect water that was flowing across the bottom of our driveway into the road.  It went something like this...

We had created a wide, shallow drainage area after the culvert under out driveway.  This allows any sediment to settle out before the water flows on which keeps valuable topsoil on our property and not in our neighbor's pond.  The catchment area had completely filled up, so we dug out this valuable resource.

Kids and Jeremy filling the wheelbarrow

Then we moved the soil and created a berm/swale along the south side of our driveway to redirect water into the roadside ditch instead of across our driveway.

Catherine by the completed ditch

Jeremy did some additional swale digging this week also.  He dug out the next 2 grape swales behind the hoop house so that we can move our grapes from their temporary bed in the garden up to their permanent homes.  That will free up some valuable planting space in the garden and will give the vines a chance to really grow.  Eventually, this hillside will be a small vineyard.

Swales on contour to catch water for the grapes.

Jeremy's been busy on some other fun projects, but I haven't gotten around to getting pictures of them yet.  It will have to wait for another post.  ;-)

We also have a ton of little herbs and onions growing on the seed stand now.  They're coming along nicely and I'm looking forward to starting this year's cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower soon.  Spring is coming...

New year begins on the farm

I don't care what the calendar says, the year doesn't start on the farm until the first seeds go in the ground.  That started last weekend with the first round of onion seed getting planted in flats for (eventual) transplanting into garden beds.  The first of them are just now starting to poke their heads up.

Onions sprouting!

Currently, I have 5 flats of onions planted and 2 flats of various herbs (thyme, lavender, stevia, yarrow and parsley).  As soon as the seed arrives, I'll have another flat of herbs to plant (oregano, wormwood and a couple of other things).  Here in another couple of weeks I'll start the coles (cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower).  It is wonderful to have veggies growing already!  There's a little bit of spring in our living room now.  :D

Seed stand and lights

On the goat front, we traded bucks with some country neighbors who also have la mancha dairy goats.  The loaner buck, Bucky, has successfully accomplished his mission despite a less than auspicious beginning. 

Upon meeting their new boyfriend, the girls unanimously ask, "Who is this guy?!?!" 

The girls spent most of the first week or so running away from him.  Luckily he was predictably persistent and they eventually decided he wasn't so bad after all.  LOL.  We are expecting baby goats sometime in April or early May.

I don't have pictures of it, but we have been busy recently cutting firewood and getting practice splitting wood.  It has been nice to have some not-quite-frigid days to be out in the winter sunshine.  We hope to do a little lumber milling in the next couple of weeks also.  There's a nice downed oak tree in our woods that looks straight enough to make nice timbers, so we're going to give it a shot. 

In preparation for winter, we assembled a section of our second hoop house over the house slab.  It makes a nice, mostly wind free, space that stays a bit warmer than outside.  It should let us work when it isn't completely frigid out this winter and it will let us leave the work out once we get started.  That will save a ton of time spent uncovering and re-covering the timbers. 

Hoop house over the slab

I have yet to do the final tally of garden produce, but I think ended up close to 1000 lbs.  The bio-char trial definitely proved that the char made for healthier plants and higher yields in our tomato trials.  It didn't seem to make a difference for the dry beans we grew or the cabbage and broccoli.  It also didn't hurt either of those crops, so over all it seems to be a beneficial treatment.  We plant to use the remainder of the char we bought last year on our tomato beds for this year and we will likely purchase more to add to our remaining garden beds.

On tap for this Spring's projects (other than the house, of course) are some re-working of our catchment swales by the garden, creating a mini-chinampas bed for watermelon, finishing the grape swales and planting the grapes and (finally!) getting the front hedge row planted.  It will be another busy year for us, but at this point we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if it wasn't!