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The boys and I have been hard at work. Today we planted pole beans, asparagus, herbs, and summer squash. Still need to plant the corn, cucumbers, and more asparagus. Have had customers out twice this week to buy stuff. I worry about how things look, because I can see in my mind's eye how the finished product is supposed to be, but there is still so much left to do to make it the way I want it to be. We planted about seven new fruit trees this year. I think I missed most of the blueberry plants, didn't really see any I liked enough. So we still have our dozen from last year. This weekend we got all the tomatoes, basil, peppers, and eggplant in the ground. Having trouble keeping our free range chickens out of the garden. They are walking right through our woven wire cattle fence that surrounds the garden. We keep trying to catch them and put them in the chicken run, but they keep getting out and eating all the brocolli and cauliflower. Our bees should be here next week. This is our first attempt at raising bees. I'm pretty excited about it! Roni |
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Hi Ya'll, Started some more seeds this morning. Artichoke: Violetta and Green Globe, Eggplant: Fairy Tale, Rosa Bianca, and Black Beauty Peppers: CA Wonder (green bell), Orange Sunsweet (bell), Golden Wonder (deep yellow to orange bell), Fat and Sassy (huge green to red bell), Super Heavyweight (huge yellow bell), Sweet Banana (yellow chili shaped pepper for pickling - like you get at Subway), Paprika (red for drying and making paprika powder), Anaheim Red Chili (also can be dried for chili powder). I still have all my tomatoes and herbs to start, but I need to buy more labels for that. Hopefully I can get to those tomorrow. We are expecting a big storm this afternoon, so we battened down the hatches, so to speak, and moved the baby goats into the chicken coop. We have four baby buck Nubian kids right now. Would love to hear how your garden planning is going! Blessings, Roni |
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Hi Ya'll, Well we've gotten a good start on the garden this year. Luckily the local Ag Center has free compost and we've gotten several loads of this to add to the garden this year. As usual we are using the wide rows, four feet wide by 75' long, and doing intensive planting. Bed 1 has peas planted all along the fence line and six parsley plants. After our last frost date tomatoes will go there, pole beans will follow the peas, along with basil interplanted at the edges of the bed. Bed 2 is brocolli, cauliflower, and cabbage with onions interplanted. Bed 3 is planted in beets, carrots, spinach, and radishes with three cilantro plants on the end. Bed 4 will have 6" woven wire cattle fencing stretched down the middle for trellising more tomato plants. These tomatoes will have peppers and eggplant interplanted at the edges of the beds. Bed 5 will be bush green beans. Along the back side of the garden peas have also been planted. 50 purple passion asparagus plants were ordered from Pine Tree Seeds that will go along the back fence. That's as far as I've gotten with the inside of the garden planning. Outside the garden we are going to put in twelve new four feet wide by 25' long beds with three foot paths in-between. Four patches of corn, two of pumpkins, zipper peas, soybeans, peanuts, summer squash, wintersquash, and melons will fill those twelve beds. Two new thornless blackberries, and two raspberries have been added. Two red climbing roses have been planted on the outside of the trellis arch that gates the front of the garden. Two pears, Keiffer and Moonglow, have been added to our small orchard. Two standard apples, Anna and Dorsett, are being planted between the chicken coop and the goat pasture, thirty feet apart. New outdoor projects I hope to start this year are a grape trellis, perrenial herb garden box, and a bee hive. The bee hive will help with polination and fruit set and will provide our family with honey. Inside we are getting a new metal shelving unit and adding two shelves of growing lights for starting my seeds. I've already started 36 new asparagus plants (UC-72). Still need to start the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and herbs. The boys have been busy hauling straw and compost into the garden. Their getting lots of excersize :) Sam has been real good about digging all those large holes for the new fruit plants and fruit trees to go in. Hope you all have very productive gardens this year! Blessings, Roni |
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Saturday was the first time we showed our own goats. It was fun! Everyone was really nice. We took our two pgymy goats down to Florida, about 180 miles away. While we were there we were blessed to see two bald eagles circling around the show several times. That was pretty neat. Our buck pygmy won two second in class ribbons. My son Sam showed him. Sam says he had a good time and is already looking forward to the next show. Roni |
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Today we went to Lowe's and spent a couple of hours there getting things for the small pond inside our garden and to landscape with. Found a beautiful Tulip tree still in bloom. It's going in the center of the front garden in the front of the livingroom windows of the house. I have a pie shaped wedge garden out there with a little bird bath and mostly bulbs. It's framed by a path that comes from the driveway up to the front door. The path is lined on both sides with black plastic border edging. The inside is filled with small light pebbles. Today we got stepping stones to lay down in the path and it looks really nice. Found two really pretty Loropetalum chinensis "Shang-hi" shrubs for the rectangle border in the front below the bedroom windows. I'm putting them at the each end of the border towards the back. The purple in the shrubs goes really nice with the burgandy shutters and burgandy front door. Sam and I tied up the climbing rose to it's trellis. I hope to see it bloom this year. Then I placed the pond plants inside the pond. Hoed and raked all the stuff from about three feet out from the pond. Layered down some compost/peat/humus on top of the soil. Laid down the landscape fabric and situated all the stones around the pond. Tommorow we are going to plant the plants around the pond and mulch with cypress mulch. I think I'll sleep with the heating pad tonight, my back feels pretty tight. Hope you all had a great weekend. Blessings, Roni |
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Well, today was a little sad. We had one rooster who took it into his head to attack the boys with his spurs, so we had to put him down this morning. Still have three roosters left, but this one was a twin with his brother that we hatched out from the egg. My neighbor is taking the feathers for fly tie fishing. The boys are all right, with some good soap and water and a little bactroban they should heal up pretty quickly, they just a had a couple of scratches. I don't take chances with my children and that's why the rooster had a quick exit. We built a raised bed for my strawberry plants this year. It's five feet wide by 12 feet long and 12" high. You only need three boards for this (if your going organic use untreated wood). We put 2x2 inside the corners to strengthen the box and help it last longer, and put two metal braces on the outside of each corner. We filled the bottom two inches with cow manure, the next two-three inches with compost, and the rest with humus/peat mixture. If your going to do this it's a good idea to lay down landscape fabric/ or several thicknesses of newspaper underneath to keep the weeds from growing through your soil. Today I planted 17 more strawberry plants, we had already planted about twice that. Ozark Beauty, Sequoia, and Tennesse Beauty are the three types we planted this year. I'm planning on letting them spread and and root more plants for next year. I put some marigolds at each end of the bed and also put thyme, lemon balm and borage in with the strawberrries. Borage is supposed to be a good companion plant for strawberries. Planted a couple dozen tomato plants; some pepper plants in yellow, red and orange; and a few basil plants. This year we are going to do more of the companion planting system and see how that works out for us. I plant in wide rows using John Jeavons intensive growing methods (french bio-intensive planting). This works well in Georgia to keep the plant roots cool, weeds down, and water directly where you need it. It also saves a lot of garden space. First we grew clover on the garden area over the fall. Then we 'tilled in the clover; spread cow manure, alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal, and lime over the bed and tilled everything in. Then we laid landscaping fabric over the top of the bed. The beds are four feet wide by about 75 feet long. We lay soaker hoses down over the bed on top of the landscape fabric. It takes three, we go down the middle of one side of the bed and come back down the middle of the otherside with the hoses. We cut little holes in the landscape fabric and plant the tomatoes, peppers, squash (winter and summer squash), melons, and cucumbers down through the paper. Then we layer straw around all the plants at least six inches deep. This keeps the soil moist and helps it keep from drying out here in our hot humid weather. The other thing good about this method is it helps to keep soil from being splashed on the leaves where it can transmit diseases. We need to till a few more beds for the corn, grean beans and edible soybeans I still need to plant. I also have a bunch more zuchinni, yellow squash, acorn squash, cucumber and watermelons left to plant too. Thank you for all your kind words of welcome, I could hardly believe anyone would want to read my blog! Have a great day in the Lord! Blessings, Roni
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Hi Y'All and Welcome to Whispering Pines Farm After years of waiting the Lord answered our prayers and gave us our first homestead March of 2005. The two years we have lived here has been a real blessing and we are having the time of our lives. Whispering Pines is on four acres in Georgia. Whispering Pines has eight goats currently, six large dairy goats and two small pgymy goats. We have chickens for eggs. George is our lab dog and Maggie is a small poodle, both black. We have a large fenced in garden, twelve blueberries bushes, rasberry and blackberry bushes, one apricot, one fig, three pear, five peach and six apple trees. Our boys are: Sam 15, Sean 13, and Jonathan 10. Jonathan, our youngest, has Down syndrome but it doesn't slow him down a bit! The Lord led us to homeschool the boys and we have been for over 10 years now. The boys all help with taking care of the animals and other farm chores. Our dairy goats are milked morning and night. The first weekend in April we will be showing our pygmy goats for the first time. Sugar surprised us with quads this spring, two does and two buck kids. Her kids are already sold. Cinnamon, Fawn and Angel are all due to kid within the next month (hopefully not on the same day!). I will post updates as we get anything interesting to share. Blessings, Roni |