Posted in Homestead 101
 |
|
|
|
|
What's Inside
|
||||||
| Welcome Spring by Nancy Carter, Senior Editor By the time you get this newsletter, spring will probably already have sprung and April will soon be on its way with the April showers. Now is a great time to buy or build a rain barrel so you can take advantage of those April showers and use the rainwater in your gardens! It's estimated that nearly 40% of household water usage in the summer is for lawn and garden watering, so using a rain barrel may save the average homeowner up to 1,300 gallons of water during peak summer months!  And while you're building things, you might as well make a chicken tractor! Not sure what a chicken tractor is or why you would want one? Just keep reading to find out. And then we wrap up this issue with some tips from Catherine Love on preparing your garden for planting. I know you all are getting excited already. Get out there and enjoy God's creation! Blessings, Nancy Carter Senior Editor of HomesteadBlogger How to Build Your Own Rain Barrel Provided by: The Center for Watershed Protection  Supplies:
For step-by-step pictures, please see the Center for Watershed Protection's online brochure. Schoolhouse Store Spotlight
 Chicken Tractors by Nancy Carter  Have you heard people talking about chicken tractors and wondered what they were talking about? I know they sound really funny. When a friend first told me about hers, I was pretty sure she had gone off the deep end--first she was getting all of the animals to take care of, butchering her own animals, and then she was even into alternative housing for her animals. Yep, sounded like a fruitcake to me. And now ... she's brainwashed me and we're raising chickens, butchering them, and building our own chicken tractors. Chicken tractors come in different shapes and sizes. Their main benefits are that they:
The most basic design is a PVC or wood rectangle frame with a lid that allows easy access but keeps predators at bay. We spent about $75 and built our first one out of PVC. It was very easy to move daily and a good size for what we were doing, but stepping in and out of it to take care of things was a bit difficult. We started out with both our meat birds and our laying hens in there together, but then moved the hens to a separate PVC A-frame chicken tractor. Before building your own you might want to visit the City Chicken's Chicken Tractor Gallery to see a wide variety of pictures people have submitted of their original designs. Looking for more of a hen house style? Countryside had a great article in its September/October 2005 issue called "Free Range Your Birds in This Chicken Tractor." It had a complete plan and design for a hen house style chicken tractor complete with roost, laying boxes, easy access doors, and great space for the chickens on grass. They estimated the building cost to be $270. You can order their back issue online if you want to get those plans. Their back issues are $4 each, and it would be well worth the money if you are considering building a hen house chicken tractor. Whether you are just wanting a few laying hens for your backyard or you want to raise meat birds for your family or to sell, chicken tractors provide a wonderful opportunity for you to keep the birds on fresh soil each day, fertilize your grass or garden, and to keep them safe from any predators. Chicken tractors may be kind of a "new thing," but as Martha would say, "It's a very good thing!" Nancy Carter is the Senior Editor of HomesteadBlogger and a contributing writer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. She and her husband are homeschooling and learning all about country life with their three sons on their small farm in Kentucky. Learn more about their journey at Nancy's Unlikely Homesteader blog!  Do You Subscribe to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine? Here's what our readers are saying: "I love your magazine. It is the only one I subscribe to, and I read it from cover to cover. The Lord used your magazine to breathe life into my deflated morale. Keep up the good work--you all are ministering to this mom in Alaska."
 Take a few minutes to drop into the home of Cotton's Journey-A Field Trip In A Box, comprehensive study unit. Here you will find a 'one-stop-shop' of cotton educational resources for learning the important basic core subjects. This integrated study unit contains everything to challenge a student (ages 1-13) and take the family on a 7-month field trip of the history, growth cycle, harvest and processing of cotton. We have done all the research for you...gathered supplemental literature books, videos and CD's, and offer a variety of resources to be used in conjunction with Cotton's Journey-A Field Trip in a Box. Preparing the Garden for Planting by Catherine Love Spring is just about here, and it's time to prepare the garden for planting. Time to clean up, clear away, and add compost and other amendments to the soil. Exactly what you need to do to prepare your garden depends on what kind of garden and soil you have. If this is a new garden, you may want to do a soil test to determine what amendments your soil needs for healthy plants. They are inexpensive and easily found at garden centers. It is also a great science project for the homeschool family. If you have a raised bed garden, you will probably only need to pull out any dead or diseased plant material and the few weeds that may have found their way into the beds. Next, add a layer of compost, stir, smooth out the soil, and you're ready to plant again. For the traditional, tilled garden, decide what you need to add to the soil--compost, peat moss, etc. Also, decide if you are going to pull out the dead things or just till them back into the soil. After you've spread on the amendments and tilled the soil, get out the rake and hoe and start making your planting rows. When we had this type of garden, we marked off our planting rows, which were 3-4 feet wide, with stakes and string. After the rows were marked, we raked the loose, tilled soil from the pathways into the planting beds. Then, we added a layer of cardboard topped with mulch to the pathways. The stakes and string gave us a definite planting area, which kept the kids for the most part out of the beds! Raking the soil from the pathways into the beds helped raise the beds up just a bit for good drainage. The mulched cardboard pathways helped by deterring weeds and preventing muddy pathways and boots. One note if you live in an area with fire ants--they do tend to want to build nests under the cardboard, so be watchful for that. Once you have your beds raked smooth, you are ready to plant those seeds and seedlings. For either of the above types of garden, you can always use the Lasagna Garden method--lay down sections of wet newspaper on top of the soil (weeds and all), then layer on several inches of compost, peat moss, etc., on top and plant away. Not tilling or weeding required at all! Container gardens are the simplest to prepare. Clean out any old soil, scrub the pots with a light bleach water solution, and allow them to air dry. Then, fill with your choice of planting medium and you're ready to garden. Spring is in the air, so let's prepare our gardens and Get Growing! Catherine Love, lives and gardens in Texas with her husband Carl, and 3 daughters, Sarah, Hannah, and Cana. Read about their garden and homestead adventures here. We hope you've enjoyed this issue of The Homestead e-Newsletter. We'd love to hear what you think about it. Did you try the recipes, craft suggestions, or any of the other tips? We want to hear about it! And we also want to hear your suggestions for future newsletters. Is there a topic you'd like to see covered that we haven't yet? Would you like to contribute a column? Just let me know! You can email me at SeniorEditor@HomesteadBlogger.com. Or just stop by The Front Porch and say "Hello" when you're visiting us at HomesteadBlogger! 
|
||||||
