Beginning of summer means thinking about plans for the winter ahead. What will we put up for food and heat? Wood splitting and piling (Hubby is building a wood shed this summer, so no more ugly tents, hooray!) and pickling and drying and picking in the garden. These long days are busy and wonderful days. I do wish summer could last all year but I think if it was for real I'd burn out fast, no joke!
I was thinking about all the things I've learned this past year about gardening and animal husbandry etc. and wanted to update you and share some tips, so here goes....
Rabbits in the Greenhouse: While it gave them a nice place to cozy up this winter it didn't heat the greenhouse enough to start the plants as early as I want to so Hubby (my engineering guru) is going to make a drum wood stove to heat the greenhouse this coming winter. Rabbits make a huge pee mess all over the greenhouse and the hay they eat and fly everywhere make for seedling trays full of weed seeds...horrible mess to clean this spring! So in conclusion I do not think rabbits belong in my greenhouse. They have nice cozy hutches that they will be in this coming winter, outside!
Vermicomposting: This is working out great to create rich compost for planting. Unfortunately, it also doesn't create enough heat BUT it's coming along great; my worms are munching away happily under cover (so they don't get too hot) and the bin I started them in is almost all decomposed/munched!
Chickens in the Garden: They are wonderful cultivators and bug/pest eaters BUT you must protect baby seedlings, direct sown beds and they love any fruit that is highly colored and will peck and destroy it before you can harvest it. Last year I found that laying chicken wireand hardware cloth on new beds until the plants got big enough to withstand a little hen scratching worked great. Seedling I set out were surrounded with small 6" sticks so the chickens didn't' disturb them either. Once the plants got big enough you didn't even see the sticks anymore and they composted into the soil over the winter (mostly). The chickens did get to the tomatoes a bit (before I surrounded them with chicken wire) so this year the crops I know they like to go after will be protected with a bird netting 'cage' when they start to fruit. This way I can still have the help of the chickens with none of the destruction they can cause in my garden. NOTE: This year my wonderful son in law gave me some plastic fencing and this is so much easier to work with than chicken wire and hardware cloth when covering seed beds!
Dehydrating crops: Cherry Tomatoes, strawberries and large leafed herbs can be dehydrated great with a dehydrator but the herbs take up too much space so this year my greenhouse will be employed as a giant dehydrator. I will be hanging large paper bags full off the herbs in the hot house and running fan hung from the 'rafter' so that I can save larger batches at a time. Oh! and Onions and Garlic...they say to put them in a dark place to dry and cure...well, the onions I put in the garage tended to rot but the trial ones I laid in the greenhouse dried awesome so I will be putting them in paper bags to dry in the greenhouse as well! Who knows, maybe I will also experiment with some veggie dehydrating....
In conclusion I want to mention using the old chicken tractor as a rabbit tractor has been working great to raise babies in and save on feed costs. Just be careful that a few weeks before you put them out that you gradually start feeding them grasses and greens from the yard so that when you put them out they don't get the runs from pigging out....AND that only babies and Momma are together otherwise Momma will kill any other adult you put in there!
So, don't be afraid to experiment on your little homestead, it's all part of the fun!
