Where Did the Month Go?

January is gone! It slipped away like a toddler set free to hunt for “dragon eggs.” Simone’s imagination has become colorful and vibrant over the last few weeks. While she and Noah have always pretended there were dragons in our large field of nothingness on the south side of our house, she has allowed her imagination to soar, searching for those elusive dragon eggs.

That’s how I feel about January. It was elusive, mystical and now gone. February has arrived with a renewed sense of purpose. I hope by the end of the month I’m not wondering where the month went. So much happened in January and I feel it was the great start to a new year. I hope that February will be just as amazingly productive.

As our seed packets start trickling in from different seed catalogs I want to start them, but I can’t…I need to wait till the greenhouse is complete. The temptation is strong, especially since all our seed cell flats arrived a few days ago. I did soak all the tea seeds, but they turned out to be duds. Only four tea seeds were actually viable.  I’m quite disappointed that we’ll need to get more tea seeds and try again. In the meantime I need to figure out what we’ll put in the ground to begin to prepare the area over the next few years before the tea seeds are planted outside.

The photo below is my final garden plan for part of the west side of our house. I have a few more things to label and color in, but for the most part its finished. The brown circles to the right are where the golden currants will be. Even though I put them in last on the plan, the area needs earthworks for passive water harvesting, so it may actually end up being a much bigger area than in the garden plan, especially since Indigo will be planted in between each currant bush to fix nitrogen. Being that currants and Indigo are perennials, they will definitely take precedent over any seasonal edible landscaping. I can always adjust how many squash, chilies, fruits and other herbs are planted after the earthworks are completed. I think I made myself nauseous worrying that the currants and indigo wouldn’t have enough space. (Click the photo to get a full sized view)

The next garden plans I draw up will be the continuation of the first plan. By the time I’m finished with all the different plans, they should fit together like a huge puzzle. I’m also hoping that by the time I finish all the plans, I’ll be able to pin them up to the wall in the new work room.

A new thing we started in January and we’ll continue from now on is to count all the eggs we get each day. We’ve been writing totals down since the beginning of the new year, and so far we have 82 eggs. That’s all total from all our birds. The ducks have laid the majority of eggs for us, but Betty and her two illegitimate children are starting to lay more frequently as the days start to become longer. During the coldest part of the winter so far, we noticed that the duck eggs were a little more sporadic and also more compact in size, but as the temperatures start to warm, the eggs are getting bigger and more frequent. I don’t think it matters to ducks whether the days are short or long, they just drop eggs where ever is convenient for them.  The chickens on the other hand, will lay their eggs inside the coop keeping their nesting area clean and dry. This year we haven’t found one chicken egg yet laying on the ground outside the coop. The ducks have also gotten very good at hiding their eggs from us. 30% of the time they will just drop eggs where ever they are, but then there are other times where they will hide them in a dirt hole under the rabbitry and cover it up with hay from the pens, or they’ll lay in the duck house and push the eggs under a lot of straw so it looks like the nest is empty.

Our short list of priorities and goals for February are:

• Finish the greenhouse
• Complete more work inside the house before spring
• Continue working on garden plans
• Order asparagus crowns and more seeds
• Work on golden currant and indigo passive water harvesting
• Prepare the soil in first garden plan area for spring
• Start boxwood seeds and cardoon
• Clean broken glass out of utility fridge and cold stratify berry bushes and other seeds needing 1-3 months in the fridge
• Build top bar beehives
• Order bees to arrive in April

Meet the Author- Angela aka Farmer Jane

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Tagged as: chicken eggs, cold stratify seeds, duck eggs, earthworks, golden currants, greenhouse construction, indigo bush, order seeds, passive water harvesting