I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! We had a wonderful day with family, lots of good food, (mom rocked the eggs benedict and dad smoked a prime rib that melted in our mouths) and gifts were plentiful. 

There are a couple of farm developments from last week that I would like to capture here. 
Our front yard was buried under a blanket of leaves from the tree by the street. It takes a couple weeks of filling the city yard waste bin to have it all removed. As I was raking the leaves, I had an epiphany! These leaves would make great compost band mulching material. I needed a place to store the leaves until it was time to put them to use. Jennifer suggested I use some of the left over chicken wire to create large baskets. I put one together, and it worked really well! The leaves that do not fit will get added to the wood chip cover that covers most of yard. 

Today, I finished the "Teaming with Microbes" book. Coincidentally, the last chapter was about tending to the soil food web through each season. One of the recommendations it made for autumn was to save fallen leaves to use in the spring time for mulch and compost material. I feel validated.

Last week, we had thought the chickens were taking some time off from laying eggs. Then, while I was working in the backyard, Louise was squawking loudly. Jennifer came outside and said that song was Louise's laying song. I disagreed because Louise was not in the laying box. Silly me, I was of course wrong. Jennifer went over to the rosemary bush near Louise and found about a dozen eggs! About half of them were a new color and shape, as well; narrow and light green. We believe these green eggs are coming from Flower. I have since raised their laying box off the ground, and they have (mostly) returned to laying in their box.

Finally, The cute, tiered garden I constructed a year-and-a-half ago, is coming down. There is a picture of what it looked like last year below. We grew some decent crops, and it was a fun project to put it together. However, it is not practical, and I believe the space will provide a higher yield with standard raised beds rows in the same space. 

-Sundown



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