Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1060)
Hello Everyone!
Happy dancing hens, Topsoil trap churning, Ideas for a worm box complex, Timber scaffolding & The rains washes my socks!
Alright, it is several hours after sunset and if I am going to get anything written today... I best dive in and see what emerges. I probably should have worked on this entry much earlier but I kept letting myself get distracted by the news and all the crazy stuff going on in the world.
The day was not a super productive one but I did manage to wake up early, get a bunch of my routine chores done, go for a hike... and then later in the day get the soil in the topsoil trap 'rolled' again. This time I was much more thorough than the last time that I did that task and in doing so I exposed a good bit of area for the chickens to be able to get to the worms easier.
Esmeralda was once again doing her 'happy dance' as I churned the soil over and by the time I was almost done the other hen (Emily) had joined in... and they were both eagerly awaiting their chance to explore the roughed up patch of ground. They were still there scratching up the ground long after I finished which means they probably got a lot of worms (or bugs) because otherwise they would have returned to their usual foraging.
As far as the soil in the trap goes, it is looking pretty good but I did notice that around its edges a rather thick matting of small roots have developed. The roots are from vegetation outside of the trap that have grown into it and were probably avoidable if I had been rolling (or harvesting) the soil more often. They are not such a big deal that they will ruin the soil but ideally the trap should not have any roots (or anything else) growing in it.
The main reason that I chose to work on that project today is because there was stormy weather on the way and the trap would not have worked correctly to catch the topsoil runoff given how full it is. Much like the last time that I rolled the soil I avoided the extreme edges of the trap where it meets the fencing so that the water runoff from the rain would not simply push all the new (or old) soil out of the trap and down the hill.
I tinkered briefly with the idea of harvesting all the soil in the trap but decided against it because I am rather sure that I am going to finally build a worm box and use the soil in it. My idea is still kind of fuzzy but I am basing it off how I once saw a compost setup that had a pipe running from it and into a chicken coop... where the maggots (from food waste compost in a barrel) would crawl through the pipe and land in a bowl where the chickens would then eat them.
Since I do not make much in the way of food waste and do not really want to grow maggots... I have been considering how to do something similar with the worms. I have basically been picturing making a chute that leads out the back of the worm box (for the worms to travel on) but I might be better off trying to mimic how it is done with a pipe or some combination of the two approaches.
In the end I may wind up with a series of boxes connected with pipes and the one placed in the lowest position would be the one that I could open for the chickens to forage in. Like I said it is all still a rather fuzzy idea but ideally I want to create a few thriving worm colonies that are easier to manage (and use) than the ones that I currently have inside the compost mounds.
On a different note. I wound up hiking downhill of the shelter site and looking at those mushrooms that I thought might be more oysters... but they were not even close to being oysters! There were two main types from what I could tell and one was 'turkey tail' that had been taken over by a secondary (white colored) fungus... and the other mushrooms were a kind I had not seen here before which were also white.
Those last mushrooms were actually kind of crazy looking because they had dropped their spores and it looked like someone had taken white spray paint to the area immediately around them. In other words their spores looked like white flour had been neatly spread around in various disc shapes... and given the distance I was from them upon first seeing them... I immediately realized why I thought they were oysters.
Anyways, the rain moved in during the afternoon and has yet to really let up... and probably will not for the next few days... so maybe... just maybe... either more oysters or more chicken of the woods will pop up afterwards. So far I have been leaving those two edible mushroom types alone due to wanting the spores to naturally spread... but if more than the few I have already seen pop up... I am not adverse to pan frying a bunch of them for dinner!
By the time the rain got here I was already napping and when I awoke and saw it... one of the first things that I thought was: Well, at least I do not have to do that second wash on the socks by hand! I could probably say the same for the rest of the laundry that I have been washing lately... because with all those high winds came a heck of a lot of dust and it was all over the laundry that was hanging on the fence.
Well, I was about to wrap this entry up but I just recalled something that I thought might be noteworthy. As some of you know the wildlife has been problematic with my gardening and farming endeavors but I think I may have come up with an interesting solution to both it and the problem of too many yellow pine trees.
What I am considering doing is felling two pine trees (that are within a few meters of each other) at about chest high and then attach both the felled trees to the tops of the stumps. Essentially this would make a crude bar (table, platform, scaffold or whatever term fits) comprised of the two poles (the felled trees) and I could then either add lumber or sculpt the poles to create flat spots where I can place flower pots.
Besides keeping the wildlife away from the vegetation growing in the flower pots... this method could possibly also help the vegetation get more sunlight. The only real downside that I can see is that the yellow pine would rot away each year and I would have to rebuild the 'scaffolds' which is not a deal breaker so much as just annoying. I guess in the long run I could also try weaving a few living trees together to form bowers... but whoa that would be a much slower approach than my "whack 'em and stack 'em" idea!
Okay, now the hour is growing late and I best wrap this up and get on with the editing and posting phase of my evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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I love the thought of your chickens dancing. I wish I could have chickens again, I loved having them.
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