Hello Hive

Merry Christmas to my beloved homestead community! I hope that we all had a wonderful Christmas celebration with our friends and loved ones. The holiday has been pleasant and quiet so far around here, and all the partying and excessive noise I was expecting didn't happen that way.

Maybe because of some economic challenge, people are unable to party this year and have marked celebration quietly in their homes.
I didn't see or experience any unboxing of gifts, and it is quite unusual.

Anyway, today I finally planted my vegetable seeds to commence the gardening activities for this year.

Having given the soil a viable treatment of more than a week, wetting the soil consistently to unlock and soften it. Together with the presence of some potato vegetations as a cover crop for the ground.

I started with clearing the soil to remove the debris.

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Weeding and clearing out of grasses first before I proceeded to break the soil. It has to be lose and soft enough before vegetables can germinate here.

Since the erosion from the rains this year, it has washed away a good quantity of the soil here that there is barely enough to plant anything.
Due to this we can only plant vegetables since they will not be deeply rooted.

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Any plant that is a deep-root cannot survive here since there is not much soil for it to penetrate deeper into the soil.

After raising the bed, here it is time to scatter the seeds. But I feel like leaving the bed to rest for at least 24 hours and be drenched in enough water again before I can commence planting. That way the soil will rest well and regulate its temperature before planting.

After weeding and clearing I can't afford to expose the vegetable bed for too long as the sun temperature is usually high and dries out the ground so fast. An average of 24hrs with wetting of the bed at least 3X will be perfect.

Another thing I wish to have right now is some poultry droppings. Poultry droppings are really good for improving the soil quality before planting. But since I haven't been fortunate enough to start my poultry pen yet, getting some of that animal fertilizer is often a bit difficult.

Sooner than later, I would be making my own poultry cage here and begin to raise birds too. This way it makes it possible for us to have animal fertilizers close at hand such that the fertilizer will be useful for our farm while some of our harvest from the farm will be useful for our animals.
It will be a part of the new year's goal to begin the journey of owning an animal farm.