#organicallygrown

Sunflower seeds ;)

We have always wanted to grow our own food. I think everyone does. If you don’t as yet, I would encourage you try. Even if it is on a tiny scale. Maybe a raised bed at the back door. Everyone who grows anything wants everyone else to grow stuff too. It is very Crossfitty that way. Some folks want you to do it for you to be able to fully appreciate their efforts. We are those folks. Some do it to re-normalize the tradition of arriving at someone’s house with a cabbage. We are those folks too. Everyone who has ever planted cabbage, knows no matter how many cabbages you plant, you always plant too many cabbage. 

Your own veg tastes far better than anyone elses. You are also far more forgiving of an imperfection. They are very similar to children like that. Our kids love helping out in the veggie garden. Helping is a euphemism for destroying and prematurely eating all semi edible food. Seeing your daughter’s beautiful face illuminated by all your tomato and brinjal flowers, neatly tucked behind her ear, is what people mean when they say parenting is exhaustion and sacrifice.

 Don’t be tempted to pick it

Since we have been down on the farm our veggie garden has grown every season. In summer your veggie garden is always bigger than you can handle. There is always that patch that you never quite get to. By winter, amnesia has kicked in and you expand your growing area like a property mogul who has decided to build skyward. We are in winter and that is exactly what we have decided to do.

Now is the best time to prepare. This year we have decided to go full-tilt on a market garden. We trialed one last year which turned out to be too small and too big all at once. Our balance was a little off. We will definitely be doing chilies on a much larger scale this time round. Our fermented chili sauce was a hit. We would like to get a large patch of asparagus up because our kitchen garden ones have done so beautifully and being perennials they stick around. They need to because it takes two years before you can harvest anything. I absolutely love artichokes, which are also perennials. There are some fantastic ways to preserve them, so they are also penned in.

Asparagus seeds in the making 

If we get the opportunity we will also add to our pecan nut orchard which we have strategically placed to be able to shade our pasture pigs once they are taller. The trees I mean, not the pigs. We want to start a small apple and pomegranate patch to. They make delicious fruit, juice and vinegar. Not to mention the pulp that is left over will go down really well too.

This year we have decided to build a small grow house. We started it last week. It is an area enclosed in glass to allow us to start seedlings a little earlier. I’m hoping it will be able to be used as a dehydrator in the middle of summer. It is going to be far too hot for seeds then. Tomatoes grow really well here and sun dried tomatoes are one of my favourite things to cook with. They also keep really well if you can get it right. Or so I am told, I have never got it right. They also say making your first million is more difficult than the rest. I would bloody think so, making your first hundred bucks is difficult enough.

 The start of the north facing wall 

One of the most important things about growing your own food is your soil. Over the years we have developed a very nice composting system, where all bedding and manure gets moved to an old silage pit. It is left there to compost. Our laying hens keep all pests at bay. Second hand pests make the very best eggs. The chickens love it and we love them for it. We have fiddled with the process over the years, by trying to add aeration pipes and developed a means to turn it. It was working very well. That was until we needed more of it. If we are going to be able to supply our market we are going to need 5 times more compost. Once you see compost as a living thing, setting up the system becomes a little more natural, so to speak. We now have steaming piles of compost really close to the house because that is where the new market garden is going to be.  

Currently all our veg is grown in raised compost beds. It is done via a no-dig method. If you are interested in that sort of thing, I would google it. There is a very cool old-timer on youtube named Charles Dowding who is incredibly knowledgeable and very generous with what he knows. He is a great place to start. It combines my affinity for less effort and my hard-won stubbornness to not fight nature. There is a little hemisphere translating that you may have to do.

When we arrived we built new sheep holding pens close to the house to reduce our risk of theft and predators. They were really helpful with lambing down. All but two very brazen jackal were too scared to come that close to the house. Unfortunately, we weren’t as persuasive to thieves. We had to move them into the old sow gestation barn at night to keep them safe from sticky fingers. Touch wood we have not had any problems since. It also means we have these fully fenced-in areas dying to become our new market garden and composting bay. 

This is the new patch