It's Tireing

But worth it. Naturally the expanded re-tired garden is taking a bit longer than I expected. We are adding power and 365 day water to the new chicken run/green house that I will pull over to the head of the garden once the City gets the old thresher from along side the "Red Shed". We've donated it to the local museum and they are building a shed for it. Apparently it has been on the property for as long as any of the locals can remember.

We have been collecting windows and will be able to completely glass in what will be the South facing side. We plan on using that for a greenhouse and winter chicken run. Apparently plants just love chicken breath. Who knew. There was a frost this morning but the plants we have in the tires are happy as clams. We have managed to reclaim a lot of the topsoil that was ( erroneously ) scrapped off to make a normal type garden. After sitting for a year we have turned it over a couple of times and use it to fill the bottom tire of the two tire stack. The top tire gets the "good" soil. Actually the top tire in this picture is just a reflector.

The top and bottom of the tire is cut out and I painted the inside so that it would reflect sunlight onto the soil in the second tire. I added four bags of perllite to loosen up the soil. That's a lot but the soil looks like potting soil now. It was originally from the horse corral between the barns so it is pretty rich. What amazes me is the amount of earthworms in the clay soil I put in the bottom tire. The worms ( with some help from turning over the pile with the excavator ) have turned it into a crumbly mixture. Very nice. I gave them a big helping of rolled oats before I put the top soil in the tires. Hay, I like oatmeal when I am working in the cold, I'm sure the worms do too..

In about an hour we are going into the municipal office to complete the transfer of an eighty acre parcel of undeveloped land from our neighbor to us. It's important to us because our driveway crosses this land. With it we will "own" our driveway and won't have to worry about easements.

And then it's back out to the garden to dig a hundred feet of 4 foot deep trench to run the water and power lines out to the yard sink and future green/chicken house. I know..it's red now. But that can change. I have a couple of paint sprayers and I'm not afraid to use them..

Were back from town. Papers signed and witnessed. When we came back I was working in the trench. It was about a hundred feet long, four feet wide and four feet deep. I guess it didn't have to be that big but that's the size of the bucket on the excavator. I managed to slip and pull something so that gave me a good excuse to have a cup of tea. I just looked up and noticed a black bear digging for roots on our East pasture. We have seen four so far. I'll bet they're hungry about now-- just coming out of hibernation.

Tommorow were off to an auction at Grassy Plains, About 15 klicks South of Francois lake. I have my eye on some solar panels. Self sufficiency reigns supreme.

Comments

Carol Browne said…
I dug a pumpkin patch today! It's about 6 feet long by 3 feet. It's no tire garden, but it's not bad.

IOU some chicken wire and possibly, a pallet. It depends on how big the pumpkins get.
Art Blomquist said…
We won't be planting for another day or two. Your more than welcome to the chicken wire. And I hope you need the pallet!

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