2 gardens are better than one.

Of course both gardens really serve a different purpose in the end. The front garden is where my tomatoes and greens hang out. But in the back yard I have the much more varied produce garden. It has French Fingerling potatoes, heirloom sweetcorn, squash, beans, and melons growing. In fact my corn has just started to put out the first ears of the year. This whole year has just been one giant gardening experiment. I have some pictures that I will be posting soon.

Tomato disaster

So I started my tomatoes inside about a month ago. Which sounds great... but I left them outside at night over the weekend because it got up to 90 degrees here on Thursday.  Well of course Murphy struck and over night it dropped to 36. Of course everyone knows that my baby tomato plants very quickly died off. Well all but two of them did. Lucky for me I have 15 more seeds freshly starting which means that by the time the last frost hits I should have enough ready to still plant them out. I'm looking forward to finding out which of the 7 varieties I'm planting will be the most productive and taste the best.

Better season extension?

I have a feeling this will be a much better system than my first effort. If you can't tell this setup is much more compact and will be mobile when I figure out how I want to finally attach the plastic in a semi-permanent fashion. The down side to this was that the units were fairly complicated in the number of pieces that had to be cut. The upside is that all my crops are still alive. Hopefully this gives someone an idea of what you can do to keep growing crops even after the traditional season has ended.

Pipe dreams

I'm quite certain that I am not the only one who day dreams about the future and what might happen.
These days it seems my woolgathering has been focused more around the farm/ranch that I will eventually open with my dad. I'm not sure if that is because I have already been to college once before or some other reason. What I should really be thinking about is now what could happen but, what is happening currently. That being my GI Bill funding has finally come to an end. What this means is that I'm now back in the position of having to support myself the old fashioned way. Either that or I have to win the lottery. Sadly counting on the second option is right out. The thing that I have found most difficult to accept or even understand is how hard it has been to find employment since I graduated. When forced to reflect on that I would have to say that most likely it has been the result of looking in the wrong area or of not adequately presenting myself. Another element to that is probably that I am looking to support myself not find a job that will be my "career". Out of all the jobs I have had the only two that could possibly even fit into the career category are working in kitchens, and the military. Right now I would say military would by far be the best option. Speaking of that I just found out that I am back within height/weight standards for the Army. My plan for the moment is to go back into the reserves, but I reserve the right to go back on active duty too. I think what is really happening is that I know what to expect from the military life. That and I don't know in the absolute sense how valuable the degree I am pursuing will be in my life. It almost seems like it will be worth it more to go back into the military, get 20 years, retire and then start the family business.

What would that business look like?
It certainly will not be a "commercial farming" operation. It would definitely have elements of that. There will certainly be livestock, cows (mainly for meat), maybe some pigs or goats, sheep, certainly there will be chickens, and I would like to have a few horses (dual purpose, riding and work). We would grow at the minimum a majority percentage of our own feed (51%+). We would have an mixed orchard of peaches, pecans, pears, blackberries, blue berries and maybe even some grapes. There would be at least an acre of garden just for us, everything else would be market stuff. Specialty stuff like honey that we could produce in house, or specialty heirloom produce. We would have solar inputs to keep down electricity costs, we would try to minimize reliance on fuel consuming items, by heating with wood and using large animals for a portion of the work. I would like to have at least 100 acres of land but closer to 200 would not be bad in my book. That way we could have a little land in woods to use and to hunt in too. Not that I've spent any time thinking about it though right?

Does anyone else have something long-term that they have been planning or hoping for?

It looks like fall at home

But it is now officially winter. Today I took, fifteen yard bags full of leaves from around my families neighborhood and they now cover my garden. Mulch is by far my most effective defense against weeds. It is also completely free for me too. If things go as planned I will not have to do any serious amount of weeding to plant my new seeds and transplants this spring.

Pipe exploded

Well one of my outside pipes bit the dust today. In the middle of the day right when the temperature was on the way up to 40 it suddenly was shooting water up into the sky. Lucky for me I have emergency shut off valves for just this reason. So I went to the local hardware store and got an endcap to make the temporary repairs. 65 cents and half an hour later I had running water again. This time I made sure that it was adequately insulated (I thought it was pretty good the first time). Fingers crossed that I don't have to make anymore repairs tomorrow.

It froze

The whole garden is completely frozen. It is also covered so I'm hoping that some of the tougher greens, like the Swiss Chard will survive. I'll have to wait until its around 30 to know for sure, but fingers crossed.