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?

Soil test results

Something like a month and a half ago I took soil samples from my yard. I did this so I  could find out what my soil quality is. Here are the details.

My only concerns right now are adding some organic matter and maybe seeing if I can get my soil slightly more acidic. Ideally I just want to get it down to maybe 6.9 or so. I have no idea if that is even realistic since the soil is almost completely neutral. Luckily for me I am in an Animal Science program at an agricultural college. I'm hoping to score some natural fertilizers in the form of various animal manures. Chief among them are chicken and cow manure, with horse manure added in for good measure. If anyone has a recommendation for lowering my soil pH please leave me a comment. 

Stink Bugs and Squash Beetles

I kept thinking that I had escaped the risk of having a pest attack on my tomatoes and squash plants. I was very wrong. This morning while out watering and checking to see if my summer bearing tomatoes had finally ripened I saw them. Stink bugs crawling on the fruit of my tomato plants and squash bugs on my patty pan squash. So what are my options right now? Really their are only two that I am considering for this season. Option 1 is to hand pick all the mature bugs that I can find. 2 Neem oil. It seems like a combination of both will work best. Picking off the bugs I can find will hopefully limit the immediate damage that is done to the fruit already on the vine. The application of Neem Oil should help limit problems with future bugs that hatch later. I just need to wait for the local feed store to open up tomorrow and the required oil will be in hand.

My squash is so covered in bug eggs

The blackberry bush

So my dad gave me some bare root stem clipping from one of his blackberry plants that he chopped down. I figured why not plant it and see what happens. Well it's going pretty damn good. 

This is the "plant" about 3 weeks after putting it into the backyard. As you can tell from the bottom of the picture there are some brand new buds growing. So I'm hoping next year I'll end up with a little crop of blackberries. This is really great especially because I transplanted this way out of season. 

Plant updates

So I took my pitiful looking tomato plants out of raised bed number one and transplanted them about a month ago... which turned out to be a great idea. I moved them to a bed that had been sitting for a while and was left unkempt by the previous owners.

One of the old beds. 

What I did in the way of prep was really just scrape the old weeds and weed barrier plastic up and plant the two new plants. These are them below. The picture is obviously not from the day of. I'd say it is from maybe 2 or 3 weeks post transplant.

Same bed with a second planting of tomatoes 

 I would say about two weeks after that my initial planting of tomatoes from the raised bed decided they didn't like their home. Lucky for both them and me I had a new home available for them.

These are the transplanted plants. Probably less than one week post transplant.

The plants initially struggled but I kept them watered pretty regularly for the first week or so. I also supplied them with some mulch. Admittedly I haven't put anywhere near enough down yet but I had all my old tree branched chipped by the city (a service they provide free once a month) so those wood chips will soon become mulch and compost fodder. I will probably add another much more current pic tomorrow to show all the marvelous new growth.

The new shed

This thing is pretty legit. It is definitely a vast improvement over my old one that was dilapidated and falling over. That thing has been around for I don't know how long.  All I need to do with it is get organized so I can fit more tools in there.

2 thousand-ish is not bad for a good working shed that I don't have to bend over in. I'll post some interior shots eventually. The old shed is still standing for the time being. 

It doesn't always work out like you want.

Life is one big experiment. And like all others this one does not come with a map or a guarantee of success. My raised bed went together like clock work which is great. Its just the after that is giving me a hard time. I planted it out and everything was going fine for a while. Now it seems that I counted my chickens before they hatched (before I even got them as the case is for me). Either the rain has gotten to my plants, which I doubt, or I used too much of the manure and humus mixture in combination with the topsoil I filled the bed with. This is more than likely the case as I planted some backup tomato plants about two weeks later in a different bed and those seem to be doing fine. What has caused my problems? I think that the levels of nitrogen are way to high from an overabundance of manure. This has caused my roots some problems and is killing my first planting. If this is the case then eventually I will pull the failed plants and some of the soil in the raised bed and remix it with an amendment of native soil and in an attempt to balance out the npk ratio and the percentage of organic matter. If nothing else this will be a lesson learned on my journey to growing my own food. Hopefully by this time next year all I will need to buy from the grocery store are the meats, dairy, and some fruit that I cannot grow my self (at least until I have some more land...but that is still down the road). The one thing I am certain of is that my thumb is green. The herbs that I am growing and the fruit and vegetable production class I took way back in 2013 have proven that much. That and the fact that I helped my dad garden as a kid, and even created a producing garden for his house this year are definitely reassuring. I'll have some more pictures here in the near future.

The first raised bed

I finally built and planted out my first raised bed about 2 weeks ago. It has 3 different types of tomato, an Anaheim pepper, a cabbage, and I've seeded some carrots and beets.

During the process

One of my sad little tomatoes. 

Owning a home comes with a lot of projects. Luckily for me the gardening ones happen to be the kind that I like. Hopefully I'll have some fresh gardening news soon.