Absurd Amount of Berries

It’s that time of the year we go raid the orchard every day for desert. We could sell some, especially since the price of berries in stores is insane, but that’d be work so we’d rather gift them to friends. It gives them excuses to come over :).

I had never eaten berries until I just couldn’t, it’s so nice to enjoy them without restraint. They also taste much better fresh off the plant. As with maple syrup, producing large quantities of something drastically changes the way you get to enjoy it. I’m not worried about there not being enough for others, or thinking about the expense of it. You can just chug down as many as is enjoyable without afterthought. I’m more worried about making sure the excess doesn’t go to waste.

The chickens clean up the berries that fell on the ground. Sometimes they pick direct from the plants, but not enough to make a dent.

Back Saving Measures

Early in the pandemic, Nicole scored us 2 enormous loads of compost. They were so big we sold some super cheap, recouped our cost, gave some and spread them generously on the gardens for years. Last Summer, I could see that what was left of the once enormous pile would carry us only one more growing season. And so it was time to get more. We called and called, all prices had doubled to tripled. In the meantime, we have several horse properties around, and they have enormous manure piles they’re trying to get rid of. I’ve tried all sorts of schemes to get some back here, and the hard conclusion I came to was that to do anything significant enough to help us, I couldn’t do it by hand.

So I got a dump trailer, and boy let me tell you… it beats a shovel by a loooong way. I finally went after the manure pile of my next door neighbor. With a tractor and a dump trailer, you can move some serious volume. I worked at it several hours and barely made a dent in it. Clearly I didn’t appreciate just how much I wouldn’t be able to do it by hand.

We now have the means to create and manage big piles that will hopefully yield more than enough top notch compost for us and others. While the trailer is a big cost, like many things we get for the homestead, it should pay for itself within a few years.

Feeling the power with the push of a button

While I had the front loader on, I mixed into our home made compost pile some wood shavings from a planer, and a bucket of ash. This one’s just about ready.