Friday, March 5, 2010

Life is growing!

Lots happening on the farm, most of which is weeds growing ARGH! Ok, that's not all GARLIC is growing too!
The weeds we're trying to take care of - we got geese yesterday. Yep, we have 8 geese penned in part of the top strawberry field. They eat grass. Lots of grass. They are vegetarians in fact. We have lots of grass growing in that top field. (Long story basically along the lines of the pesticide/fertilizer/cover crop guy recommended a cover crop to us that we didn't realize had to be killed with round up. Now EVERY and I mean EVERY bit of root ground up in the rotatiller grows, quickly.......) We are hoping the geese cut down on our labour and that they love Italian Winter Wheat! I've been working on the better half for a couple of years to get geese...and like pigs, I prevailed! (And the looks, curses, sighs and rolled eyes as we were building a pen were very very similar to the day the pigs arrived and had to put in the puppy pen.....)
Now to convince Don to get 8 or 10 goslings by post from the states....an adventure by itself! I want chinese geese. I want to train the little suckers on exactly which weeds they are supposed to be eating, and apparently it can be done....their momma's teach them what to eat! (They HATE strawberry plants BTW) Did I mention that I hate weeding?
And the best of it? EGGS! Our strawberry plants bear great huge eggs. Geese don't even make a nest!!!! It laid it in the middle of the plants! It's huge....
And that chicken egg is farm fresh and bigger than a store large!

2 comments:

Alison said...

cover crops that have to be killed with roundup?!? that sounds like a little bit of crazy to me... but of course, roundup "has no residual action in the soil" and all...
Congratulations on geese and great big eggs :)

MamaLou said...

Yes - many farmers use round up to kill the cover crops....so don't be fooled by the farmer that uses cover crops. Winter Rye which is our standard is killed by mowing or tilling in at the right time. Of course, winter rye is the recommended cover crop and used by organic farmers and home gardeners everywhere! Silly us trying to do something different! Round up is nasty stuff, but was marketed to us as the same old "it's harmless when......"