Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 569)

almost 2 years ago

Hello Everyone!

Dry conditions, Building topsoil in the meadow, More corn & Those random grain seeds finally matured!

I am off to a slow start this morning and not really feeling all that inclined to write but hey I have to get back on track with these daily entries and the only way to do that is by opening the text editor each morning and diving in! In all reality I do not have much that I feel compelled to convey or share but if I am to get back into doing this each day then I have to push past all that and spell out one word at a time and see where it leads me.

Anyway the weather is looking pretty good until later in the day when another big storm is going to blow in from the west and from the radar it looks like another nasty one with thunder, lightning, high winds, heavy rains and even hail. It is still too far off to tell how many of those things we will get here but we will probably get the rainy/windy/thundering part of it at the very least.

Surprisingly after all the rain we have gotten over the last many months the conditions are rather dry here and I have avoided having a fire the last few days to burn off a bunch of the smaller debris left from that fallen cherry tree branch. I also have some burnables to turn into ash but mainly I just want to make a bunch of low-grade biochar to toss on the ever-growing compost mound.

Perhaps once this storm blows through I can get to burning stuff but with all the high temperatures (and low humidity) I best do it promptly afterwards before things dry back out again. The 'drying out' may or may not happen because it looks like there might be another round of storms heading this way over the next few days so I may well have several chances over the coming week to safely burn outdoors.

When I went hiking the other day I stopped by the meadow and was happy to see that the vegetation sure has grown in really well not just in the spot that I mowed during the winter but also everywhere else. Of course the area that I mowed is doing much better (as far as grasses and such go) and all the tan colored sedge brush surrounding that area creates quite the contrast to all the greenery.

I really think that the best thing that I can do for that meadow is continue to mow it twice a year. Once after the first freeze (so I know the venomous snakes have gone dormant) and once a month or two before the last freeze of the year (before the snakes wake up again) like I did this past year. Aside from doing some controlled burns of it (or hauling in dirt) I do not see a better way to build up the topsoil there.

The meadow itself floods a lot at various times of the year so it also gets a good bit of topsoil deposited in it that way but from what I can tell most of that settles around the edges of the meadow and not in the center where it actually needs it the most. Those areas tend to be super frigging mucky and are more prone to aquatic and semi-aquatic plants which by and large are fine but I would rather see the area producing more fodder for the wildlife in the form of grasses, grains and such.

Some of the runoff topsoil does reach the center and there is plenty of mucky areas so eventually the topsoil will rebuild itself on its own... but I like the idea of speeding that process up a bit by mowing it a few times a year and mulching it all back onto the ground. Like I have said before it would make a pretty nice little hay (or straw) field but I just cannot shake the notion that it is better off as a wildlife habitat.

Alright, it is now a little while after dark and that storm that I was watching on the radar broke up and pushed further north so we may not get the kind of rain that I was hoping for. All my little plants (and trees) in the garden sure need it because yesterday they were looking so wilted that I wound up watering them from the well which is something that I have been trying to avoid doing.

There is no particular reason that I have been avoiding doing so aside from conserving a wee bit of water and electricity but overall I have been trying to rely on the rain for my irrigation needs. Although I have yet to get any kind of rainwater harvesting system setup here (aside from the roof of the chicken coop) I have not lost sight of that project either.

On a different note. While I was shuffling some of the potted plants into more sunny areas the other day I was delighted to find a third corn plant growing in one of the pots. Hopefully between it and the other two (that are now all in a row together) I will get at least one ear of corn so that I will have some seed for next year's planting season.

I never mentioned it but several weeks back those grain plants that were growing in that big flower pot finally matured all the way and once they had dried out I spread them in the other big pot that is adjacent to it. I have yet to see any of the new plants pop up from the seeds but if all goes well I might just get another round of it to grow before the colder months arrive.

Okay, it is getting towards the time of the day when the fatigue starts catching up to me so I am going to call this entry good enough and get on with the editing. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.