Angel's Farm Reflection 9

Angel Arias                   Silk Tree Farm Reflection                   4/11/13

Today was one of those sullen April days, where it’d rained earlier, but luckily it did not rain for the rest of the day. We started with watering the greenhouse plans, since they were not subject to the natural waters of the sky. We also did a bunch of work on a computer, research and updating things; that day I had brought in the flax seeds that I had started. Interestingly, the flax seeds were doing impressively well, even though I had started them on Sunday. The germination rate was stellar, and the plant progress itself was pretty good as well, considering its factors. But even so, a lot of the fodder system things that we had been reading were telling us that our fodder would be done in 24-48 – max 72 hours, and this was clearly not the case with any of the seeds we had been sprouting, which concerned us. We wanted to know why this was happening, and something that we had wanted to try was soaking the seeds in vinegar, instead of water, to cleanse the seed hulls and help the germination rate. Well, at any rate, if we use many different methods to sprout seeds, inevitably, one will end up working. The flax seed sprouting method that I had used asked for a sheet of paper towel underneath the seeds, and for them to be misted (Sprayed with a bottle) instead of conventionally watered. The issue with that, though, was that the flax seed root grew through the paper towel, and thus were a pain to separate. We’d decided that we might split it up; continue watering about half of the seeds, and feed the other half to the chickens to see how they might like them. We also had to start cleaning out the chicken coop, which we got to after we were done inside. This consisted of a pitchfork, a shovel, a tractor, and a barrow to shovel it all into. The pitchfork was used to break it all up, shovel to get it in there, and when the barrow got full; the tractor to transport it over near the compost pile. So we did that for a while, alternating between breaking up and piling, and while it wasn't the best, it wasn't the worst, after a bit we were done with the first half of the chicken pen. It was similar to the goat pen in that all of the manure had been compressed and packed down into sheets; so it was large, broad, and heavy, if you were too fast to pull it up. Then, we worked on the second half of the chicken coop, freeing it up, shoveling it away, finding things that had been buried under the soot and manure, and when the load was too large, we drove it over to the pile and unloaded it. We did for a bit too; about half of that half, but collectively we’d already passed a lot of time in the day, and it was just about time to start looking out for when the buss would come and I’d have to head out for the day. So we headed inside, and Tom arrived back from the errands he’d been running, then we waited for a little bit until my bus arrived, and I headed off.