After spending last week in Anchorage, it was good to get back to Homer. The summer is slowly coming to a close. Tourism has been strong all July and up until now in August. July tourists were largely Alaskan as evidenced by all the dogs on the Spit. ALASKANS LOVE DOGS. August has been more lower 48 tourists as evidenced by…. no dogs and lots of Rent Me RV’s.
We are waiting for a high tunnel being trucked up from Pennsylvania and will need to get the field ready where it will be set up. That will mean flailing, plowing, and soil amendments. Speaking of amendments, these were the results to come back from the NRCS.
The NRCS then provides a set of recommendations based on the lab results.
Microbial soil health is one of our top priorities at this point. Prepping the soil and adding the amendments is the first step. We will be using hairy vetch cover crops. We have created a large personal garden to experiment with the cover crop varieties and some no-till methods. Our fields designated for production will not quality for no-till at this point due to time constraints. We would love to flail them and tarp them but don’t think the root mass will thoroughly decay by next spring.
ChickShaw Feedback
After a month of daily use, we are loving the ChickShaw. Why? Just take a look at this interior picture. Consider that this coop has held 14 birds every night. They free range during the day but still come and go. Check out the floor. All their droppings have simply fallen through the wire to naturally fertilize the ground. It is not only maintenance free but it lets you move it around your fields/lawn to distribute their droppings. The maintenance free cleaning component is alone pure genius. Kudos to Justin Rhodes!
Random Homer Pictures
Be well & green dreams!
Leave a Reply