Adventures of my hobby farm

[flusher]

Start a thread here to share the ins and outs of my small hobby farm. My goal is to go into early retirement working myself to death on a market garden one day right now I'm focusing on putting a significant portion of my income into buying tools and implements needed and improving the land.

Today I went and bought 5 more trees to expand the orchard so far I had 2 peaches and 3 figs. Today I'll get them all in the ground.
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Went through all your are experiencing during the 10 years (2005-15) that I owned a 10-acre ranch in Northern CA. Best time of my life as far as home ownership is concerned.

Enjoy it while you can. My deal with myself was that I'd keep the property as long as I was able to do all the maintenance and repair work myself. Advancing age and the lingering CA drought made the decision to sell in early 2015 for me.

Good luck

 

[aarolar]

Went through all your are experiencing during the 10 years (2005-15) that I owned a 10-acre ranch in Northern CA. Best time of my life as far as home ownership is concerned.

Enjoy it while you can. My deal with myself was that I'd keep the property as long as I was able to do all the maintenance and repair work myself. Advancing age and the lingering CA drought made the decision to sell in early 2015 for me.

Good luck

I'm only 27 so barring anything catastrophic I should be good to go for many years and hopefully I will be putting in a good sized well soon.

 

[aarolar]

So yesterday I did manage to get corn planted, did 8 rows of silver king and 6 of silver queen. Not much to see but here's a pic.



Now today I decided to tackle the old side dresser and cultivator frame I plan to use this year. For now the plan is just to do the bare minimum to get it all operational. The hopper and shaker pan were in solid condition but had cancer bad so I went ahead and pulled it apart and brushed it down good and sprayed them with ospho.





Also got the wheel and knocker freed up and working correctly. I have a good set of drop tubes but I'm going to need to fab a sheet metal funnel tomorrow at work and find some new springs.

Also replaced the hitch pins and all the bolts in the hitch on the cultivator frame. The existing hardware was rusted away it it just rattled around.




The weekend will be a busy one the irrigation supplies I ordered for the orchard and blackberrys is coming in and I have a special project I'll be finishing up and revealing.

 

[aarolar]

Today went well got the irrigation put on the orchard but I'm still playing around with it may need a different sprinkler head.




Planted cangreen beans and tinder greens.



Tinkered with the fertilizer sidedresser some but ran into needing some bushings to finish getting it all together properly.




Also managed to get an old golf cart top attached as a canopy and it actually looks pretty good I think hopefully it'll help keep me from roasting my neck and arms so bad this summer.



Wife and I just finished putting up a trellis for the cukes this year it'll be our first year trying this. Hoping it'll make it easier to weed them.



Also subsoiled the plot that I'm laying out this year it needed it bad I could tell it had a definite plow pan. Planting buckwheat in it sometime in the next week or so.

 

[EddieWalker]

Great pictures and a really nice looking garden. I'm curious to see how it all turns out. Is a market garden where you grow stuff to sell? Where do you sell it?

 

[cat fever]

I wish I had aarolar's ambition and Donald Trumps money; man I could get a lot done. :laughing:

aaroler it all looks great. Keep the pictures coming.

 

[aarolar]

Weekend update,

Got the irrigation done on the other half of the yard which is the blackberrys, scuppernogs and blueberrys.





Then I got on a tangent, this old stump had been here since I moved in and the fir next to it had recently died. I made the drastic decision I wanted them gone.



So as you can see I cut down the standing dead and then I hooked the Bota off to the older stump and it just rolled right out.



Then I started working on the other it was much more attached. I stared cutting the roots with the subsoiler then ended up digging and using an axe to get to that big Ol tap root under there.



And finally after hours of hard labor success!



Then I spent some time with the root rake tearing up stragglers then tilled it for the big finish.



Now after 9 hrs at work I'm layed flat on the couch for the afternoon completely spent.

 

[Wakey]

Nice job, you'll never have to look at that stump again.