Adventures of my hobby farm

[aarolar]

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.

 

[aarolar]

Hitched up to the tree digger with my handy helper at the wheel.


Now with that out of the way I reconfigured this raggedy old cultivator to lay off some beds for plastic for this year's tomatoes. This is also one of my restoration projects coming up.



Got interrupted by the fellow I let fish my pond delivering a sprayer he sold me for a whopping 125$. Came with a brand new pump but all the lines will need replacing.


Now with the addition of all the new trees I realise that I need more spigots so I can easily get water to everything so now I'm off to the store to get some PVC for tomorrow's project of running irrigation lines. The plan is for all the trees, blueberrys and blackberrys to be drip irrigated on a timer to eliminate one thing from my check list.

 

[General Lee]

This will be a fun thread to watch. Any plans for livestock?

 

[cat fever]

I'm getting tired just thinking about all the upcoming work you have.:laughing:
Good luck, I'll be watching your progress.

 

[2ndhalf]

Interesting, I'm doing something similar; not a market garden but trying to grow my own food. I don't consider it work really.. I enjoy it and anything you enjoy isn't work. Just trying to live off your own land more. Not a bad thing! I also think that as you get old and retire you need something to keep you moving.

 

[aarolar]

This will be a fun thread to watch. Any plans for livestock?

We continue to toss it around by so far no serious plans. I'm totally ignorant to livestock but my family has a background in growing things.

 

[aarolar]

Interesting, I'm doing something similar; not a market garden but trying to grow my own food. I don't consider it work really.. I enjoy it and anything you enjoy isn't work. Just trying to live off your own land more. Not a bad thing! I also think that as you get old and retire you need something to keep you moving.

For now it's mostly for us but we sell extras. I'll go a 1/4 acre of sweet corn and about 75 tomatoes to sell. This year peppers will be a new experience for us mostly to market. Ideally I want to eventually sell to local produce retailers in the area in bulk I have already made some contacts and expressed my interest.

 

[aarolar]

Well got one of the lines ran decided to hold off on the second because I'm not sure exactly how I want it and the wind is blowing harder than I like fooling around in so I'm going to focus on something else.

 

[aarolar]

Here's the pics of the irrigation.

Used the subsoiler to pull the line way to lazy to dig trenches. Didn't get many pictures the wife was running the tractor and I stayed pretty busy.


Semi finished arrangement the right side of the wye goes to the drip on the maters and peppers, left side will be the tree irrigation and the top will run a impact sprinkler for peas and beans.




Limed the peach trees then hooked up to the harrow and headed down to the food plot I'm establishing in the middle of my 50 acres. Pulled the disc awhile then this happened



So headed back to the house and stopped at the water to rinse the dust off and ended up washing and waxing the Bota somehow.



Then I parked her and tore the harrow down. Fought like **** to get the nut off the shaft due to rust but finally won the battle and got the new disc on. Putting the gang back under the harrow is a task for another day.




About this time wife called for supper and I came in to this wonderful meal. All in all its been a pretty productive weekend, I feel like I've been hung upside down and flogged with a chain but that just means I'll sleep well tonight.

 

[TSO]

I'm in for the viewing !

We raise and sell about an acre of pumpkins, as well as a couple hundred meat chickens, some hogs, and apparently now (according to my wife, starting this year) Goats also LOL