Busy couple of days on the farm... Justin came around to help so we had him doing dome neglected chores in the garden. Pulling weeds that are starting to come up in the pathways and beds. We made a big compost pile - salvinia and hyacinth, goat and chicken straw, one coppiced gliricidia worth of leaves, a barrow full of lawn clippings from the morning's lawn mowing, and a bucket of comfrey... Justin also took care of some planting and sheet mulching while I ran the lawn mower around.
We moved the chicken dome yesterday, wednesday the 3rd, and planted it up. We also mounded up the other half of the long chicken tractored bed and planted it up with an experimental timestacking guild of tomatoes (which will die after an initial flush if they are anything like all the other tomatoes we have grown here - although these ones had some of Robs Azomite trace minerals and we'll see if that makes a diff) with sweet potatoes which will last longer no doubt. We also dropped in bunching onions, beet berries and eggplants. Happily I was able to catch the araucana that keeps getting out of the bamboo corall. I threw her in with "speckles" as Lorinda and Lichen have taken to calling him. Oh, I also caught one of the free ranging ducks and we had her in fried rice for dinner.
Justin came up to the site of the bag with me and we dragged the carpet back and rolled it up and I sort of wrang my hands over it. I still can't decide the best course of action. Leaning towards making the most of what we actually have on the farm right now and dragging all that carpet down to the gulch and following through with Iruka's pond, even though it is not an immediate solution to irrigation water. I know we don't have the money, but a tank right up there on the top of the hill would be kind of cool. I don't know... Justin is open to spending part of his time for us helping with pond work, rather than gardening, which is his primary interest which is great, and if this Tim Farmer bloke shows up we will have the nucleus of a team for dragging carpet and plastic around!
What else, oh the usual ongoing things, like adding water to the batteries, feeding the goats, etc. Oh, and first thing yesterday I spent some time pulling weeds in that annoying area between the garden and the greywater trench. It is a strange reverse tardis like area that seems so much bigger than it is until you get in there and start clearing it. I actually cut out some stupid stuff like the self sown guavas and I trimmed back a big agave and used it to mulch a Jakfruit growing there, as those plants while providing some windbreak and groundcover, were really doing more to harbour weeds than anything.