Thanks to the help of our many investors, I’ve ordered all the broiler chicks for the year, scheduled processing up through August, bought nearly all of the seeds and broccoli starts I’ll need for the year, and purchased a thousand pounds of chicken feed. We’ve been accepted into the Clintonville Farmers’ Market, and from my communications with the Easton Farmers Market, it doesn’t sound like there’s any reason to expect they’d turn us down. A couple people have already started purchasing goods using their accounts. I’ll be picking up the first batch of broiler chicks for the year this Wednesday. And rather than putting up all the fences I was planning to put up, I’m looking into using portable electric poultry netting for keeping predators away from the free-ranging birds.
At this point, I need to get the tiller (and chipper) fixed, do a lot of construction work fixing up old chicken shelters and building new ones, and start acquiring components to install a rainwater-fed drip irrigation system in the gardens. I tried that last year with old garden hoses full of holes being gravity-fed by barrels, but there just wasn’t enough pressure to make it work. This year, I’m wanting to put in a system with proper emitters, a pressure regulator, and maybe a homemade treadle pump to move the water from the barrels through the lines. (If that pump doesn’t come together in time, I’ve got a small pump I can run with a cordless drill that should be sufficient.) I also need to get the water meter at Woodland fixed once I know we’re done with hard freezes for the year.
