Hello everyone and welcome back to Wicked Quail and Pork Homestead- the blog. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook! We are a small family farm operating on a 3rd generation property. Prior to us purchasing the property from my grandfather, it was a beef farm. However, with 4 other beef farms nearby, and my strong opinion on chasing cattle and fixing fences.. we have changed it around a bit.
We have been raising swine for 8 years, we mentor anyone looking to get into the pork and piggo industry. Recently we switched to registered Idaho Pasture Pigs. We also have poultry, turkeys, ducks, quail. I think we may start leaning more towards the birds on the business end of things.
I am happy to say we have our meat rabbits back, that's one of my favorites due to sustainability and cost. We also recently brought in dairy sheep! Yum!
We are a small family with 2 kiddos, that love all things outdoors. We hope you enjoy all we have to offer, and we'd like to say.. Welcome, friend!
If you'd like to support our blog here is an affiliate link to our favorite seed company- Botanical Interests Link- https://shrsl.com/3de5l
Azure Standard Link- https://www.azurestandard.com/?a_aid=135be8a608
We all know that many people are going to pick up gardening this year with the hopes of cutting back on that grocery bill and gaining a little self-sustainability. This is a great idea and I fully encourage it, you'll learn so much about life in the garden, it truly is a heavenly place to be. However, without the proper nutrition, your garden will not produce the food you are looking for. You must give in order to receive.
Composting on your homestead is the easiest way to give nutrition back to your land and even better, anyone can do it!
Compost piles. This is your long-term, give you continued nutrition for years to come, method. Compost piles can be so simple! You don't have to own a fancy compost tumbler or anything like that, you just need your organic materials and scraps from your kitchen along with the organic materials from your yard.
If composting animal manure, it is nice to have it on a concrete slab so that weeds are minimal when you go to use it in your garden. With that said, we have tons of piles of composting manure all around the farm and they turn into these jet-black, nutrient-dense, worm-filled piles of garden gold. So do it wherever you have the room, you won't regret it!
Make sure you have a good amount of materials from the landscape around you: leaves, grass clippings, straw, livestock manure, bedding, etc.
Now gather your household organic materials: vegetable scraps, fruit scraps, garden plants, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc.
Layer these things in a pile (I like to make sure there is no layer of household scrapes showing because it helps avoid curiosity from critters).
You'll want to wet down the compost pile VERY well every time you add more organic material to it. This will keep everything in place and help start the composting process.
The last thing you are going to do is just turn this pile over once a week and water it. This doesn't have to happen on a strict schedule, you aren't going to ruin your compost by turning it over a day, or even a week late.
Depending on what you use for materials you can have usable compost in 6 months to 1 year. That's all there is to composting! It's so simple, everyone should be doing it. It's a self-sustainable resource and good for our planet. I like to make 1 or 2 new piles every year so that you can use one while the other ages.
If you are composting animal manure, you'd want to use the same concept without the watering. Just flip the pile every week or so and watch it turn into the richest, dark soil you've ever seen!
Compost Tea. Compost tea is a great way to concentrate that compost into a product that is super efficient but doesn't use a whole bunch of your resources all at once.
All you're going to do is get a 5-gallon bucket, fill it about 1/4 of the way with your compost, fill the rest of the bucket with water, and stir. Let this sit for 24-48 hours, maybe stir it once or twice during that time, then use your compost tea to water your plants! Again, composting as well as utilizing the compost is simple and beneficial!
Other than our manure piles, this is my favorite method for compost because I don't really have to think about it beforehand or put any labor into it. I just fill the bucket when I think of it, and grab it 2 days later. You can say "Oh I forgot to order fertilizer." and just go make a compost tea instead. As home gardeners and homesteaders, we have much more independence than we think we do. We just have to think outside the box!
**You can also make a compost tea with the things listed below in the "use now" list!**
Things you can use in your garden NOW!
-Coffee Grounds
-Eggshells
-Wood Ash
-Tea leaves
-Rabbit manure
-Banana peels
-Aquarium water
Rabbit manure is the only safe livestock manure to apply directly to your plants, please do not use fresh cow, horse, pig, or chicken manure in your gardens! This is just one of the many reasons that I think of rabbits as one of the most valuable critters on the homestead.
You can, however, add fresh manure to your garden when you put it to bed in the fall and it will be good to go by spring! We like to mix things into the soil and then mulch it nicely, which leaves us with healthy, ready-to-plant dirt in the spring.
There are so many things in our home that don't need to go to the landfills. Raw foods are organic materials that can be given back to the land and put to good use.
Now go get to work and create your homestead sanctuary into a self-sustainable growing machine! I believe in you, Happy Homesteading!
Comentarios