Glen Kowalski

I would consider blue lupine as well.  Nitrogen fixer either biennial or short-lived perennial, attractive to both pollinators and the eye and deer resistant.  Also cycles P fairly well.  Oats to help establish mychorizal fungi would also be helpful.

If you can invest on a chum grinder or a meat grinder.  This will allow you to more fully mix the sawdust and fish leftovers.  Are you getting guts from gutted fish or the leftovers after they are fileted?  If the former then meat grinder is fine. If the latter than a chum grinder would work better.  Any large heads can be buried whole in your tomato beds or corn beds a few weeks ahead of planting.  Smaller heads and bones will be ground up fine by the chum grinder

Like the title says-we are into October here in the panhandle and all of my fruit trees have lost most of their leaves with the exception of one peach tree.  It still has all of it's leaves and they are still a healthy green.  Do peaches lose their leaves due to temperature or amount of sunlight or a combination?

Roosts are off the ground highest point available.  They go to roost eventually after I put them in.  The ducks on the other hand go to bed on their own.  To be fair the ducks seem to prefer to stay in the house unless bathing or feeding though  

Finally took the plunge and got 4 chickens and 4 ducks from TSC about 2 months ago.  One chick was sickly/injured and didn't make it out of the brooder and had to be put out of its misery.  The rest all thrived and are living outside together in more or less harmony.  Which is to say my chickens think they are ducks and my ducks think they may be chickens.  In spite of everything I had read on them my ducks are the ones who put themselves to bed at night while I have to herd the chickens in.  Of course the ducks spend most of the day in their house so that might be part of it.  Neither the chickens or the ducks like to forage very far from the house at all.  If the ducks do decide it is time to forage the chickens follow.  If the ducks go for a swim the chickens forage around the area the pool is set up but return to the house when the ducks do.  Unless it is night time and they should be going to sleep-then they run around the yard like toddlers at bed time .  I am so disappointed in my chickens that I went ahead and purchased another 5 chicks from a local feed store :p  

All joking aside raising birds has gone much better than I thought.  No issues with health outside of the one who was sick when we bought her.  With two dogs who roam the yard at random intervals day and night and backing up to a fairly busy road we haven't had any issues with predators yet.  My smaller dog is an active hunter and killed a rat at night a week before the birds went out and haven't seen any signs of rodents since.  And despite it not seeming like the chickens are doing much in the way of foraging they rarely eat much of the feed and even the ducks don't eat as much now as they did when I first put them outside so they are getting food from something else.

The biggest lesson I have learned so far is not to raise duckling and chicks together-the ducklings are entirely too messy!  That and the fact that my neighbors don't mind the ducks and actually like the sound of a rooster so are cool if I get one if I share some eggs with them

two beds nearly finished-final leveling and topping with alfalfa hay and spreading wood chips around the base left to go.  

Guess some pictures might help  bed will end up being 30x9ft and about 5 inches thick topped with alfalfa hay as mulch

Building a new bed today-about halfway done.  It consists of 2 yards of mushroom compost and 1 yard of topsoil.  The pine bark mulch is going to be used as a border to inhibit weed growth.  I found out today the same place has cow manure so going to check on the prices of it and may add a yard of that to the mix depending on how hot it is.  Still need to level the bed some more and smooth it out (you can see my footprints in the pics ).   Hope to have it done tomorrow but right now I can't feel my arms or legs so we'll see may have to be done Sunday.  

Once it is all done I'm going to add 1 and half pounds of Blood meal and plant corn on the back side 4 rows deep and the near side will be planted out in tomatoes, cucumbers, Peppers, squash and green beans and maybe some black-eyed peas.  With the corn I'm debating on spacing and whether to use traditional rows or offset rows and closer spacing.   My shop closed for 2 weeks because of the Virus but thankfully the people I work for are good people and are paying us all to stay home.

I've had great luck with my envirocycle (SP?) Tumblers.  I have a thread on here with the results of an experiment I did with one.  End product is here

Final product added to small bed today.  Definitely a good result