Leaves, Bedding, and 300 Cloves: Getting the Garlic in Before the Rain

This past week was busy. Very, very busy. Wisconsin has moved into its late-fall routine: overcast every day, a drizzle every day, and a temperature that only goes one direction. Give it about three weeks and snow stops being a possibility and starts being a plan. So everything that needed to happen outside needed to happen now.

The Leaves Versus the Fence

Leaves are pretty right up until they pile against the chicken pasture fence. Then the wind comes off the field, pushes on that wall of leaves, and the fence lies down. Our fencing has many qualities, and standing up to a leaf-assisted wind is not one of them.

So every leaf in and around the chicken pasture had to go. We leaf-blew and raked the whole area and got the fence line clean, then blew everything into one large pile in the middle of the yard. The lawnmower mulched the pile, I raked the mulch onto a tarp, dragged it out to the newly tilled field, and dumped it there. Leaves: relocated, shredded, and now technically employed.

Out With the Old Bedding

The day before the leaves, I cleaned out the chicken coop completely. All the old bedding came out and new bedding went in. Then I did the same in the duck house. All of that old bedding went onto the field too, as brown matter to compost over the winter. The birds got fresh floors, and the field got everything else. Everyone was happy, though the field was quieter about it.

Leveling, the Low-Budget Way

The field was still pretty chunky from tilling. I don’t have a leveling attachment for the tractor, so I made one: an old pallet with sandbags on it, tied to the back of the tractor. Then I did laps around the field.

It worked better than it had any right to. The high spots got moved into the low spots, and the whole thing ended up smooth enough to work. It’s not getting featured in a tractor catalog, but it did the job.

Planting the Garlic

Friday or Saturday (the days were blurring together at this point), I built the Garlic Dibble Board, the free plan we just put together for the Kruger Farm Workshop.

Before planting, I took the EGO cultivator over the field to loosen up the soil the pallet had packed down. That cultivator has been well worth the money. I use it for a lot more than the garden: it freshens the bedding in the coop and the duck house, and it works the raised beds too.

Once the soil was fluffed up, I went over it with the dibble board and planted close to 300 cloves of garlic. They went in rows, and I made a note of what was in each row, with some space between the groups to keep them separate. That way, when harvest comes around, we’ll actually know what we’re pulling out of the ground instead of holding up a bulb and guessing.

Then the garlic got covered with more dirt. I bought six straw bales from the farm next door, which runs cattle and keeps straw on hand, spread it over the garlic, and matted it down.

The timing worked out. This week’s forecast is rain, basically every day, all day. That will hold the straw down and pack it in, which is exactly what it needs heading into winter. It’s rare for the weather and the to-do list to agree on something, so I’ll take it.

What’s Next

The rest of the field still needs a silage tarp over it. That will kill off the grass over the winter and help all the compost we laid down, the leaves and the old bedding, start breaking down before spring.

The Chicks Have Discovered Vertical

The 11 chicks are doing well and getting bigger. They’ve also figured out how to get out of the brooder. The route goes like this: hop onto the waterer, hop from there to the edge of the brooder, and they’re out. It’s a solid plan, and I respect it, but they don’t get to use it anymore. We put a mesh window screen over the top of the brooder, and that ended the escapes. Other than the jailbreak attempts, they’re growing fine.

The rest of the flock is doing well too.

That’s about it for this week. The garlic is in, the straw is down, and the rain is on its way. For once, we beat the weather.