Another Hi From Indiana!

TheBrumstead

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Hi!

I'm Jennifer, aka "TheBrumstead". I found this site a while ago from BYC. We got our first chickens in August. I'm 31, married stay-at-home-mom to an almost 3 yr old boy. I'm also a Lindt Chocolate RSVP consultant, which means I do chocolate parties for people :) We have 7 acres in northwestern IN. We had horses until last spring when they both had to be put down due to complications of old age. I'm not ready to get more, so now it's the chickens and a good sized garden this year. I haven't had a good place to put the garden in the past because of the horse pasture. I put in a Red Haven peach tree and Bing cherry tree in the fall. I didn't know that the Bing needs a pollinator, so that will go in this spring. I'd like to do a few apple trees at some point too.

Gardening goals for this year:

Cover crop/forage for the chickens
blueberry bushes
blackberry bushes
cranberry bushes
tomatoes
onions
potatoes
bell peppers
hot peppers
3 sisters - sweet corn, zucchini, pole beans
assorted herbs

wildflowers, carnations, violas, whatever else catches my eye.

I have about an acre to play with, but it was the "dry lot" for my horses, so it's been grazed down to bare ground and compacted by hooves over the last 5 years. I want to try the "soil bag gardening" method for some of my plants - where you punch holes in the bottom of a bag of topsoil, cut open the top and plant directly in the bag.

Ok, now that I've written a novel... I'll end here ;)
 

lesa

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Welcome! Welcome! Sounds like exciting plans! I hope you have some lovely piles of horse manure composting somewhere? Could you rough up that horse pasture and plant a cover crop there for green manure and to loosen the soil? What about letting your chickens have had it- I bet they could scratch it up pretty good? Let us know your progress and Happy Gardening!
 

TheBrumstead

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lesa said:
Welcome! Welcome! Sounds like exciting plans! I hope you have some lovely piles of horse manure composting somewhere? Could you rough up that horse pasture and plant a cover crop there for green manure and to loosen the soil? What about letting your chickens have had it- I bet they could scratch it up pretty good? Let us know your progress and Happy Gardening!
Yes, we have a few large piles of horse manure just waiting to be used! The pasture was divided into two sections, one for grazing, one for dry lot. The 3 acres of grazing is going to be heavily seeded this year to get the actual grass going good before we get something else. I'm hesitant to let the chickens free range as we have 2 pairs of breeding hawks nearby and just 2 chickens right now. We had a third, but she died of unknown reasons. I'm getting two more later this year (hubby said I was "allowed" 4 only, and that's all the coop will hold for now). But I'm planning on building a moveable pen (larger than a tractor) so that will help too.
 

rebbetzin

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