Friday, April 23, 2021: Berries and Other Homestead Edibles

Friday was a cool day. I had no issues staying up all day, and had a nice low key day that we'd spent mostly walking the property. I get a lot of enjoyment out of walking around our half acre, observing a project at a time each time.

Food forest chickens

The berries all around look to be coming on pretty thick this year. I may just have to become a fruitarian for a little while so we can make full use of them all. Not sure if I'm serious in saying that, but I might actually give it a try for a while. The chickens will be laying soon too though, so maybe I'll be a fruit-and-egg-tarian so that I'll be eating 100% off the homestead again. Oh man, to have my 20% of our food budget replaced will be awesome. Has anyone else noticed how expensive food is getting?

Triple crown blackberries about to bloom

Wild blackberries ripening

Ozark beauty strawberries ripening

Farmer Sam and the big comfrey

Farmer Sam and I started an experiment. We harvested comfrey for the first time this year, expressly with the purpose of feeding the rabbits on it for the day. I picked out the closest plant to me, and chopped it. This pic is of that single plant, which fed all of the breeders consisting of two nursing does, one pregnant and nursing doe, one pregnant doe, and our three bucks, all fed on comfrey yesterday. The nine grow outs and nine weaners required two more small plants.

Here shortly I'm going to continue propagating a lot more comfrey. I'm thinking along the bottom Swale would be a good place for a solid line of it, propagated from root cuttings of my largest plants. If I could replace my rabbit feed bill for a week out of every month, that would be amazing. One large plant and two medium plants feeds everyone I've.got now, at peak production I bet five plants max per day will cover it. We'll see. You can't have too much comfrey, so I'm going to plant more either way, whether it comes out to a significant production model or not.

Should I plant alfalfa in one of my yard sections? I'm considering it, as another homestead feed source. How does alfalfa grow I wonder? And maybe some Timothy grass too. Both of those are good feed for rabbits. I'll look into getting some seed with this next week's blog earnings.

I'm beginning to finally see the real cost implications of having so many animals around. Melissa says in a year that we've spent $500 or so on rabbit feed. I've only eaten four rabbits. That's not economical in the least bit, soy-fed industrial store pork is more economical. It was our first year, and we learned a lot, and the end of this season right now is showing the potential for next season, but that's a lot of money. The bag mower has definitely helped here recently, having supplied us about a week of feed so far. Things are lining up to knock out the feed bill, and I'm pretty motivated and disciplined about being a better Steward of our homestead this year.

I wonder if I could skip a month straight of rabbit feed... I'll try it when we run out of whatever feed we have left right now.

The boys laying down for a snooze

Of course, I spent a lot of time with the pigs yesterday. I'm enjoying just sitting with them, trying to pay them when their habits carry them near to where I sit. This is one project that I'm really wanting and needing to succeed.

It rained a lot of the day yesterday. A good soaking rain. Before it started though, I was able to plant out some cantelope melons, some watermelons, some okra starts, more tomatoes and jalapenos, and our moonflower starts. I can't say how good it feels, with Melissa's help and guidance, to be planting so many plants for food. We're nearly at half the tomatoes we want to get planted, and that alone is more annual food plants than I've ever planted. Melissa gets full credit for that.

It's almost time for me to make my biweekly milk run, so I'm calling that a wrap. I'll have another post on Sunday night/Monday morning to wrap up and report on the weekend. Y'all be sure and get something done this weekend.

Love from Texas

Nate 💚