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| Caden helping me pick and clean one of our harvests |
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| Our very humble salad garden |
It was around my last post that we planted our fall salad garden comprised of spinach, arugula, bibb, and other lettuces. It has been extremely prolific as we planted it in a very mature and deep raised bed. The soil is comprised of 3 years of compost, rabbit manure and home to hundreds of night crawlers. In addition, being in the part of the yard that gets the absolute least amount of sunlight, I put up radiant barrier insulation on the fence just to reflect more light onto the plants as the sun goes down. It has worked wonders. We have harvested 4 times now and usually get 11 stuffed gallon sized ziploc bags. It is ready for its 5th harvest and the broad leafed salads show no signs of slowing while the arugula is spent. The salad has a very peppery and nutty taste mostly thanks in part to the arugula. When bagged almost right away and put in the vegetable drawer of our fridge, the salad is lasting about 4 weeks! I have learned to not wash the salad before bagging as it leaves a filmy residue after about a week. Also, I can't plant the salad to close together or it becomes a thriving jungle sanctuary for bugs.The picture to the right is our original ten tilapia. Most of them are between 5 and 6 inches I originally bought them thinking they were pure bred blue nile tilapia. Blue Nile are more desired because they have a lower water temperature tolerance around 55 degrees. 7 out of the ten adults are shades of pink and red which makes me think they are crossed with Mozambiques or Red Nile so their low temperate threshold should be moved up to 59 or 60 degrees.
In this picture they are 5 months old. They will be harvest size around 9 months and start reproducing at 7 months. We also bought 20 fry (baby fish) 2 months after buying these 10 and we have 17 left of them. The idea being I will using the two different "generations" of tilapia to breed to each other and thereby increase our gene pool resulting in faster growth and fewer deformities and health problems.
We have visited several farms to include Anne Bibb Ruble's farm and her beautiful Highland cattle. Highlands interest me because of their long hair coats and how winter hardy they are and hardy in general. Very parasite resistant and great grazers.
We have been starting to hone in on buying land and a house or just the land or renting the land. We are seriously looking at the West Union area of Adams County. And now, wanting a house and land, we have lowered our expectations of purchasing 50-100 acres to purchasing 20-50 acres. We have looked seriously at a few places and are looking at one now that is 23 acres, pasture, small barn, creek, and a bit run down 3 bed 1 bath old farmhouse.
Becca and I are currently enrolled in Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. As I will be asking for friends and family to show they believe in me by asking directly and indirectly for their financial support, I want to prove that we are good with money. Progress so far: I am proud to say that other than our house we are completely debt free and we have a 6 month emergency fund and then some. We outright own our three vehicles and will be going down to just our van and the farm truck as we move up to Ohio. Even with all that, getting into farming, just being a small farm, in order to not take out any loans and outright buy your equipment, livestock, feed, fencing and shelter, it would cost about 80,000 even with buying used equipment. There are no grants available for someone like me because I haven't had it recorded on my taxes that I have been involved in any farm related enterprise and therefore I am not considered a beginning farmer or rancher. Those are the people who have been doing this for a minimum of 3 years (small livestock) to 5 years (large livestock). Makes sense, right?
