The Absolute Worst Bug in the Garden

This year was almost met with catastrophe!

As you probably know by now, we raise our animals on primarily produce grown in our own gardens (instead of buying commercial feeds). It's a lot of work, but the cost / benefit factor is amazing. This concept is the basis of how to make small farms profitable!

But, this year, 2017, we almost lost half the garden, the ever important zucchini and pumpkin, to a bug.

Gardens are full of insects, some good and some bad. Bugs  are constant battle gardeners of all sizes fight. But this bug was unlike any other! This bug, one single bug, had the potential of wiping out half our plants in a slow steady death. To make matters worse, this bug is invisible and elusive! Once it rears its head up, it is difficult to track down without very specialized tools.

Not the typical cucumber beetle, not squash bugs, those are mostly controllable with Guinea Fowl and simple soap.  No.. this bug is very very different. Immune to all normal methods of containment and riddance. This bug, is a real challenge!

Over the last 2 months we have been fighting this bug on an almost daily basis. The plants were suffering, and stunted from it's effects. The harvest was dramatically less than expected, and some plants even just died. We feared that unless we can get a handle on this, we would loose the remainder of the harvest and end up having to purchase animal feed from off farm! That would be devastating in our present financial position.  So last week, I decided it was time to get to the bottom of this situation once and for all.

You see, this bug is not the typical insect, not even an insect at all! This... is a computer bug. Those elusive defects built into anything computerized by a programmer's oversight or failing, that allows things to go astray in some way. What does this have to do with a garden? Water... the blood of the earth. without water in the proper amounts, nothing lives. Our entire watering system is "computerized" meaning, run by a digital timer. Most things digital have inside a computer running a program, and therefore, can have bugs. The difference here is that in a device such as a timer, you cant "debug" the program using normal means. It is hard coded into hardware and is what it is, unchangeable, untraceable.

The timer we prefer is made by Galcon: http://galconc.com/product/6100s/

This timer is battery driven, 6 zone, easily programmable, calendar or cyclic, water windows, overload protection, weatherproof, reliable, and has 2 severe bugs in it's programming! 

Such was this bug.  Until.. I found it!

Here's what happened. The timer we use (LOVE this timer! best ever, aside from it's now 2 bugs) has two separate modes it can operate in... calendar and cyclic. A  calendar mode say "turn on water at 9am on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday for 3 hours".  A cyclic mode says "turn on water for 3 hours every 2 days".  Very different, with pros and cons to each. We tend to use cyclic for sprouting and growing to ensure frequent short but consistent watering, and switch to calendar for maintenance and harvest.  And therein, the switch between the two, is where the bugs is born!

This bug is related to yet another really cool feature of this timer. Water windows! I love water windows! The challenge with sprouting through drip tape on a water timer is the hot southern Oregon summer days. In order to keep the surface soil "moist" to germinate seeds it is necessary to water frequently throughout the sun filled days. But if the water kept going all night, it would flood! So to prevent this, we use cyclic timing with water windows. A water window is quite literally a window of time when and only when the water can turn on. outside the window, watering is restricted. Its a perfect answer!

Well, except for this bug.  What happens is... I set the cyclic timing for frequent short watering during the day, and the water windows to disable water at night. But then as the plants reach maturity, I change the program to calendar. Since calendar is a "deterministic" mode where you say definitively when to turn on and off water, the window is not necessary, and the setting of the window removes itself from the programming screen. That's appropriate, right? you don't need windows so it should not be visible in the programming details.  BUT, the programmer who wrote this, forgot to disable the FUNCTION of the window along with removing it's CONTROL from the screens.  Naturally, we assume if something is not settable, then it is disabled, right? well no, not in this case.

So, when I switched a couple months ago from cyclic to calendar, the water windows dropped off the screen but stayed enforced! any calendar timing I set, would be overridden by the now invisible water window and water would not run! Some zones got full water, some partial, some NONE (or so little it was effectively none). WE tried to manually water, but trying to maintain the right water balance between this unknown semi automatic amount and an added manual amount was impossible, the plants suffered from this "bug".

Once I discovered what was going on (after days of trial and error and deep exploration), the fix was simple. Just switch each zone back to cyclic temporarily, disable the water windows that then showed up on the screen, and switch back to calendar mode.  Easy enough! The bug was eradicated within minutes, once I saw it.  But, damage is done.

fortunately, the garden has sprung back to life within a week of fixing this. The proper water amount has doubled or tripled the plant size in only days. Well, to be honest, we also applied a good amount of good homemade fertilizer (another post) and sea minerals in an emergency treatment. But ultimately, the water is what did the trick.

So, lesson learned, bugs come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. This particular bug, the computer bug, is perhaps the worst of all. But it was conquered and now avoidable!

Best watermelon of 2017

What is better on these hot summer days than a cold juicy vine ripened watermelon?
Our melon patch is doing really good this year, in fact it seems the healthiest part of the animal garden! If all goes well, those lucky pigs will be enjoying a steady diet of heirloom vine ripened melons soon!

But we had to try one!



Hunter picked it out himself, and he made a great choice! This melon was the sweetest, the juciest, the best tasting melon ever!



If there are extras, we will offer a few of these for sale soon through the normal home delivery ordering. Keep watching for it!

posted from Bloggeroid

Fried devil's claw

We tried a new dishwasher tonight... Fried devil's claw!

Devil's claw pods are much like okra... And I love fried okra... So we decided to try some. We used a normal fried okra recipe and it cooked up nicely!

Unfortunately... Devil's claw is a bit bitter. That the medicinal components in it coming through the pods. It was ok, but would be more tasty if the bitterness was hidden behind some other flavor... Will try that next time.

We are raising devil's claw (and selling seeds) because this plant is highly beneficial to anyone with joint pain. In Europe, they use devil's claw root to treat RA and other arthritis pain. O have tried it myself, and it works for me! I seem to enheirented my mom's tendency for arthritis in the fingers, so I tried the European remedy. For me, a tea of devil's claw root mixed with nettle leaves bring some immediate relief and much long term relief if continued daily for a week or so.

We are very happy to have this amazing plant pop up wild in our garden area for the second year. We have enough seeds saved from last year to sell and next year we will be able to offer organically grown devil's claw pods and root directly!

I will say that for me... Our own fresh grown root is more beneficial than the preparations found in the store. Nothing like home grown!

posted from Bloggeroid

Rainey the Gardener!

Rainey, our llama, makes a great gardener!

I noticed him walking through the tomato patch, and was a bit worried that he might decide to eat some of the young plants. I got closer and watched to find that he was meticulously "weeding" the tomatoes! He was munching on the tiny weed sprouts at the base of the plants but avoiding the tomatoes themselves quite well!

Tonight's menu...

Here is a look at tonight's menu at the farm...

For starters we have a selection of fresh baby greens, a variety of green plants and weeds from the garden. Succulent, just picked with roots and all.

Then we move on to the main course... Our own mix of soaked, sprouted, and fermented grains. Not one grain... but multi grains. And when we say sprouted... We mean really sprouted with 1 inch tails!

Then to finish, a dessert of another batch of greens (weeds).

These guys eat well!

posted from Bloggeroid

Tomatoes Everywhere - but what a day!

Yesterday was a very full day, but with a successful ending... Lots of tomatoes!

We were given almost a thousand tomato starts, needing to be in the ground ASAP. So what do we do? Drop everything and get those plants in the ground!

The "chicken transport" trailer was still together, so we were able to load all the flats of starts into the trailer, utilizing the second deck quite nicely. It was wall to wall plants on both levels!

Then yesterday, the fun started. The first step was to prepare a plot of ground becasue of course, there was none ready! We decided on the original pig pen. It should be decently fertilized, out of the way of other activity, close enough to water, and  "doable" this late in the season.

To till the hard dry clay dirt requires the tiller to be in top shape.. so that meant a couple hours rebuilding the tiller.  The back cover had fallen off while preparing the melon spot (sorry, missed the chance to blog that one), some of the tines were shot, and it was again covered in rogue baling twines. So this was the first order of business.. rebuild the tiller. Sorry again, no pics.. was racing the clock! But we managed to clean the tines, replace the worst ones with the old semi worn tines I had kept from last time, and reattach the cover. Took a couple hours of work.

The tilling went pretty good then... until the 4wd went out on the tractor! Yep, tractors ALWAYS break when you need them most. It's some type of law of nature! The thing is.. with a reverse tine tiller it is possible to turn a hard dry clay pasture into plant-able soil in a couple of passes IF in 4wd, but totally impossible without it! the rear wheels simply dont have the traction required to pull the tines through the hard dirt. There is a weak C-Clip in the driveshaft, which only gets weaker and keeps popping off, letting the splines separate. This happened in the middle of the second pass. So, off to repair the tractor! Unfortunately, I know this repair all too well! Took about an hour underneath and it was all back together.  That allowed just enough  working time to get it barely sufficiently deep for tomatoes before it happened again. Ok, fine.. good enough! Time to move on...

Then the transplanting started... this takes a while. 900 plants?  Takes a system! Fortunately the farmer who grew the starts let us borrow his "auto-transplanter" which is a really great invention.  A tool that cuts a hole just the right size and depth, open the hole, drop a plant in the top, and almost fully buries it.  Pretty nice! We set up an assembly line with the kids and it worked beautifully! The kids loved taking turns dropping the plants into the hopper to let them fall into the hole.  Farm Fun!

Then of course, water... we rushed to build some headers (were out already). Of course the glue got spilled onto the soil, so I was literally dipping the ends of pipes into the liquid glue puddle resting on the soil and successfully gluing the ends on. Quite a site!

We did manage to get the water lines in and "lit up" right at sundown... But didnt get time to fix all the leaks in the one year old lines. Instead, I just turned the water flow very low and let them drip slow all night.  In the morning, they look bright and tall!

The finished product. A patch of about 900 tomato plants getting their first real drink and sun in the "wild". As you notice.. planted VERY close with no stakes or trellis of any kind. We are going for a "natural" tomato patch where the vines "do their thing". Low maintenance!

Believe it or not.. THIS is what the patch looked like just 6 hours earlier! This is the beauty of a reverse tine tiller with 4wd trator. 

The slow watering all night seemed to be just enough to perk them up.

This is the nifty trans-planter tool that we borrowed. What a timesaver!

for the curious

Watermelons in the ground!

Early this week we planted the watermelons. Three different types this year, red, white and yellow.

Here is a pic of the kids setting the drip lines to sprout the seeds.

This watermelon patch is exactly twice as big as last year. This will provide even more delicious melons to finish the hogs on for the incredible pork flavor only at Little Sprouts!

As of this weekend, the sprouts are mostly up already and looking healthy!

Fava Beans looking good!

The fava beans are growing wonderfully!

They are actually covered in beautiful white flowers now, and lots of tiny beans.

And oooo.. all that goat feed! (weeds) in between the rows. We are harvesting a load per day of beautiful organic goat feed from in between the beans. Some of the weeds are too small to harvest efficiently, but they are growing!

Quick Update on things for April

Sorry, no pictures on this post. Quite honestly... we have been a bit too busy to keep up with reporting on things.  So here is a quick update:

1. The fave beans are sprouted, reasonably well. Not as good as hoped, but not bad. The week of warmer rains might bring a few more to the surface... hopefully.

2. We did manage to get the entire main garden tilled this week, just in time for the rain. As always, the plan is to till as soon as dry enough, then let it sit through a warm rain (at least not cold) to sprout initial weed set, then a light till when it dries again and plant.  We have the first tilling done, now waiting for the rain, sprouting, retilling and planting. For the curious, the main garden this year is right at 1 1/2 acres in size.

3. We have 2 more areas hoping to get planted before summer, the old goat pen and the present pig pen. Those two are well fertilized and ready to go. But, the goat pen is much too muddy yet and the pig pen is.. well.. housing pigs yet! Plus the pigs totally tore down one side of fencing, held up by a pallet, so that must be replaced.

4. There are 2 more potential areas to plant this year... one has been housing horses for several years, and the other is the original winter garden spot. both should grow well.

5. The goats are almost all into milk now, ready for the season.  It has meant some serious restructuring of the barn to accommodate the bulk of the herd all at once, but it is slowly coming together.

6. We did manage to get the milking barn rebuilt, cleaned up from the winter, and useable again.

7. The new chicken flock is doing well, we ended up with right at 150 young birds that look healthy and happy. They will be coming out of the brooders this week and into their first job of fertilizing one garden area.

8. The new guinea fowl arrive this week, which means we will be retiring the old flocks to start anew, providing some excellent meat and organs for sale.

9. We have tested last year's home made "feed" of dehydrated zuchinni and greens. It stored exceptionally well! opening the buckets after 6 months revealed perfectly dry, aromatic, well preserved vegetables! The chickens were the first recipients of this marvelous free feed and they love it as long as it is ground a bit into smaller chunks. And their eggs... WHOA! the best eggs we have ever produced! Thick orange yolks, well developed whites, perfect aroma and a beautiful soft flavor. These are , in my humble opinion, the best eggs I have ever seen! And that is without the bug barn in operation, just zuchinni and greens! It looks like the experiment is a smashing success!

10. This week with the rains we hope to spend time finishing the barn insides and getting the chickens moved into their spring positions. Then it's office work! We have lots of paperwork to do to support the new may announcements!

I think that's about it for now. Please forgive us for not keeping up with emails this week, the pleasant weather break meant some long days, and enough hours in the sun to build a nice sunburn! The rains means that things will settle a bit and we can get back on top of things.

Thanks for all your support!

Spring is here! Fava Beans in the Ground!

Spring has finally arrived and we are busy getting seed into the ground for this year's animal feed harvests.  Yes it is a tad early, but some plants are fine germinating in the cooler weather. This includes the new trial crop for 2017, FAVA BEANS!

The beans are a good 1/2 to 3/4 inch across, sometimes as much as an inch! That is the largest bean I have ever seen!

Here is a pile of beans spilled out on the grass

We are trying heriloom fava beans to use as animal feed. They are very starchy beans that grow in HUGE pods with HUGE beans! The nutritional stats look good, and the weather profile looks acceptable for an early spring planting.

So this week we planted 6 rows of 60 yards each in fava beans. There are no drip lines yet,  which is unique for our system. But the weather should see some nice bouts of rain yet, enough to sprout these seeds, so we literally just tilled up the driest spot available and put seeds in. If the rain doesn't materialize over the weekend, then we will install drip lines.


These beans are too large to fit any of the hand push automatic seeders, so we needed another way to avoid the planting backache. The answer? a 3/4 inch PVC pipe! I held the pipe at one end, placed the bottom where I wanted the seed, and dropped one down. It would land in a small impression, and Hunter would come along to bury and compress them. This was quite efficient! Occasionally the beans would not fit, but not too often. Usually they slid right down with a song and a thud.

Our homemade fava bean planter. Just a piece of 3/4 inch pipe. Drop one at the top as you walk down the row and it is easy to space them out without bending over. 

Then just follow along and bury each one by hand.

We managed to turn a 60 yard by 120 yard patch of pasture into a garden, with 6 60 yard rows of fava beans planted, all in one day. We just finished as the sun set.

Sheep and grass

The sheep had same quality time with green grass over the weekend! The ground is finally drying out enough for them to graze without mud puddles.



This patch will soon become the first spring garden as soon as it can be tilled, so why waste the grass?  We will let the sheep consume it until it's time to till and plant.

posted from Bloggeroid

New Product! Heirloom Seeds!

We are proud to announce that Little Sprouts is now offering the very heirloom seeds that we use to grow our animal feed, direct to you. These seeds are the varieties we have tested and use on our farm in bulk. But you can order small packets to fit a normal garden area. 

INCLUDING!  The now infamous Gete-Okosomin squash!

One story has it that the seeds were found in an old clay pot, dated to be over 800 years old.  However, there is an alternate story:

The true story may be even more captivating, Lobe said. Although less theatrical, the real story of Gete-Okosomin (which means “big old squash”) reveals rich agricultural knowledge among Turtle Island’s original inhabitants.
“This is not an abstract archaeological thing,” he said. “It’s a way to connect back to the first people and acknowledge their agricultural heritage.”
Further digging into the story reveals that the seeds came from elderly gardeners on the Miami Nation of Indiana, who gifted them in 1995 to David Wrone, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin. The seeds had not lain dormant for centuries, Wrone said, but the Miami people had grown them for as long as 5,000 years.
The Miami were careful stewards of the seed, taking care to hand-pollinate them and maintain their purity. Wrone planted the seeds and grew several squash weighing 30 pounds or more.

This alternate story is according to  https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/genealogy/the-shocking-true-story-of-that-giant-squash/

Either way, these are amazingly awesome heirloom squash representing centuries old agriculture.  And now you can have them in your back yard, courtesy of Little Sprouts!

Browse through our online store now and put together your garden list for 2017. Supplies are somewhat limited, so don't delay!

https://csa.farmigo.com/store/littlesproutsfarm

Devil's claw harvest

This very wild looking plant of beautiful flowers had now lived up to its name. Wow! Those pod, when they dry and split, make hooks very similar to hay hooks only much sharper and the points align to create a vice effect.



We pulled out first set of vine ripened pods off today. Or goal is to save the seeds over the winter and plant an entire crop next year. Right now the plant is mostly on the ground, about half the pods are dry. It seems best to let the plant dry completely to get as many mature seeds as possible.

Devil's claw is reported to be a very effective anti inflammatory for such things as arthritis, rheumautism, joint pains. We will definitely harvest the roots when it's time.

Exciting!

Crenshaw Harvest has Begun, with a 16 lb Melon?

Finally... the time we have long awaited.. CRENSHAW MELONS! mmmmm, This is truly the Cadillac of melons!

Crenshaws are an heirloom melon, sort of a cross between a honeydew and a canteloup. The flesh is juicy, very sweet, and creamy tasting. Unlike any other melon we have tried.  These beautiful melons form the tail end of our melon harvest for the year.  the recent rains have brought an urgency to get them in from the garden before the wet soils make the melons burst from too much liquid.

This year was .. a bit odd.  The melons for hte most part kept growing instead of ripening. Not sure exactly what mechanism causes these late season melons to ripen, but it was missing! There are a few patches of ripe melons in the field, but most are still green and enlarging. some are HUGE! Our biggest melon so far weighed in at 16 1/2 lbs! Thats larger than many of the watermelons!

Common Question, why do we grow so many melons and sell so few?

Answer: The physiology of pigs works much like humans. The single best way to "fatten" a pig is with sugar, just like in humans. Fructose to be exact. In nature, the fructose in fall harvested fruit causes the buildup of fat for the longer winter months. We mimic that cycle by growing and feeding a high percentage of fructose laden produce (watermelons, crenshaw melons, etc) combined with the regular feed (often pumpkins and greens this time of year) to produce the absolute best pork imaginable! Well marbled, plenty of healthy lard, and a noticeably clean sweet meat flavor.

So, the harvest has begun. If we end up with more melons than necessary, we will offer a few for sale through our online store.

A crenshaw melon... lots of juicy sweet flesh and small seeds. Very efficient for storage of winter sugars.. not to mention TASTY!

This is a mostly ripe melon, they turn from green to yellow/orange as they ripen, and become a bit soft and VERY aromatic. This is a bit larger than average size for this melon.

This year's price winner... It was not vine ripened, but I picked it to make sure the wild turkeys didnt destroy this one. It weighs in at a whopping 16 1/2 lbs!

First crenshaws in storage, next to the remaining watermelons and some pumpkins. We will need more room soon!

Cauliflower in place of watermelon

Today we finished planting the cauliflower patch where the watermelons used to be.  This section took about 6 hours start to finish, to convert from growing watermelons to freshly planted cauliflower.

This is a new approach to the drip irrigation setup. The header pipes were spaced wide, for watermelon vines, by using the spacer pipes between each spigot pipe. To convert to narrow spacing was a simple process of unscrewing the spacer pipes and screwing on the spigot pipes. This took the area quickly from 6 wide row to 11 narrow rows.  But the Crenshaw melons are not ready to come out, so this narrow spaced section simple screwed right into the existing wide melon header in place. No changes required to the rest of the setup. I am pleased with the flexibility and ease of change with this drip irrigation system we are developing.

So.. as of today we have 11 rows of 70 yards each, with two types of heirloom cauliflower.

Here is the new patch... right next to the crenshaw melons in the background. 

You can see where the narrow spaced cauliflower  row header connects into the wide spaces melon header.  as easy as screwing two pipes together! 

Imagine this filled with cauliflower plants, half purple, half white.. ready for the slow  winter growth.

Winter Beets are in the ground - Milker area is resting - and we MADE lots of Dirt!

We managed to convert the milker barn area into a winter beet garden this week.  27 rows of about 25 yards each, planted with heirloom beets that grow to about 5 lbs each over the winter.

This also gives the ground behind the barn, where the milkers have lived for a couple years, a well deserved rest. There wont be any goats on this ground or in those barn stalls for at least 6 months. That rest, combined with the tilling and cleaning, will prevent a parasite overload that could come after constant use through multiple winters.

This ground, I must say, is absolutely AWESOME! I mean.. this plot is like intensive grazing on steroids! Taking measurements, the goats have produced an impressive 1 to 2 feet of .. dirt. Fresh, organic, fertile dirt.  yes, made.  that's the beautiful thing about mixing plants and animals the way nature intended... the animals consume the plants, and in turn make the best dirt possible, for even more plants to grow. It's a marvelous synergy that life on earth is based on.  This dirt looks just like what comes out of bags of premium top soil, rich, moist, plenty of variety and biological material. When I first tilled it, there were literally millions of earthworms.. the surface of the ground was .. moving, with a life of its own.

This is a great combinations, as the fertility of this soil is higher than any in the ground we manage, which means the later than desired planting date should be helped through fast growth in this soil.  At the same time, the ground can recover from intensive animal use, produce winter feed thats organic, heirloom, and so nutrient dense.

The other good news is, our drip planting system is paying off well. The conversion from goat stall to planted stand alone garden took about 8 hours.  Just clear, till, build headers to size (just screw together), drop seeds with our Hoss seeder, install water controller, and walk away.

The area is laid out as 3 sections of 9 rows, about 25 yards long. We left enough space for a road on the end to the right, and a run on the end by the barn.

You can see the controller, filter, and feed mounted to an old table. There are 3 controllers on the timer (one per section). 

First Pumpkin Harvest! - a Prize Winner

We pulled in the first picking of the "cinderella pumpkins"...  the heirloom variety that looks  like carriage wheels if you hold them on end. They are quite a bit sweeter than the normal field pumpkins, and really dense without the hollow center, but don't store as well do to their thin soft skins.


We found the prize winner for the year, and a close runner up! The biggest one weighed in at 39.5 lbs, and the runner up at 29 lbs. Not bad !

Hunter and Kaelyn are quite proud of this one!

The official water melon harvest has begun

It's time! Time to pull in those deliciously juicy watermelons that have been growing for a while.

There are two varieties growing this year, a pink flesh heirloom and a white flesh heirloom. the pink flesh one has a hardy rind, good for transport and storage. But the white flesh one, not so much. In fact, these are so fragile that just thumping them in the traditional "is it ripe" test will cause them to burst. But oh so yummy! Because of this, we have decided to leave the white flesh on in the garden, and feed daily the ones that burst (besides what we steal for ourself) but the pink flesh one we are harvesting and storing in the walk in cooler (the back end of the farm kitchen / fermenting room / cheese cave).

 So far.. a rough estimate is about 120 melons harvested, averaging 15 lbs each, for a total of 1800 lbs of watermelons. That accounts for about 3/4 of the total harvest expected of the pink flesh heirloom. These pigs never had it so good!

If you would like to purchase a organically grown, vine ripened, heirloom watermelon of either variety, please contact us. We may not put these in the online store, but will sell them for about $1 per lb if you care to come pick up at the farm. There are all sizes from 1lb to 25 lbs.

The watermelon patch before harvest... the blank spot in the middle is our initial test harvest (yum!)

This is a good example of the pink flesh heirloom variety, this one is about 20 lbs

These striped ones are the white flesh heirloom, smaller and much more delicate but no less tasty

Kaelyn's favorite... its a pink flesh but as heirlooms go, there is a lot of variety. This gem has beautiful markings!

The harvest so far... about 30% left to pull in when time permits. This end of the kitchen stays around 70 degrees year round, perfect for melon storing. 

Test 3 of dehydrating zucchini

Today we finished the third round of dehydrating the zucchini for animal feed. So far is going beautifully!

We are adjusting the recipe by including various fresh greens with the zucchini. Available is kale, chard, dandelion greens, and arugula.

First we did a mix of about 75% zucchini and the rest a blend of chard and dandelion. The mix cane out beautiful, but the chard didn't work well in the chipper. Kept plugging the exit screen from the soft fibers. The dandelions worked OK though! We only harvested the plants that had talk hard stalks, so they chipped up much like twigs.

Then we did a batch of about 50% zucchini and the rest dandelion, arugula, and kale. Unfortunately the kale plugged the screen almost as bad chard. The heavy green mix made a very different final product, more like balls of fiber. Hopefully it will dry ok.

All in all, the 75%mix seems the best. But... Let's wait a few days and see how it dries.

This is the setup, I had to block the exit flap open to get enough flow. You can see the 50/50 harvest ready to chip on both sides of the machine.


This is a look at the 75/25 mix.


This is the 50/50 mix right out of the chipper. Notice the heavy fibers dominating.


A close-up of the 50/50 mix shows mostly balls of fiber with pockets of zucchini chips.


And here it is on the tray ready for sunshine

Dehydrating at Scale

We started working on our feed dehydrating operation today. The garden is producing more veggies than we need on a daily basis, so now it is time to start storing for the winter.  Plus, we need to start our annual pear harvest again, where we hope to grab about 10,000 lbs of pears this year.

why dehydrating?   Several reasons:

1. It is fairly quick and cheap if the sun is the power source
2. It can scale easily
3. It preserves sugar (where fermenting converts sugar into acid)
4. It separates juice from bulk, so both can be utilized

The overall plan is simple... the extra produce goes into our chipper/shredder to pulverize it and separate the liquid juices from the bulk.  the juice is captured and stored in buckets to freeze. The bulk is placed on drying racks for a few days and then bagged for storage.

Today we built an initial drying rack to test the design. The cost per rack with this method is around $12 for a 4' x 8' rack covered in standard fiberglass window screen.  2x2 and 1x2 pine form the frame to make it sturdy but light.

Here are some closeup pics of version 1:

The finished screen, version 1. 

Closeup of the design

Standard 45 corner braces

I cut a slot to accommodate the standard spline to hold window screen. this might need to be reinforced.

Here it is in the garden, on blocks and ready for use!

The Chipper / Shredder is a large PTO driven model with a wide screen. I would like an even wider screen to make larger chunks, but too expensive to warrant buying one. Some adjustment of the exit door should make things flow nicely.

We placed the chipper / shredder into a kiddie pool, so that the juice is caught and can be easily removed to store in buckets separately. When we do pears, there will be a LOT of juice.

the produce is slipped into the branch chute, not he brush entry at the top. This makes larger chunks with less shredding.

The finished working setup, a tarp underneath keeps the dead grass down and out of the way.

And here is the finished product.. a tray full of dripping pulp and chunks, drying in the sun.