The Grandmother Apple Trees

We are big believers in deep mulch with all manner or organic material, we rake up leaves in the fall when the deciduous oaks and maple trees have dropped all their foliage and pile them on thick at the base of the grapes, the stinging nettle bed and the comfrey row. It's not that these plants needs this form of organic matter to do well, it's simply that they are the closet crop to where the leaves fall. Raking them over to these beds makes more sense then raking them up and utilizing them in a row or bed further away. Deep mulch is a big help in keeping weeds down, which makes it that much easier to keep 'no till' beds and rows. Mostly we use straw for our deep mulch, and it's usually infused with animal manure. The coops, barns and hutches all have a 2"-4" thick layer of straw in them. Goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits leave their waste in the straw which we clean out as needed, piling the manure infused straw in fields and under trees until it's needed. Straw by itself improves soil, encourages worms to migrate to the soil and supports mycorrhizae, which you can read about here . Add an animals manure, urine and hair to the straw and you have a powerhouse of weed suppressing nutrient source that will add to the soil and the plant growth of whatever you've planted in that bed. The manure infused straw that we have in abundance every month of the year comes from the rabbit hutches. which you can read about here . The rabbit hutches are cleaned out every couple of days, while the goat barn is cleaned out every 4-6 weeks. Rabbits and goats produce a 'cold manure' meaning it doesn't need to compost before you can utilize it, so any manure infused straw coming from their barns and hutches can be used any day of any week. The chickens, ducks and quail all produce a 'hot' manure that does require composting before using it. When their coops are cleaned out, all the manure infused straw goes to a specific compost pile to compost down before being added to the soil as a fertilizer. Most of the deep mulching is done in the fall just before or after the rains start, that's when the weeds and grasses start to grow back after the long, hot and dry summer months. Depending on how much rain we get in the winter, we may mulch a second time in December or January, and then the final mulching usually happens in the early spring when things warm up. The mulch we put down in the fall month has settled and is well on its way to being broken down, when the day time temperatures start to warm up in March and April, many of the grasses and weeds are once again shooting up past the older mulch. Another thick layer of manure infused straw is added to the row to continue to suppress the weed growth, as well as add to the overall health of the soil. Another thing we do is to utilize our heavy, brown paper feed sacks. There isn't a bit of unwanted material on the feed sacks we buy, it's all earth friendly brown paper with a bit of cotton string that holds the bags closed. To help with weed suppression we'll lay the feed sacks down over the weed and grass growth before piling the manure infused straw on top. The brown paper attracts worms, supports mycorrhizae, does a great job at suppressing weeds and will decompose to add to the soil. We have found over the years that the easiest way to keep the soil healthy, with the minimal amount of work and expense, is to keep livestock that produce wanted food for our consumption as well as manure for our fields and garden. The best way we've found to utilize that manure is to collect it in straw the animals have lived on and use that straw as a mulch.

We use everything we can from the animals we butcher out of respect for the life of that animal, every butchering is a zero waste event for us. It’s a simple task to catch blood from a small animal that is hanging, like poultry in a killing cone, or a stunned rabbit by its feet, so I never pass up the opportunity to catch the blood in a bucket and use it. I occasionally catch it for culinary use , making blood sausage or blood pasta, but most often I catch it in a bucket, dilute it with water to keep it fluid and use it when watering leafy greens in the garden. In this case it was rabbits that were butchered, and I caught the blood in a 5 gallon bucket and diluted it with water, about a 50/50 ratio. From there the diluted blood goes through a strainer to strain out fur and blood clots so it can be used in one of our EZ Flow Fertigators without clogging it. The EZ Flow is hooked up to a garden hose which further dilutes it and doses the plants we choose to use it on. Adding it to the crops in that manner dilutes the strong smell of blood which can attract unwanted nocturnal predators to the farm. The NPK of blood is 12-0-0, which is the highest percentage of organic nitrogen there is, and it's full of micro-nutrients, especially iron. Using it to feed plants that you want spectacular leafy green growth on kale, collards, lettuce etc. is a great way to utilize this resource which is at your disposal if you're someone who does backyard butchering. You can also do a strong dilution of 75% water to 25% blood ratio in a 5 gallon bucket and add it directly to your compost pile. If you want to amp it up even more, adding more nutrients to mix, you can add some rabbit manure to the bucket and/or comfrey leaves, let the bucket sit for 72 hours, stirring it daily, then strain out the solids before using it in the garden. Making blood meal for the garden In the spring and summer it’s easy to use fresh, diluted blood in a the EZ Flow , but in winter time there’s no need for it in the garden, so I dehydrate it and store it for use when spring rolls around. I use a plastic sheet that came with my Excalibur dehydrator to dry the blood on, and once it’s dried I run it through my blender to powder it, then jar it up and store it until we’re ready to use it. When the warmer weather starts, we add the blood meal to the EZ Flow with X amount of water and it's good to go. Zero waste with every butchering.

I really value bones, they are the base for all of our homemade stocks and broths. We use a lot of stock here, for soups, stews, to cook grains in, to add to ground meats in small quantities for more flavor, etc. I save all the bones from everything we bake or pan fry. When we're done with the meal and only the bones remain, I put them in a container or plastic bag and pop them in the freezer for future use. Sometimes I collect enough of these bones to make a pot of stock out of them, but most often I add them to fresh bones I'm cooking into stock after butchering poultry. When I'm parting out ducks and/or chickens I usually have a good pile of backs/feet/necks and those all go into a stock pot. I don't care that I'm mixing bones from chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, quail etc in one pot, when the stock is done I simply label is 'Barnyard Stock' which lets me know it's a blend of flavors. My pantry has single animal stocks and my blended animal stock so I get to choose what I want to use at any given time. Once the stock is made and all the solids from the pot (bones, herbs, veggies) have been strained out, I toss all the bones into the fire to become ash which will eventually make it's way to the compost pile. I often feed raw bones to my dogs, but never cooked bones. Cooked bones can splinter when the dogs are eating them and cause them issues when they swallow them. I'm not prone to cooking bones long enough for them to literally fall apart, which is possible to do, and since I don't do that the bones need to be disposed of in a way that won't harm my dogs or attract predators. Around here, any bones that go into the compost pile without being burned first, attract unwanted predators from the forest that borders our homestead on two sides. Utilizing a winter wood burning stove to burn the bones solves the issue.