Homestead Garden | Part 1 - Intro

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options go to TimberKing.com. We've got some fun interesting things coming up and you may see a little bit of that in the screen behind me. But today I want to introduce something that's going to be our big spring slash summer project and it is over there. It's easier to show you on the computer. So let's go inside and I'll show you on the computer. This is the project for this spring and summer and that is a garden. A 150 foot by 30 foot garden with an attached 20 foot by 30 foot chicken run area. And there's a few things on here that's not set in stone just yet. But let me walk you through the idea behind all of this stuff. So if I go to a top-down view all the brown you see is essentially wood chips and available for future expansion. This is a kind of a big garden for us and I'm not sure what we're gonna what she's gonna plant in it and how crazy we're gonna go from the very beginning. Is she gonna just do a little section at first and then build off and on to that? I don't know where she's gonna plant everything. I don't know but this is Jamie's dream and we're gonna make it happen. So on the front side we have basically a main path that walks all the way through it. And over here on the left side I just threw some random plants in there. Those are tomato plants and lettuce plants in between. I'm not sure what she's gonna do but she can have many rows. And by the way each one of these grids is a five foot grid. So that's 15 feet from the fence to this walkway. And quite a few rows. Down here I just got strawberry rows. And she does want two tunnels to grow into. So one of them is going to be cucumbers if I'm not mistaken. And the other one she wants to try and make some luffas. So we'll have two cattle pen tunnels. And then on the north side, the taller stuff, definitely want to do some blueberry bushes. And I don't know which side she's gonna do. I don't know the specifics on what's going where. But blueberry bushes and enough rows for two viney type plants. These rectangles are raised garden beds. And the two purple ones are the raised bed that we made this past year. We made it, I think it was 36 inches tall. And then the sheet of plywood four foot by eight foot. But we used solid wood off the sawmill to make it. And we never did anything with it. Things just kind of, the timing just wasn't right. So I think I'm going to slice it right down the middle all the way around and make two planter beds out of it. Or two raised beds out of it. And we're going to compare those to four metal raised beds. It's obvious that the metal is going to last longer. Galvanized metal versus untreated pine. But it's going to be a fun, fun learning experience regardless. I'm not sure what she's going to plant in all of these. I know one of them is going to be full of carrots. I know one of them is going to be full of onions. I know one of them is going to be full of potatoes. And I don't know and I don't know and I don't know. The gate system, we don't want a big tractor gate anywhere. Because this is also going to have to be closed in tight enough to number one, keep the dogs out. And number two, allow the chickens to forage in there in the cool season when this is not being used as a garden. So the chickens have access in their run and then they can come into this area and and play around or whatever chickens do. Little mini velociraptors. They'll have access to this. So I don't want a huge tractor gate. And to be honest with you, I don't know what I would use a tractor for on the inside of here. Everyone's telling me to put a gate in there for a tractor. But what for? Like what am I going to use a tractor for in here? Jamie's kind of a no till kind of kind of a person. And we did turn over the dirt to get started. And she wants to do a lot of she wants to stay in the organic slash no till zone once she gets established. But we understand that to get established, we have to break through this muddy, not muddy, this this really hard clay dirt and turn it into soil. So we did turn it over once. And we will probably till the entire thing. But after that, I don't see a need to get the tractor in there. I just don't. And neither does she. So I don't think we're going to make a big gate for a tractor. Although we may just make a regular regular gate that is just wide enough for a tractor for future proofing. But I still don't see the need for a track for the tractor to be able to go in here. Because if she needs material dumped in there, I can go to any one of these sides and just dump it over the side and she can move it where she wants to. No big deal. We also have on the other side of the chicken run three stations for compost. So we're going to move our compost station right next to here. And the thinking is all of the clippings or anything that she pulls out of the garden just gets tossed into the chicken run. Chickens just pulverize it and the material on the chicken run floor will eventually build up plus the droppings or the chicken poo from the chicken coop. All that's going to accumulate and you just simply shovel that over the fence into run number or run number one into compost area number one. And then it just continues the cycle from one two and three. There's another gate over here. There's no need for a gate on this end. Am I missing anything? I don't know. We're going to plant two plum trees in here. That's going to be for long-term shade for the chickens but also if they produce fruit all that stuff's just going to drop into the chicken coop or chicken run and they can have at it. So there's that. Things that are not set in stone like we're going to have a work table for Jamie but is it going to be there? Is it going to be here? Is it going to be? I don't know where but she needs some type of workstation so that's not set in stone. Are these going to be here or are they going to be something like this? I don't know but that's open for negotiation. Is the chicken coop going to be right there? I have no idea. I kind of like it right there because it's it's more protected and then you just walk into the garden to to collect the eggs. The initial plan which was to have it right there and that's where the initial plan was that we just walk up and get the eggs whenever. However, I do like the idea from a predator perspective of having you know a greater distance to actually find the chickens. So I'm leaning towards that being the area. I'm not exactly sure. The only access into the chicken run is in from the garden so that's that's beneficial. The chicken run obviously has to have a little bit better fencing. We're going to do like a cattle fencing all the way around to keep our dogs out. I'm not really worried about like bunnies getting in or anything like that. Our dogs patrol this clearing where this is at 24-7 so I mean good luck little buddies. That's all I'm saying with that. Let's see what else. So a chicken, I'm sorry cattle pen all cattle fencing all the way around and then we're going to come back and increase the security all the way around this maybe with some hardware cloth. I believe that's what we got in our spreadsheet. So the chicken area is going to be going to be guarded just a little bit more. I'm not sure if four foot high is high enough in the chicken area but we know two people who let their chickens free range all day long and then just put them up at night and that doesn't seem to be an issue. So they don't have any fencing at all. So four foot fencing for us I guess it's a good place to start. I would really really really really like to do the wood just the way it is all the way around. We would have to purchase pressure treated posts to go all the way through here. I'm not opposed to that if it makes sense financially speaking because we do want it to look nice. This is one of the first things that we are going to try and put an even emphasis on the way it looks versus the how the way it performs and functions. Previous to this has basically always been it has to function number one and looks are number two. But this is going to be something long term that we're going to keep building upon and getting it better and better and better. So maybe we do the whole thing in wood. I would really like to but if it doesn't make sense financially then we'll do the main posts like every 50 feet we'll do a post and of course the corner H brace posts and then we'll do T posts in between and a lot less wood. However I think this looks way better with a bunch of wood rather than just T posts and you know cattle fencing. We will purchase the pressure treated wood that goes in the ground and then all of the above grade wood I'm just going to use probably inch and a half thick pine off the sawmill untreated and just throw it up there. It should last a lot longer when it's not on ground contact than what people typically think especially if it's not exposed to ground contact like I said and you know it's going to be in full sun and breezy conditions. So I don't know where I was going with that. I was about to say something else but I went blank. So there's that. Yeah this is our next big project. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of work. Also another reason for not having a you know huge tractor gate is you know I don't want to make that huge gate chicken proof or whatever if they are foraging in here but also I might have something up my sleeves to be able to dump a bucket through a narrow space we'll say. So there's that. Anyway this is our new project that we're starting on. As a matter of fact I'm recording this out of order. We've already started on some of it and you'll see that in the next video. My goodness I love Sketchup. If you're not familiar with Sketchup this is a software program called Google Sketchup and you can build just about anything in it and see the way it looks before you actually break ground or make sawdust. Sketchup is fantastic. All right talk to you in the next one.