Where we're at now

Welcome to

Mulberry Farm

Today is April 22, 2015 and we've come a long way since moving in. We haven't did a lot to the house yet besides tear out two small closets that were back to back an make one large one for the wife and me. New handicap toilets for the extra height that they provide. I'm getting a little older and it's not as easy to get up from the lower models of some toilets. Also tore out a cabinet on the washroom back porch to make room for the upright freezer. The back porch is totally enclosed with windows on the two exterior walls so it makes a great laundry room as well as doubling as a place for a storage pantry of all the canned goods that came with us and the ones that we'll do this year. The dogs Pam and Alpo also have their kennels there as well.
We installed a timer for the electric water heater

 so that it runs 8 hours a day instead of 24. According to the label on the heater it will cost $408.00 per year to run it. If i run it for 1/3 of the total hours it should save about $272.00 per year. The timer will pay for itself in a little over two months.
A few weeks after we moved in I talked with the foreman of the tree farm that is our neighboring property to the south, and asked him make up a few rows for a garden. Well I ended up with four rows about 48 inches wide and 144 feet long. Waaaay more than what I needed. Especially since I didn't have a tiller or any way to work the area. I went from no garden to one that covers over 2800 square feet. WAAAY more than what I needed. I've since purchased a 4 tine potato type fork and a friend gave me a Mantis gas tiller, LOL, but if you break up the row with the fork the tiny tiller works pretty good. How do you eat an elephant......

20 feet at a time

I've planted about 20 feet on three of the rows so far.

The same evening that the rows were made it rained 2 1/2 inches. If you ever need it to rain just invite me over to start a garden or a building project.
Having said that in the last month or so I've managed to plant a 4 foot by 4 foot block of sweet corn that's as many as 64 stalks of corn, I really need to hoe this area badly.

A 20 foot block of red potatoes,

 3 eggplants

I've learned that any more than 3 eggplants for my family of 3 leads to neighbors who close the door when they see you coming with more eggplant.

5 bell peppers 

Really the grass just looks bad, yea I know break out the hoe.

5 Gypsy peppers sort of like a yellow wax pepper,

15 hills of pole snap beans, you can never have too many green beans, these  are Kentucky Blue one of my favorites

7 okra, should be more than enough, I got to hoe these yesterday

3 hills of small pie type pumpkins, 5 hills of black diamond water melon, and a

15 foot row of sunflowers. 

I also have two bell peppers, 2 tomatoes one each Arkansas traveler and one Mortgage lifter and 2 bunches of green onions in the aquaponics set up.

The onions do very well in this setup the tomatoes and peppers are an experiment. I've grown mustard greens and cabbage in this as well. It was amazing that in the winter two years ago that the whole grow bed and about 4 inches on top of the water froze solid with no noticeable affect to the plants. We've only managed to use a small portion of the garden so far. In fact while I was mowing the day before yesterday I cut the grass on top of the rows so it wouldn't look so bad.
We will probably eat some of the corn but save the best for seed. I also hope to save seeds from everything else except the pepper plants. The peppers are not open pollinated types.