Winter Layers For My Garden

Compost right over the soil.

I discovered a natural way to nourish our garden soil and keeps the weeds down. In this post, I will share how I did it.

 Our soil is hard clay and for 5 years we have mixed in llama manure and rototilled it in. I came across this method of putting layers of materials over the top of the soil like you would a compost pile. This process will invite beneficial microbes, bacteria and earthworms. It will also keep most of the weeds from growing. 

Autumn is now in full force. The nights are in the 20's. The orb weaver cat spiders, which came to visit us this year, transitioned in the cold leaving their beautiful webs behind. The grasses in the pasture have begun to brown, and the leaves that fell from Grandmother Apple Tree were mulched and placed in a pile by the corn field to use later in the garden. 

The garden was dismantled, cleared, and ready for a nourishing mask of green manure, kitchen scraps, hay, and fallen leaves. Husband went out and collected cardboard boxes for the project. You can also use newspaper ( no colored ink or shiny surfaces) discarded toilet paper rolls, shredded junk mail ( no colored inks or shiny surfaces) We had everything else we needed like kitchen scraps, tea bags, hay, llama manure, dead leaves, and hay or straw.

Here is how we laid the layers in the garden.

      1. Removed any tape from the boxes and cut them to lie flat. 

       2. Water the soil first then lay down the cardboard. I let them overlap about 6" so the weeds cannot come through.

      3. Water over the cardboard.

      4. Put down green manure on the cardboard. We used fresh llama manure and kitchen scraps. 

       5. Water over the manure.

      6. Scatter dead leaves and hay or straw over the manure. 

      7.Water over the leaves

You can repeat these layers if you want to. Water each layer.  

The snows will come and in the spring the ice will melt into this nourishing mask and it will be ready for planting and seeding. 
The cardboard will be easy to penetrate for planting or roots to grow through. If the cardboard is still firm, then I cut a hole or x’s in the cardboard to plant.

I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I felt close to Mother Nature. I am also doing the layer technique in our garden boxes. I will lay down what is left from the plants in the boxes and begin to layer over that. 

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Until next time, 

Garden as though you will live forever.

                                                         ~ William Kent

DeborahMoonMoen
Little Utah Farm

Duck Teeth

Do ducks have teeth? Lolli at Little Utah Farm

Do ducks have teeth? I set out to find the answer. I Googled duck teeth. In this post I will tell you my findings and show you a good illustration of the duck bill. 

I went out back with my camera to get a good photo for this post.

trying different places and techniques to capture an image of these "duck teeth".

Winona is the most energetic of the flock.
Little Utah Farm.

I bent down on one knee on the lawn. This made the ducks very curious so that they hung around wondering what I was doing. Winona, our hen ( we call her Red for short) kept looking into my camera lens.

Ducky hears something. Little Utah Farm

At one point the ducks heard a peculiar noise out by the barn.  Ducky stepped forward and stretched way up high to see what she could see. I was surprised to see how tall she was. Daisey, Ducky, and Lolli usually swing their necks low to the ground to gain momentum as they waddle from one place to the other.

I realized my camera was too high to get under their bills for a good look. I bent down lower and tilted my camera up.  

Just then a plane went overhead. The ducks tilted their heads with one eye looking up to the sky. Voila! Click* I got the perfect photograph of the "duck teeth". 

They are not exactly teeth but serrated fringe on the edge of the beak. This makes it easy to sieve the water on out and keep the tasty stuff inside. The only things that compares, they say, is how a Blue Whale feeds in the ocean. It is quite an advanced filtering system. 

Check out these chompers. 

 Look at those serrated sieving edges on these Buff Orpington females on Little Utah Farm.

This morning it was 22 degrees. I put warm water over their feed and had a big bucket of fresh water nearby. They love water.  The sieving process is very splashy and noisy. Listen to these 3 girls sieve. Watch the video below and turn up the volume. It is 52 seconds.

Deborah Moon Moen of Litte Utah Farm

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Until next time, please check out our Facebook Page and our store on Zazzle. 

And remember..

Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel. Things are gonna be just fine if you only will.
~James Taylor.