Backyard Farmgals

  You all know that Spring is the time for pruning fruit trees.  We have 17 apple trees on the microfarm, plus an apricot and cherry.  We also have a pear and another apple at the house.  All of these trees means far too many things to prune and take to the green waste at the dump.  I could take 5 or 6 trailer loads of just tree prunings to the the green waste each Spring.  That's a lot of time, energy, and money in gas and entrance fees to the dump.  We devised a way to reduce our waste that really benefits us on the farm. As the trees are pruned, we sort through the piles of branches.  (We had someone really terrible prune our trees and we are now paying for it with overgrowth on the trees, so when I say piles of branches, I mean PILES.  Lesson to be learned: take a class or two and learn to do it yourself, it isn't very hard.)  The watershoots are the vertical straight growth from the previous year that doesn't produce fru...

Pole beans.  I love them, and they love to be off the ground.  I have devised a very quick and easy way to keep them up, it was also really cost effective for us since we had PILES of bamboo laying around that my grandpa saved for us for years.  Even though he is gone, he is still contributing to my madness!!!  I think that he would love that we FINALLY used the bamboo.  I had Woodman cut the bamboo to 2-foot lengths and then I cross-hatched them to make a short teepee kind of shape for them to climb.  It looks so pretty.  Sometimes I catch myself staring at the farm, it is really gorgeous and I wonder how I ever had anything to do with it. Next year I have plans...marvelous plans...involving bamboo and pole beans!!!  But I can't tell you now, it would ruin the surprise. The beans are loving it.  They have wrapped their sweet little vines around the bamboo and are climbing away.  I am hoping to have beautiful long beans in the next fe...