Hello from PEI

[Journey's End]

I finally decided to find a site that (hopefully) has some like minded people. I own a small hobby farm in western PEI. Trying to make it profitable, but not doing so well. My ultimate goal is to grow and raise 75% of my annual food supply. We're up to about 40-50% now.

[Chickenlady]

Hi and welcome, I hope you like it here, it is a small group and we are like minded, just need to post a little more ;-)

What are you growing and raising?

[Journey's End]

At the moment we have a large garden with staples to keep us through the winter. Peas, potatoes, turnips, broccoli. Anything that can be stored or frozen. We also have dairy goats, chickens and ducks. We're planning to get a beef heifer or two this coming spring, and a couple of weiner pigs. We have apples, plums and cherries, as well as different types of berries, and perennial herbs. Lots of variety, just not enough for 5 of us.

[Fowler]

Welcome JE. Love you here what you do for your gardens. Might help improve my own dismal efforts.

[Journey's End]

Poop. That's all. Everything grows well in poop lol. Horse and goat specifically.

[Chickenlady]

Yes goat poop is amazing...I till it in my own garden and always share generous with the neighborhood ;-)

[Fowler]

I will be using sheep. Planning on dumping the whole barn on a poor area that would then become a garden in a year or two.

[niglefritz]

We need a thread "All About Poop!"

We are going to finally put together a hugelkultur garden this fall. It may be the only way that we are going to have a real garden with all this water laying around. We lost a lot of land this year to standing water, and we don't have much land.

We are also planning a firepit/fruit tree area as well. Maybe we will make 2 of those hugelkultur gardens. I would like to try the food forest idea and see if it could be combined well with it, actually. We certainly have enough dead wood and manure of all sorts around here. The hardest part to do would be the actual building. We have all the materials readily available.

Journey's End, I think you are doing well. 50% there is nothing to sneeze at, and 75% is certainly attainable. It is a journey, for sure. The thing is to enjoy it as you pursue it, step by step. That is the ultimate, in my opinion. Having said that, I know that there are discouraging times, some worse than others, but that is part of the experience that we take to learn and grow.

Right now, we are trying to figure out how to do things better with our birds. Again, we lost most of our runner ducks (and thankfully nothing else) to a fox. They were super plentiful in our area this year. Really not fun. Ah, but one day we will get everything right, I hope.

We are currently building a new mini barn too...a milking station only. It was time that our old one was replaced...it was pretty wet in there this past summer.

Still working on moving on to a larger, drier place so that we can accomplish more, but until then...

[Journey's End]

The only suggestion I can say about foxes is get a good dog. Since we got our dog in 2009 we have not lost a single bird to wildlife. Other than what she killed trying to help that first year lol.

[niglefritz]

We have a good dog, but she is old and slowing down a little bit. She still tries and does well, but that fox seemed to come when she was off preoccupied with something else. We have only had problems with foxes in the last 2 years. There are many more around the area lately too than there used to be.

She could deal with anything without getting hurt herself...bears, coyote(s), mink, stray dogs, raccoons (once kept 3 in 2 trees for 3 days until DH shot them), etc...no problem. She guarded, herded (even the birds). She even caught a turkey of ours by the neck that got away one day. She held it there until we came to retrieve it. Lots of feathers flew, but not a puncture wound anywhere...no damage. Impressive.

We are working on getting a pup to help her out, and one that she can still help train when she is still here with us. It might have more whatever-it-is-that-is-needed to deal with a fox.

Thanks for the suggestion. You have an awesome dog. A good one is worth its weight in gold.

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