I moved to Rockdale, Texas in February 2008, and I guess you could say I didn't waste much time turning the place into a homestead where I could raise my own food. Of course, I had some great help: I was truly blessed to find Robert Brown and David Svreck of AM Customs. These darling guys not only built my hog pen and chicken coop with superior workmanship, but they shared a wealth of country wisdom as well. Such great guys. I love them like sons.

David

Robert

Are they cute, or what?

So, I have populated my hog pen with piggies -- one feeder pig to raise to market weight (she goes in the deep freeze) -- one pig for having my own litter of piggies next spring, and the other piggie to keep her company. Pigs like compansionship of their own kind, just like all mammals. Since I am running a humane operation, this is an important consideration.

I haven't moved my chicks to the coop yet, but I will surely be glad when I can! I put the chicks in a bin under a heat lamp on my screened back porch, but they GREW so fast that they outgrew the bin! It's perfectly ridiculous, but they've got the run of the back porch while I paint the coop and let them grow just a little bit more. Living in the country means you have to coexist with other critters, many of which you'd just rather not. This includes "chicken snakes" which will eat a small bird if they can get at it. My coop is designed to let the flock out during the day and to lock them in when they roost at night for protection against predators. I chose Rhode Island Reds because they are good layers and good broilers. Chickens are filthy with micro-organisms, so I'll have a major disinfecting job to do when I get them moved off the porch!

We surely do have a lot of red-heads here at Townsend's Ranch! There's moi (don't be mean . . . I know what you're thinking!), then Honey and Winks, the chickens, and the pigs, as well (they are red Durocs).

Timing-wise, it was a serrendipitous find when I ran across a book called Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. You can google this; it's all over the Internet. Without this method, I would never have been able to get a garden going in time for the season. It's a Q&D surefire method for as close to a work-free garden as you can get. It's just what it sounds like: You lay down a layer of sodden newspaper (or cardboard, whatever), then begin to just layer peat moss, humus, peat, compost, peat, barn waste, peat, humus, peat and so forth until you have a bed about 12 inches high. Then, you throw the seeds in and keep it watered. I also added hundreds of earthworms I bought off the Internet: They till the soil right down through the newspaper and leave behind all those nutrient-rich castings. I have cucumbers and squash blossoming, corn flowering also, and tomato plants that are thriving but growing awfully slowly (I'm worried about them fruiting just as we reach our peak heat of the summer). There's spinach, carrots, and some other stuff (Surprise me! I was so exhausted the day I planted that I actually can't remember what everything is!). My big goal for my first year was to get a crop of tomatos and can my own marinara. We'll have to wait and see . . . I'll keep y'all posted!

Oh, and thanks go to my pal Regina Anderson, a friend I made through BEHS, who actually knows what she's doing when it comes to all this stuff. She's my answer woman! We single gals gotta stick together!