Monday we had rallied friends and family to help us out with the no-dig garden beds and wood chips. It turned out to be a beautiful day with 27 degrees (c) and a light breeze.
This is what the garden looked like after Brock and his dad had rototilled it the day before. We realized we had to, the soil was packed and hard like cement - no way we could have been able to rake it.
Here is me and Jordan ready to get started! I was supposed to be the supervisor for the day but it didnt take me long before I was in the garden with a rake in hand. 30 weeks pregnant and chronic pain only slows me down the days after the work is done. A friend of mine and her daughters stopped by and help with the beds as well as Brocks brother in law Eric (he is the only reason our beds are somewhat straight lines! ).
While we were making the trenches Brock and Jordan filled up the truck with wood chips and brought it back. They filled the trenches and put it on top of the straw in the food forest part. The bags to the left are the seed potatos Brock got for us.
We put the majority of wood chips in the garden part since we wanted that one in order first. The no dig garden will be used this season while what we do in the food forest is preparation for next year. We will plant some stuff in there since there is a layer of good soil from years of dead leaves and branches etc, but it wont be our main focus.
Waiting for more wood chips. Eric suggested we use something to get the beds and trenches straight and I remember seeing some old baseboard in the basement, so we found 4 that was really long and used them. It was a brilliant idea because the second bed was already starting to go off to the one side :P
Brocks dad rototilling the last of the garden. Eric digging. Brock with a wheelbarrow full of wood chips and Jordan trailing behind. Brocks mom was preparing venison burgers in the house and I mostly documented what was going on at this point. We started at 11.30, and this picture was taken 6:41 pm.
A happy discovery was that our asparagus had started to sprout!! (inbetween the weeds in the bottom of the picture)
Ground deer & moose mixed with some lean pork (so they would stick together). Super yummy!!
When we wrapped it up for the day we had 9 beds, roughly 2-3 feet wide. We will continue doing beds all the way to the other side of the garden. We didnt do the rows all the way to the lawn thinking we have a bed going the other way from asparagus patch to asparagus patch with tomatoes. The temperature today was chilly and it will drop to a low of 2 degrees celcius and the last frost date is may 15th so we still got a couple of days to get everything ready before its time to plant stuff. But yeah, thats what it looks like for now. Still lots more to do but we got a good start! :D