Grand Island Acres

Archive for March, 2016

The plan this year is to add bees and chickens to the operation.  I posted pictures of the bee hives earlier and we have bees coming mid April.  It is time to start working on the Chicken Coop.  We bought plans for a 4 x 8 shed from http://www.icreateables.com You can see those plans here.  They were really helpful and sent me a couple of pages from an alternate version of this shed so I could see how to add a second door.  This will all make more sense when you see the pictures of the final product.  Kathy and I went window shopping at my Dad’s house.  Okay we went to his house and dug through his shed for windows we thought we could make work in the coop.  We found 2 windows, one for each of the 8′ sides of the shed.  Will and Lee helped me build the foundation and Will helped me conceptualize the walls I was modifying from the original plans.   Here are pictures of the project in process.  I will keep adding pictures to the gallery and I hope they will update automatically.   Maybe next year we will be able to offer eggs with the CSA![Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”4″ gal_title=”Chicken Coop”]

The weather has been so wonderful the last few weeks.  Today we were reminded that it is still March.  The high was about 40 and the winds blew and gusted all day.  We even had a few snow flurries.  I had hoped to maybe plant some early spring things today but decided against it.  My Dad, Richard brought over a load of leaves and grass clippings that we put on the horseradish and around the apple trees.  I visited Menards and Home Depot trying to price and find chicken coop solutions.  I did not get any decisions made.

The biggest accomplishements were taking down about 200 feet of 4 strand barbed wire fence including removing the poles and building our 3 bin composter from freecycled pallets. One of our CSA customers is moving and needed to get rid of a bunch of pallets.  Seven of them fit on end in my short box Ford F150 between the toolbox and the tail gate.  Luckily I only needed 7.  I also was able to till some ground that we will use for wild flowers near the bee yard.

Here are some pictures of the pallet compost bin system.  We hope to get the compost moved in there tomorrow.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”3″ gal_title=”Pallet Compost Bin”]

It is March 1 and GI Acres has sold 5 of the 10 shares available.  I think it is actually 6 but until the forms are filled out I’m not counting our sales.  If you are interested in our CSA check out the CSA Member Agreement. You can sign up for the CSA by clicking on the link HERE! We plan to start plants soon.

Seed trays waiting for seeds and soil