Wood Chips!

Fall is upon us and the days have been gorgeous! Though harvesting is done, I've left the Roma tomatoes growing and am using the (slowly) ripening tomatoes as chicken feed.  Other than canning some applesause, we've pretty much wrapped up the harvest and that's fine with me.  The shelves are full and I'm tired. =) 

Caesar soaking up some sun

(notice his closed eyes)

We seem to have an overachiever in our flock- her eggs have been so big lately that I can't even shut the carton.

Yep, the biggest one was a double yolker!

A while back, I shared about the Back to Eden film that shares the idea of growing food in wood chips and therefore not needing to turn the soil (or as I call it "fight the rototiller as it runs along the surface of the hard packed KY earth known as my garden). 

  This past year, I trucked in mulch whenever the city of Lexington was giving it away (TOMORROW is another give-away day) but that only gave me about an inch or two once I covered the whole garden.  My weeds were WAY less because of the mulch and I watered much less, even with the drought.  I've been contacting different sources for free wood chips, but didn't have any luck until I came home on Tuesday and saw a large truck with grinder attachment sitting behind my house.  They were trimming trees around the power lines and were happy to dump their load wherever I wanted it.  So I just opened the garden gate and they backed up and dumped it right on the garden.  

So much easier than unloading a truck with a shovel!

Load #1

The chickens were a bit intimidated by the pile at first

But soon overcame their fears and began getting to work

this is our ADHD hen who got distracted by the camera and came in for a closer look

climbing Mt. Wood Chips

"I'm king of the hill"

and Ms. Curious decided to hop in my wheelbarrow, just to make sure she wasn't missing out on anything.  She didn't stay for a ride though.

Another day...another load of wood chips!

Seriously, what am I going to do with all these wood chips!?!?!

Oh yeah...put the kids to work.

Once again I enlisted the neighbor kids-might as well put them to work, right? 

Well, I need to go spread some more wood chips around the garden.  Can't wait to see how things grow next year!