Goat Milk Soap

We planted a garden this year. We chose and area that has full sun all day. This area was never a garden before so it took a little bit of work to get it ready.  But all the hard work paid off.  

First we mapped out an area, the size we thought would be big enough to suport our family's needs for vegtables.  It is the biggest garden we have ever had. Then we had to take out all the grass.  Boy what a job that was.  We don't have a tractor on the farm yet.  So we purchased a small tiller and went at it.  My poor husband worked hard for many hours, but he got it done.  

Next we wanted a fence around it.  A few reasons why. One, we plan on having an organic garden.  To do that we will keep animals in it during the off season to compost.  Also we would like to keep animals out of it during the growing season.  We have free range chickens and they would love to eat our crop, before we get to, if we let them. It is better to keep them out until the end of the year when we want them in the garden to clean up and fertilize it for us.  

The fence we decided to make it as natural as we can.  We used timber we cut down for some pigs padducks as the posts and cross bars.  That saves a lot of money and looks great.  We purchased chicken wire from an auction to go inside to keep animals in or out.  It came out wonderful.  We just love it.

Before we planted any of our crops we housed our goats, pigs, and chickens in the area for a few weeks.  They composted, tilled and fertilized the garden soil for us.  It worked out perfect.

For a first year garden the crops were wonderful.  

At the end of the season, we put our pigs into the area and let them finish up the vegtables that we did not pick.  They also ate the stems and tilled it all up, getting it ready for the fall.  It all works out great!