06/23/2026
One of the great challenges to any form of farming is 🌧️ precipitation, or lack thereof. We are quite nearly out of the dry conditions and drought that have plagued our region since summer last year. While the regular rain waters our neighbor up the roads’ newly planted 🌱 vineyard, vastly improves fire safety and replenishes our aquifers, a lot of rain can be pretty tricky with livestock, particularly directly in front of their shelters and around fencing. As you can see, we have a ton of mud and compost. Farmer AJ works hard to scrape our pens into the large compost piles you sometimes see in photos. These are the same piles the Weims, the occasional bald eagle 🦅 (who isn’t terrible bright and likes dog toys), and the livestock like to stand on to get a better view. We use the compost to refresh our gardens and improve soil on our small permaculture farm. Before it hits the piles, it can be a real pain, so we bring in wood 🪵 chips to add to the compost and also to create a surface to drive on and for the livestock to have underfoot. They slowly churn chips in the soil as they walk on it with hooves and root around 🐽. Today the truck and tractor 🚜 also turned over some soil. We are excited to have plenty of rain, but less excited to occasionally get stuck in the mud. The pigs and cows will be pleased with the chips tonight.
