Our
Garden - Chicken House Foundation
Summer 2009
The
building was impressive, over four hundred fifty feet long and 32
feet wide with a clear span. The chicken house was built for egg
laying with three rows of four cages each running the length of the
building. The cages hung over dirt pits, between concrete sidewalks,
that would catch the litter for scooping out the far end of the
building. It was even more impressive when full-up with 35,000
chickens.
After being obsolete for several years, our vision was to convert
the first hundred feet or so of the building into our barn. The rest
of the structure was salvaged and scrapped leaving the foundation,
the four walkways and the open dirt pits.
At
the open garden end, each of the three pits measured about seven
feet across and about three hundred feet long. A plus is that there
is a very gentle slope which was engineered to aid in the flow of
the chicken sh#@ down hill. Our idea was to put a garden in these
pits. This slope has allowed us to water from the high end of the
garden row and the water gently flows down the slope and seeps in.
This way the water goes directly to the soil at the roots of the
plants.
We
bought a green John Deere farm tractor. We also found a PTO tiller
implement that the tractor drives for turning the soil. The tractor
and the implement are six feet wide and just happen to fit nicely
into the chicken litter pits.
This is our first year for the vegetable garden so we went with the
basics; tomatoes, okra, corn, beans, squash, melons and of course
pumpkins. After leaving the pits open for over a year, we wondered
if the soil was sterile or had too much litter residue and how a
garden would grow, if at all. Well, the weeds seemed to like the
open area. They thrived!
We knew that our challenges were many. We live in Atlanta and the
garden is near Madison, sixty miles away. If the weather did not
cooperate we would be in for a disaster due to no rain, our efforts
would just dry up. Another concern was the continuous march of the
weeds borne on the wind. We saw how they absolutely took over the
open pits last year. Another is the always present wildlife like
deer, birds, squirrels, rats and other varmints want to graze on a
free meal. One-by-one we tackled these obstacles and ended up with a
somewhat self maintaining garden space that is fun to visit on the
weekends.
The pastures around the old chicken house has been fenced with
electrified wire for our Black Angus. We found that we only needed
to provide a temporary fence extension across one end to keep out
the big grazers, our unwanted friends, the deer.
Weeds and water conservation were addressed by landscape fabric that
we found from an agricultural supply company. This fabric came in
rolls three hundred feet long and six feet wide, just wide enough
for the pits. The fabric was advertised to let the moisture and
nutrients through and keep the weed seeds from growing through the
fabric. We had our doubts when we first rolled the material out. The
black absorbed the suns and heated the surface up very fast. We cut
small holes in the fabric and planted the tomatoes and peppers into
the soil. We just knew that the heat from the black fabric would
cook the plants dead. We spread straw out on top of the fabric to
help reflect some of the sun. The black seems to have had just the
opposite effect. The heat kept the soil warm and the plants
flourished. The fabric also seems to hold in some of the moisture.
An added benefit is that that the fruit from the plants does not
come in contact with the ground and is kept clean and mostly bug
free.
We
have also tamed the Black Angus cattle. As the yellow squash gets
too big, or the tomatoes split and start to spoil we send them over
the fence to the cows. They absolutely love them. When the first
batch of sweet corn had grown out we cut the stalks down and fed
them to the cows. When we arrive on Saturday morning we are greeted
by the bellows of the Angus. Moo!
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