Watermelon 4 Sale by the Truckload

The kids' little produce stand is doing pretty good, they're bringing in a bit of money every day.  I keep restocking for them.  I put a plug on FaceBook and they picked up a few customers from that.  Bill had a fellow come out for a truckload of melons and that gave me an idea:  I posted an ad on CraigsList and I have 5 customers coming out daily for a pickup load...I'm averaging about $30 a load (.50 a piece).  Not bad for melons that were going to be disked under.  This is something I have wanted to do for years, but I was always working or too busy with babies.  Next year I'll be better prepared and really do it up right.  The kids have been lucky, too, my customers have purchased pumpkins and butternut squash from them...win-win.

I've been diligently watering the transplants with the worm casting compost tea and they look pretty good.  I brew a 5 gallon batch every other day.  I'm going to pick up 2 more aquarium bubblers and do 15 gallons at a time.  Tessa has the Rubbermaid storage containers for me to build a worm bin of my own and I found a worm farmer that sells castings that still contain baby worms and worm eggs...I will be getting my *seed* from him.  I had to completely re-do the screen covers over the raspberries, strawberries and inter planted Brussels Sprouts and broccoli...I don't know if it's the chickens or the kids, but they keep getting knocked down and then the baby chickens eat all of the leaves and scratch out the roots...I had hoped the plants were big enough that the abuse wouldn't hurt them too much: I was wrong...they really have wrecked havoc.  So most of the watermelon money is going to fencing and housing for the chickens...I need to have more control over their come and goings.  I had thought a chicken tractor would work...but the run area is just too small.  So I will fence in the walnut orchard and let the free range in the late afternoon for about 2-3 hours while I'm working in the garden.  I'm also going to be purchasing a good pasture seed mix and put in three separate nice small pasture areas...one on the east side of the property...one on the west side and then another along the very back of the walnut orchard. 

I have solved my hay storage problem.  I found that all of our barns here at the home place are used to store equipment...when the kids were in 4-H and FFA we had 1/2 of the big barn for our animals...pigs, goats, chickens, 2 horses and over a hundred rabbits...it's a BIG barn...well that barn is now chuck-a-bucka full of harvesters and pallets of seed.  I priced new small livestock barns: YEEKS!  Well, the other day I went over to my mother-in-law's home to look for some canning jars in the shed and remembered there was a small barn behind the foreman's house across the field...sure enough plenty of room for hay and any animals I would want to keep there...good set-up.  The only problem is it's a mile from my house.  Well, I'm what they called a "big gal" and I could use a bit more exercise...so I'm going to pull out my bike get the tires fixed and start riding over there 2 times a day, build up my stamina BEFORE I invest in the goats and steer...I can go ahead and call for the hay and start setting up the barn.