Update on the Garden

Here are some pictures I have been hording of the garden.  It's been growing like crazy over the last few months, mainly because it gets watered twice a day.  However, over the last week or so, we have been getting rain every day.  That in itself doesn't say much, except out here 6 inches of rain a year is a lot.  Just one reason I miss the wet south.  

This is the first egg I found out there.  I'm so proud of my chickens and my ability to not kill them.  I have five hens that I got from the feed store before Easter and I am getting one good size egg every afternoon now.  I am hoping to get more chickens this fall, move them to a larger coop and give the eggs I don't need to my neighbor that has dairy goats.

Don't remember planting sunflowers in my garden.  But they are really taking off.  I am hoping to plant many more next spring and build a press to extract the oil.  This would come in handy post-SHTF for fried chicken.  I don't know what is growing behind the sunflower, but the neighbor mentioned that some of it is oats.  My problem is that I didn't compost the droppings and debris off the bottom of the goat barn before I planted my garden.  I just tilled and tilled and watered it until I got a nice layer of mush.  The soil here is very alkaline and sand, so nothing grows out here except greasewood and a few desert grasses.  Tilling in the hay and poop helped the soil, but allowed for whatever grains the goats didn't digest to sprout.  Not that I am complaining, just an observation. Next year will have a better composting program on site to fix this problem. 

Inside the small chicken coop.  It's about 4 feet deep and well used.  You can see the egg in the background. I had to get a garden rake to reach in to get the darn egg.  I have nesting boxes, but the girls like to watch me suffer.  I'm hoping to have a much bigger coop for them real soon and I might take out this coop.  Beautiful Wife hates that the coop is "attached" to the house, but c'est la vie, she gets used to it.  Keeps me outside so she can have some "her time" away from me.