Did we mention that it all starts with the chickens? FIRST thing anybody who's really serious about backyard microfarming ought to do is build a coop. They produce first-rate eggs, and even better COMPOST. We'll be eating some good sweet corn this summer, and first-rate salsa all year long, because these ladies poop gold.

What most folks see... a year ago, you couldn't even have seen this much. The entire house from the door leftward was hidden by yaupon so thick a squirrel would have had trouble navigating it. The snow fence (probably a Texas term, but I've never looked up the etymology) is actually a blackberry fence, but since we just planted the blackberries, they obviously haven't taken it over yet.

It's hard to get an angle that shows all I really want it to show... you can't see, for example, the far southwest corner of our yard, which is the only part in the 100 year floodplain, where we've move a bunch of sand from our nascent catfish pond (which you can also just barely make out, as it doesn't have water in it yet, nor the windmill which will power the aerator/pump)... and the grapevines haven't started growing yet, so you just can't see them.... which is why we'd like this set of photos to be thought of as "Before". Wait 'til you see "After"! Big Myrtle herself won't know what to make of it!

Happenings in February....

Okay, so, this is Texas, which means that we've either already had our last freeze, or else we're a month away from having our last freeze.

Makes planting something of a mystery.

Anyway, we've put tons and tons of compost (or at least wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows of it) on our 10 raised beds; we've mulched the blackberries, which are beginning to sprout, and we've got plans to buy a cistern for rainwater collection.

And... we started a blog.

More pictures to come soon. I want y'all to be impressed, but without getting the wrong idea. We're amateurs. Ambitious amateurs, but amateurs nonetheless.