Spirit Level Farmstead LLC

11/20/2018

Ha! This is the truth this time of year.

09/03/2018

Fresh eat the best, dehydrate the rest!

08/05/2018

Speckled Sussex. Enjoys: peeping, running from other birds, and chicken reenactments of The Battle of Hastings.

07/24/2018

Never been hiking here, but after reading this blog we want to!

A rare desert environment in southwest Wisconsin includes native cactus

07/23/2018

Tame the goldenrod in the little prairie and reap big rewards!

05/09/2018

Garden observations from Megan: I've used a flame w**der for a couple of years now with a propane tank and torch attachment and I love it. It's rigged up to fit into a hiking backpack frame, so it's on my back.)

Things have gotten even better now that I've switched over to straw mulching my entire garden, paths, rows and all. Now when it rains, I don't have to worry about compaction because I have permanent straw paths to walk on. I w**d with the flame w**der when it drizzles and I don't light my straw on fire. (Important!) So far this is the best method I've tried. I don't need a dry garden to w**d, only to plant. It helps make rainy days even more productive. When my plants get big I'll have to keep the flame w**ding to the paths and start to hand pull in the rows, but with the straw mulch that should be minimal. I'll hand w**d or heap more straw on.

I anticipate every year will bring less viable w**d seeds that reach the light. I won't be tilling, so I won't restart the war with those w**ds year after year with their inexhaustible seed bank. Add to that, permanent help from fungus and beneficial soil bacteria that I'm not exposing by tilling. You know those guys in Fraggle Rock called Doozers? They build and build and the Fraggles keep eating their roads and stuff? Fungus and bacteria are the Doozers! I don't want to keep wrecking their hard work like a Fraggle would. There's a lot to like about Fraggles, but Doozer distain I can't get behind. ANYWAY, I do use a tool called a broad fork that's a giant fork you step on and can loosen the soil in big chunks, but isn't like putting it in a blender.

The garden space we're talking about is about 75' x 90,' and I think as a one woman operator, I could manage double that.

I'm sure other folks have their own great ways of doing things! This is saving me enough labor that I thought it was worth mentioning. Oh, and P.S. It's not like I invented this, either. Plenty of people do this, I'm sure.

You got stuff that works for you? I wanna' hear about it.

04/27/2018

The winter slow down, when art projects are possible, is over. Now our attention is pulled in different directions as spring and summer speed up our lives. Growing things is all we can think of now! Soon enough we will harvest and rest again.

04/21/2018

Hard hard work and good good times. Looks like you could have both here:

Before you get excited, please be aware that access is this property's major downfall. It's what you might call Extremely Private. You'll have to cross half a mile of off-road terrain between the parking area and core homestead and the creek floods past its banks a few times a year.That said, for th...

04/19/2018

We won't be the purveyors of fine heritage pork this 2018 season. The two of us will be focusing on how to integrate our new 20 acres into the scope of what we do here. Creating pasture and focusing on water retention are our main goals. We were sick of flood events and now we can work on solving some upstream problems! Anyhoo, many thanks to our customers and we'll keep you updated on the whats and the whens!

04/12/2018

Painted a barn quilt. We are calling it the garage blanket because it is small and we don't have a barn!