I am very happy for you as well Marcus. An opportune time to get more self sufficient. Grow bags, containers and raised beds are the way to go anyway. You still have plenty of time to grow beans, Cukes and squash and of course fall crops like kale, chard, broccoli, cabbage. I just put some corn in the ground today. The only thing you are lacking is time with that long commute. I hope your wife likes to garden. For all the reasons you mentioned, chickens are a no go here but I’d look at that set-up Don Mannes has with those quail.
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I would like to do quail as well, from what i have read they grow to maturity very quick for harvesting. I have not dug as deep as i want yet, but from what i have read per pound the fastest growing meat crop with the least input and least feed cost was rabbits, thats why i went for them first. Eggs are primary for chickens i will eat eggs daily if i have them, not a huge fan of chicken meat myself i prefer game birds ducks grouse pheasant chukar quail dove those are good eating to me. The veggies will be my biggest problem with the poor soil, but i know with time ill get that figured as well. Im very happy to have acess to garden this piece from the timber company
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Congratulations Marcus! That was always my dream to have a place like that in the woods.
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Can’t wait to see your oven build if you end up doing it, Wood fired pizza is addictive because it is so fast and simple to make. I have a chinese version of the Ooni oven at home, and a real Acunto from Naples at my work. The Ooni knockoff is much more efficient combustion & quick to get up to temperature, probably uses more wood tho because it has zero insulation. On my long to do list for this summer is building a larger, improved version of my oven with insulation.
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Marcus,
Congratulations on your beginning of the American Dream.
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I was born and raised in Kansas and we used to go quail hunting all the time. They are very tasty indeed, and you won’t have to be spitting out lead shot as you eat them if you raise them.
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Am I looking at any deciduous trees in the picture? You are going to want to immediately start looking for tree trimming company to drop off loads of shredded limbs and branches. Make a composting toilet and get your boys to use it. Wives are a harder sell. Never waste urine by flushing it. a great source of nitrogen and other trace minerals. I will post the set up I use for bin composting. You should be constantly building compost. If you have any access to animal manure get it. Do not be afraid to use human waste.
When your compost passes 140F it will kill any pathogens. I’m sure you have a million things to do but making compost should be way up the list. First water, then food. The shit is hitting the fan. Try and steer it into a compost pile.
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Ha! Speaking of lead . . .
on out own bought very much as-is place I’ve been finally digging out piles off overgrown stuff:
I’d thought that I’d found another pile of decorative bricks, pavers, or foundry liners refractory bricks . . .
No. Lead ingot bars. And a couple of wads of lead sheeting. Heavy.
And Marcus, we work every weekend scrounging wheelbarrows of raised bed planter fill base.
First layers:
Then old mill site rotted with dirt scrounge:
From now up until halfway, better scrounged about dirt:
As I told you; no need for you younger folks to go above 17" high raised beds. Deep enough for vegetable plants.
Yeah. That sticky gooey clay just has to be experienced to believe. Photo’s do not say it well enough. Pounds stuck onto shoes, boots, shovels says it. Then go dry and rock hard.
Steve Unruh
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Already have a compost pile going, really another big reason for the rabbits is i am told that bunny berries sell for top dollar to gardeners. I want that asset for my own garden
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Allright Marcus! Im real happy for you. And you are on the right track!
JO gave you a wery good advice. If you are not 100% sure of something its way better to leave it till you are. Nothing worse thain chainging /repairing things after your self…
You have done your homework. Rabbits are the cheapest to raise and wery healthy. Usefull gor fur too! And the manure ofcorse.
What kind of a soil do you have? Or shuld l say why do you think its poor?
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The best compost for remediation of clay soils along with normal organic matter in PNW is tofu by product, relatively cheap/free too… it stinks and you will smell it for awhile, but produces the best results I have ever seen has to do with whatever microbes it attracts. As far as composting toilets IMO anaerobic digestion & collecting gases is better, but that’s like a whole different topic and one even more niche than woodgas. this is really interesting vid not feasible as shown for most people, however I do think the heat is usable on a smaller scale & doesn’t need to be 40 ft wood pile to be useful, purports to be more efficient to compost wood in this system than to burn: Jean Pain Biomeiler English/German - YouTube
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It is clay, according to Marcus. I think the best you can get. A little hard to work on, no water goes in and if dry it is rock, but full of good stuff. My wife says its bad…. We are both no experts. Who is?
Fruit and potatoes do best on clay?
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If his clay is anything like my red clay it’s probably mineral rich but a nightmare to work and like you said, resistant to hydration.
I think composting and broad forking to aerate are in his future if he doesn’t just go with raised beds.
It took me about 2 years of wood chip layering to get my plot to start looking like soil.
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Clay, loam, red soil… there is also such soil in our area. In some places, there is a layer of black soil on the surface, which is much more fertile, I spread such soil over the fields, which mixed with the red soil and now the plants are growing beautifully.
The black color is said to have been given to the earth by charcoal, which is produced during the decomposition of organic substances without the presence of oxygen
, humus quality measurements are performed by measuring the proportion of charcoal per unit of soil. Marcus, if you drive your V10 daily, you will have good quality black soil to work with
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Base layer of hugelkultur like SteveU is doing in his raised beds is the way to go, especially for that nasty clay. He is, by the way, using what may be the Cadillac of raised beds. 32" Extra Tall 9 In 1 Modular Raised Garden Bed Kit | Vego Garden.
The original article on the Jean Pain system the SamS posted about is still available on Mother Earth News archives. That and the Wood Gas articles from around the same time period had a big impact on my life.
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Thats why l asked. Clay can be a blessing. I farmed on sand before, thats a headake…
But it needs time and effort, sure. I got a video somewhere, where the excavator sliced my garden soil perfectly vertical (for our house fundation) on the top is this fertile black/brown layr, fertile and soft. Maybee 8" below is pure silver clay, you could literaly make pottery out of it right there. Dead and useless in the garden. The secret in this case is just organic matter, mulch in this case. From years of leaves falling down on this abandoned, brush overgrown plot. Like Tone sayd, it slowly turns to carbon.
Similar story on the other feald. I had to real deep plow it to get the stumps out, this turned out this pure, yellow clay. Nothing wuld grow there, it took me 3 years of covercrop incorporation to get the soil alive.
Since on the matter. I found compost and manure are good short term soil amendments but for longterm soil improvement they are too volitile. They dissapear within a year. Leaf mulch has shown to be best at this, it is slow to decompose and this is whats geting that carbon in the clay, give it good structure. Covercrops are good too but l wuld vote for leaves on a small area.
Second thing is rototill and plow minimaly. Once air gets introduced to the carbon in the soil, it starts to oxidise and get away. Plus a load of other negative impacts, and frankly, its unnessesery hard work for man and machine. Once a good soil structure is achived l find it easyest to just go over the feald with a rottotiller with a minimal depth seting, about an inch. This gets out most weeds, leaves the roots to rot and make air/water chanels in the soil, and a good disturbed space to put seeds in.
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Congratulations!! It sounds like a great place!
I would look at biochar. A lor of animals will eat it. It helps clean up their digestive tract. chickens do, and i heard it helps keep the smell down. I bet Rabbits do as well. Then you don’t have to grind or crush it, and it is innoculated already, and chicken like to dust bathe in ash as it helps prevent fleas.
@don_mannes raises a bunch of quail. I would ping his thread if you have questions, he doesn’t claim to be an expert but he does have a few years of experience and seems to have spent plenty of time looking up information. 
Don’t throw food leftovers out in the compost pile. It attracts too many critters. You are in sasquatch territory. I would look at black soldier flies that eat pretty much anything organic or worms then feed those to the chickens. You can make bone meal putting bones in the instapot for a couple of hours then it softens so you can grind it. If you can recycle, then you might only have a couple of bags a month of trash and it won’t be the smelly leaking stuff that you would want the more expensive weekly trash pickup for.
I would also poke around the lumber company. They may tell you were they are cutting to get tops, or have scraps available.
I am sure you have already thought about most of this.
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Excellant descriptions and solutions KristijanL.
Marcus’s problem is a bit diffnert in that he will main garden on a plot that he has no ownership title to.
So Why I’d say to only do the expensive to set up compact raised beds only on his own house plot.
Your build-up area-way on his “borrowed” plot for a bulk crop like potatoes or corn.
You spotted us alright TomH. Only we went with 10-in-1’s as longer at 9 1/2 foot capable.
I think the Birdies brand out of Australia of corrugated metals raised beds are equal quality.
Old at plus/minus 70 year we do not want to be stooped or bent down onto ground level anymore. Years stretching now to stay above ground (joke). So these are our Golden Years $'s splurge. Equals a couple of ship cruises my two sister love to do now. At that, getting 1-2 at a time when only on discount sale.
Two more to assemble now. One hour assembly is B.S. Takes me 2.5 hours even with opposing cordless tools. Or maybe it is just my now gone stiff fingers, eh. 72 nuts, screws and loose washers sets!
“Life is good if you do not weaken.” Not a physical thing. Mental. Determination. Will-Power.
(Ha! Learned to assemble in the back of the pickup truck bed so’s I can find the screws, nuts and washer dropages. Thoughtful Vego does gives one set of extras.)
S.U.
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it is yellow clay hard as a coffin nail with scatteted fist size rock through out. The garden patch down the hill is the only easily tillable soil within probably 1000’ of my place, down in the valley floor there is good topsoil, years ago washed down mountain sides ash from volcano eruptions. Everything valley floor up a slight rain makes for a slip and slide greased lightning. Also near the crick seems the clay has eroded away and left clay colored rock, i will get some pictures tonight
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You are right till very shallow.
I suspect the difference you see is the leaves have the mycorrhizal fungi and other bacteria in them. You want soil that has air exchange but tilling deep is like dropping a nuclear bomb on the microbial equivalent of NYC. Then the soil settles and compacts without all the holes the worms and roots made which were the highways used for gas exchange and water penetration, and it goes anaerobic. The anaerobic bacteria lock up nitrogen and other nutrients so they are not available to the plants. The fungus of course, attaches to the plant root system and 20x the surface area of the root system.
There is a video in the other section that shows how to make the compost tea to help reintroduce them or boost the population. Since it is just a bacterial growth medium, substitution with what is easily and cheaply available is the valid option.
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