Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures in The Good Land is largely a fish out of water tale about how I eventually found my footing on a small farm in an Amish town. We are a mostly organic, somewhat self sufficient, sustainable farm in Ohio. There's action and adventure and I'll always tell you the truth about farming.


Monday, April 8, 2013

Hoopin' it up!

What a great weekend! I spent almost all day on Saturday hoopin' it up!  Since you know I'm not a sports fan I'll let you know that I'm talking about garden hoops - little row covers to protect the seed sprouts from frost. And chickens.

Baby goats - adorable yet very distracting.

I've been doing a lot of tilling the last several days, in between watching adorable little goats, of course. Since the soil was prepped I wanted to do some planting but I just can't keep up with our crazy spring. All last week I lived in fear of crushing frosts and freezes and this morning it's over 50*. Not knowing what is going to happen next week I decided to put up some quick garden hoops.

True to my Appalachia-American-cheap ways I didn't want to spend a lot of money. I found a terrific row cover from Johnny's Seeds - this is the one I have (I'll list it in my Amazon store also). Next I needed to support the row cover so I took a look around and remembered how great it was to use half-round sections of field fence last year.

Half rounds of field fence keep chickens out and provide a hoop for covering rows.

I cut the fence in the center of each square so that I had "long tails" on each end - then just shoved them into the ground. It was easy to line up and center the Agribon logo on the row cover over the fence hoops. Then I just unrolled the fabric cover. I found some weirdly cut small sections of hog panel for each end and those sealed off my hoop row.


Voila! Now my little seeds are safe from chickens and frost. This worked out so well - and was so easy - that I'm going to do a lot more of this little hoop row this week.

Happy Monday everyone - anyone else hoopin' it up?


6 comments:

David said...

So whatcha put under them there hoops? It looks good!

Rachel said...

I never thought about using row covers to prevent chicken thieving...hmmm....

Traci Sumner said...

I still have frost in the ground and snow on the ground with more snow expected later this week. I'm dreaming of seeds. If you can get in the garden, it's half under standing water, because the frost line hasn't broken, yet. Sigh.

But those darn baby goats are distracting. Our last doe, a newbie, went on Friday - good thing it was warm, because we kept looking and "is she, isn't she" - with the verdict swinging toward isn't. Well, Friday, she decided, yes I is, and had the cutest little girl - outside, all by herself.

Vera said...

Great idea for using up bits of fencing wire. Have loads of bits and pieces of the stuff sitting in our eventual fish pond, being kept out of sight because we didn't know where to put them....

Horst in Edmonton said...

Those little Goats are so sweet. Also love your Row Covers, makes me wish I had a big garden again.

Ohiofarmgirl said...

hey Dave! the usual suspects... early peas, radishes and the like. I didnt cover some peas that that bad chicken got them! grrr....

Rachel - so far so good! Our hennies are really diligent in finding the seeds so we have to be tricky.

Traci - SNOW!?!? But yay on the baby! Will there be more - do you have other does?

Thanks Vera - this is really working out - keeps the songbirds out of the seeds also. I have Cardinals that raid my seeds all the time.

Thanks Horst, Good to see you! those goat babies are getting cuter by the day.

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