Regenerative Agriculture Archives - The Halfway Homestead

This comfrey wont quit! From a stub to massive leaves in weeks!

We thought all this comfrey was dead but it had no quit in it!

We have had mixed success with comfrey this past year due to poor planning of when we ordered, where we put it and the ducks who decided they loved it! Here is a quick video of where we are at this point with more detail of the mistakes we made below.

When we first ordered our comfrey from Marsh Creek Farmstead last spring we had massive expectations. We ordered the Bocking 14 cultivar of comfrey as it does not spread via seed. The only way to propagate it is to take cuttings from the root and plant them. This allows us to control exactly where it grows and get the most out if it. Planting root cuttings as small as one inch long will shoot off into another plant quickly and vigorously. So we took our root cuttings and dropped them pots and man did they take off! We quickly moved these into our mini orchard, putting 4 plants around each fruit tree.

The leaves got huge, some more than twelve inches in length extremely quickly. Then the first duck tried to eat one and decided it was delicious. Within a few days the ducks had eaten all of the comfrey down to the ground and they were tearing up the ground trying to get to the roots. We lost all of those plants sadly. So we went and ordered more cuttings and dropped them into pots again. This time we had over sixty cuttings to plant and learned a good use for coffee filters while we where at it.

These two photos show just how much growth can happen in a very short period of time. This massive burst happened over a mere fourteen days! We will probably chop this off near the base and give the leaves to the ducks this weekend. Then let these plants take off again until we can get them transplanted outside in the now fenced off mini orchard. You can find a playlist of videos about our comfrey exploits here.

Here is a couple of reasons you might want to add comfrey to your homestead. We know there is a lot more reasons but these are some of the most important to us.

Dynamic accumulator- Comfrey grabs many nutrients from the deep down in the soil and pulls them up to the surface. Among these are nitrogen, potassium and magnesium.
Chop and drop mulch/fertilizer- You can harvest the leaves of Bocking 14 many times a year by chopping them down near the base of the plant. Take those leaves and drop them anywhere you want to increase fertility in your soil. All those nutrients listed above are quickly made available at the top of the roots systems where you dropped it.
Fodder for your animals- All kinds of animals will eat comfrey, either fresh cut or dried slightly. Comfrey is very high in protein not to mention the other nutrients and minerals.
Medicinal uses- Comfrey can be made into a salve for healing cuts and abrasions.

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Deep Mulch and preparing next years garden

Turning old compacted clay and grass into future food using the deep mulch method.

This is what we started with. Basically clay soil with grass on it.

Last year we prepped an area 25×25 feet for our garden space. We were in a rush so we took some shortcuts and didn’t get the best results. This year we are taking a little more time and attempting to turn an area that is 130×90 feet into our fully enclosed garden and mini orchard area. The goal is to produce all the calories we can from this area for our family and those families that already purchase our delicious Duck eggs and broiler Chickens.

All we had here this past year was the two raised beds with the goat panel trellis.

So this year we have started with laying down cardboard directly over the grass, a step we skipped last year. Doing this smothers the grass, kills it off and leaves all the biomass and nutrients in the grass in the soil. This will then feed worms and the fungal layer helping to speed the process of turning clay into soil.

Another view showing the overlap of cardboard to completely block out the grass from getting any sunlight.

By skipping the cardboard last year we ended up with some grass growing up into our beds and we had to weed quite a bit. This year we should have very little of that to worry about. Some of you might have heard of this method of prepping an area, it is commonly known as the Deep Mulch Method. The basic idea is you never til the soil because doing so kills the fungal layer and compacts the soil over time. Instead you cover the soil with deep mulch and just add new wood mulch each year, you want to maintain 4-8 inches of mulch depending on your area. The layers should look something like this cardboard/compost/mulch. We do not have any compost ready this year as we were not here last year to get it going. So we will add compost when we plant in the spring. We do have plenty of leaf compost going from this fall. We will be adding some aged horse manure as well.

So this is how much we got done in one day. This was 5 truckloads of wood mulch and tons of cardboard. We got a long ways to go still.

We will be planting lots of perennials like asparagus and strawberries along with our annual gardens veggies. This area will also have about 20 fruit trees ranging from apples and peaches to paw paw and pears. So have you ever done anything like this before? Got any experience you want to share? Leave a comment below!

Frozen water and our attempt at a solution

Good afternoon everyone! So here we are in mid November and our nights are getting below freezing pretty regularly. This means that the ducks are waking up to frozen water! We clearly need to find a new solution.

One of our challenges is that we have two separate areas where we need to keep water from freezing. The daytime water which up until now has been kiddie pools which we dump and fill daily and the overnight water bowls. In this post we are attempting to solve the daytime water issue first.

We picked up a one hundred gallon Rubbermaid stock tank and the drain plug heater that works with it. Our problem was that given deep enough water the ducks will try to dive and swim down. The heater would then potentially burn them if they came in contact. We threw together this little wooden frame with some half inch hardware cloth to make a frame around the heater. This should protect their little flipper feet while still giving them some depth to bathe in.

The second issue was how do we get the ducks into a tub that is 30 inches off the ground? We have a hill that we placed the tank on and built up the void between the hill and the tank with cinder-block. We are going to back-fill the space with mulch to give them a easy path to walk on. Now we just got to train them to use it and see how it works! We are considering making some sort of cover for the whole tank with holes cut into it that will only allow their heads to fit in. This would eliminate the need to change the water daily as they wont be able to poop it up! We will have to see how they take to it and make adjustments as needed.

We will have another post about what we are doing for the overnight water bowls in their holding pen once it is complete! Have you had any experience solving frozen water for your poultry? Share your thoughts and hard learned lessons in the comments below!