In the pervious couple years when we have had our Straw Bale Garden we have used soaker hoses. Soaker hoses do not have a long life span and degrade within a year or two if in the direct sun due to the UV radiation. We decided to upgrade our garden to a poly tube irrigation with drippers. This video demonstrates my son and I putting in all the poly tube and connectors then putting in 2 GPH drippers every 12". This will allow us to manage exactly how much water the bales are receiving as well as turn off the system when it is raining. Make gardening and farming fun!

We are excited to be setting up our 3rd annual Straw Bale Garden. We have been very excited with how it works for the past two years and are doing it again. This video is a quick demonstration of setting up the garden. This is based off of Joel Karsten's book on Straw Bale Gardens. I am also a certified Straw Bale Garden Instructor, you can visit my profile on the Straw Bale Garden website HERE. In Part 1 I will be setting up the cardboard as an underlayment that serves as a weed block and ten the bales. Part 2 will show setting up the rest of the cardboard, spreading out the straw and getting the bales all ready for the growing season. Enjoy!

In our last blog titled, Worm Hotel Vermicomposting... Composting with Worms I gave several reasons why a gardener would want to have a vermicomposter. The bucket style, or as I call, the 'Worm Hotel' is perfect for the typical backyard gardener that is wanting to create worm castings and make compost tea for their garden.

In this video we take it a whole other level by converting a 55 gallon barrel into a worm trough. I decided this was a better route for a few reasons, 1) this year we plan to really develop our farm. We live on an acre and are only using a small portion of it so far. We could really use a lot more worm compost tea and casting. 2) as we scale up and build out our farm we will begin doing a lot more tours, demonstrations, and classes. With those events happening we will be able to sell worm castings, Worm Hotels,  and compost tea kits.

​To learn more about the power of vermicomposting read this blog.

Some gardeners and farmers know all about vermicomposting yet I still come across many you have never heard of vermicomposting or the incredible benefits of what worm casting and worm compost tea is or can do. Here are a few reasons why you should start a vermicomposting Worm Hotel:

• It’s GREEN. Reduce the amount of waste you are sending to the landfill by instead sending your table scraps to the worm hotel.
• It’s FAST. Waste is converted into compost in days instead of months. If you have a traditional compost bin use this as your breeder to grow more worms to add to your composter.
• It’s ODORLESS. As long as you follow the directions the system is designed to be incredibly aerobic, this means it has lots of air, is very healthy, and smells earthy. Many of our customers keep their worm hotel indoors under a sink or in a closet.
• It’s MULTI-USE. The benefits do not just end at composting. 1) You are able to harvest out the castings to amend to your garden soil as an amazing fertilizer, or 2) even brew it into what the University of Arizona considers one of the best fertilizers on the planet known as ‘compost tea’. Five gallons of this concoction is powerful enough to spread over an entire acre... yet gentle enough to pour on a single plant without ANY fertilizer burn. 3) Use this to grow more worms to add to all your potted plants and garden soil. This is your very own WORM FACTORY & FERTILIZER FACTORY.
• It’s INEXPENSIVE. For the cost of a bottle or two of organic fertilizer you have already paid for the Starter Worm Hotel. Then for the cost of a few lattes, you are purchasing high-rise real estate to allow you to self-harvest the castings as you convert your Hotel into a Worm Tower.
• It’s FUN! Now you can brag to all your friends, “I got worms!” Your kids will love them, they can take them to school for show & tell, and much more. ​

We recently had part of an aquaponics system donated to the farm and we wanted to show you its current state. We will do update videos as time goes on and as the system evolves into an abundant food system! 

We also are highlighting some baby chicks that Mrs. Black hatched out and some new bunnies that are a cross between a Rex doe and a Californian buck. Enjoy!

Mayfield Family Farm
North Dallas Area - Denton, TX
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We recently lost a chicken that was like a pet. She was an amazing chicken and would follow us around. We figured either a hawk or coyote got her. I had built a few snares a couple weeks earlier and decided to place them around our property where animals could get in. We ended up trapping a coyote within lees than a week.

HERE is the video that taught me how to make this snare.

This post essentially is a SYSTEMS PRINCIPLE. The power of 'systems thinking' is very rewarding when you see the potential to leverage their outputs. I want to show one particular system with zero or almost zero input that has the potential to create a incredibly sustainable constant resource and income.

The power of 'systems' is a foundational element to our farm. It is through constant focus to systems that we can deliver on our goals of sustainagility, self-reliance, and community. This video and blog shows one particular system. In essence here it is:

1. Rain water lands on our property and moves across the slope and is captured into swales to redirect water and to hold water for plants (FREE - ZERO INPUT).
2. Greywater from laundry is exited from our home and directed to the swales and a specific grow area (FREE - ZERO INPUT).
3. Comfrey plants are grown around the greywater and swales to grow without any water from our well (ONE TIME COST - ENORMOUS OUTPUT).

This system is powerful! The rainwater is a free resource that we can control and take advantage of. By managing its direction on our property we can control it to our needs before running off our property or returning to the water table.

While it is not raining we are always washing our clothes. We use all-natural organic soap nuts/soap berries (I will do a separate post on these in the coming future) and will also look into making our own soaps someday. While this water would normally be sent to the sewer or in our case our septic we can redirect it to be an input instead of a waste byproduct.

Comfrey is a one-time purchase, its a pretty plant and can even be used in an Agriscaping method of a elegant edible plant in normal landscaping. We can propagate it through root cuttings and create 1,000's of plants from the 8 plants we currently have. The comfrey could almost completely replace ALL feed for our rabbits, goats, pig, and chickens. The goats can also free-range to pick up any other needs they have in their diet. Chickens can still free range to get bugs and other plants, rabbits could also be fed random vegetation and scraps. We will still use our Fodder System, and with those two we can essentially feed all our animals. Without the Fodder System we can be 100% self-reliant. With the Fodder System we only need barley seed as an input. This means once we have enough Comfrey to fulfill the needs of our animals a $12 bag of barley per month and other on-property inputs creates enough feed for dozens of rabbits, a dozen or two chickens, 2-3 adult goats and their kids, and a pig or two. Their outputs is not only serviceable in way of compost, meat, eggs, milk, and fun for our family... it also adds another layer.

When you add the second layer of profit through selling and/or trading meat rabbits, eggs, chickens, goat milk, young goats, etc. this immediately moves into the profit portion of micro-farming/homesteading.

We only posted our Rabbit Dome Garden Spring 2016 Update video and blog a couple weeks ago, but already had this video filmed, just a little admin error. However, in just the couple weeks from filming this video the vines have exploded even more. Visit that post to read more detailed explanation of the plants in this garden space. Funny enough only a couple days ago I was managing some of the Malabar Spinach Vines and notice another vine growing that I quickly identified as a Chinese Long Bean. I picked a few beans and they tasted great. The funny thing is our Straw Bale Garden is a good 100' away and we grew this bean there last year but do not believe we could have gotten any seeds to this bed. We are stumped to it's origins but have never seen it on our property till this year. I may give a brief update on this plant growing on the dome in our next updated video but I also included a couple pictures below. Until then check out our newest video, we are very excited for its growth and know that the vines are covering 60% MORE of the wire mesh than in this video in just two weeks! Insane!!

I know it is two weeks into summer and this is a Spring update, sometimes things get overlooked, like uploading videos and blog posts. Well here is an update of some of the plants that are growing and some newer plants that we are adding. Watch the video to see the updates and read below for some great information on the plant selections.

We have three types of plants that we have planted. Comfrey, Salsa Jasmine, and Malabar Spinach. There are also a couple varieties of native vines that have popped up along the garden bed that we are allowing to grow on the dome as well. I highly encourage you to consider growing Malabar Spinach and Comfrey in your garden, homestead, farm, or general landscaping! Below is a little more information on each.

Malabar Spinach - We have about a dozen Red-stemmed Malabar Spinach plants growing. We grew these all from seeds. I used 1-2 seeds per jiffy pod and had a 100% sprout and growth rate. Malabar Spinach is not a true spinach variety. This is from Wikipedia, 'Basella alba is a fast-growing, soft-stemmed vine, reaching 10 metres (33 ft) in length. Its thick, semi-succulent, heart-shaped leaves have a mild flavour and mucilaginous texture. The stem of the cultivar Basella alba 'Rubra' is reddish-purple. Typical of leaf vegetables, Malabar spinach is high in vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium. It is low in calories by volume, but high in protein per calorie. The succulent mucilage is a particularly rich source of soluble fiber. Among many other possibilities, Malabar spinach may be used to thicken soups or stir-fries with garlic and chili peppers.'

Comfrey - We have 5 Comfrey plants growing. One is a 3-4 year old plant, two are 1-2 year old plants, and two are root cuttings. Our goal is to use root cuttings over the next few years to propagate a hundred or two hundred of these plants throughout our farm. As you read the brief description below you will see why we can not have enough of these plants on our farm.
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The information below was taken directly from Coe's Comfrey website.