Hi Folks !

[thundercloud]

I finally decided to become a member. My wife is a member also and had been trying to talk me in to signing on for some time.

I retired early from work due to being disabled. I grew up on a small farm in Southeast Missouri. I've been away from work about 2 1/2 years.

I have a small garden on a somewhat large lot in a small town on the Missouri River in the central area of the state. Some folks say I have a large garden but I disagree. On the farm we had a main garden that was at least an acre. Dad liked his potatoes so sometimes we had as many as three potato patches. To top it off sometimes dad would put in a truck patch or two. There were also times where he would plant pumpkins in with the corn. Some years he would have good luck with the pumpkins sometimes not. I got away from gardening and farming in my early 20's when I moved away from home.

I am not an expert at gardening or farming. I will try to keep my posts as accurate as possible. I like listening to other peoples experiences. I like to experiment and I like to learn. My only complaint about gardening is that my disability prevents me from getting work done. I refuse to give up totally and just sit watching TV all day.

thundercloud

[homesteadingnky]

Welcome,

Good for you that you haven't given up and just sit down. *I have some disability issues myself that really restrict what I want to do. *But I do what I can and am adapting my style of gardening to suit what I can do. *For example, instead of the compost bins I did have that require heavy turning and lifting 2-3 times a week, I'm now using worm bins and letting the worms do all of the work for me and the end result is better. *

Glad to have you and hope you share your experience and knowledge with us and if there's anything you need to know, there's a really good chance that someone here knows so ask away.

Take care and enjoy the site,
Homesteading Dad

[thundercloud]

Good to meet you homestead. If I come up with or run across anything that I think will be useful for folks who are slightly disabled I'll be happy to share it.

I can think of one thing already. I've developed a liking for a lot of the Fiskars products. They have some pruners that you do not have to put a lot of muscle behind to work. People who are not disabled like them too because my neighbors are always wanting to borrow them.

I've never tried composting with worms. I've considered it but when I was working I never really had the time for it. Do you purchase yours or do you just let them come to your compost naturally?

[homesteadingnky]

Currently I have worm bins made from plastic totes. If you're interested I can tell you more about how I set them up. When we move I intend to set up the worm bins underneath my rabbit cages and let the convert the rabbit droppings into worm castings. I started with some worms I purchased at the bait shop nearby. Not the way I would recommend to start because it is expensive for what you get. You can order them online to be shipped to you and get a lot more worms for less money. Or you can dig them from an old compost bin site or aged manure pile (lots of work)! I needed to go easy and as cheap as I could so I bought what they said was 4 dozen but found that each dozen had closer to 30 worms in them. This let me try it without the fear of killing a bunch of worms if I messed up. The worms are thriving and multiplying rather quickly. It's been a cool project and next spring I'll have some great compost to put on the garden.

I've been wanting to get some fiskars garden tools. haven't had the extra funds to spend on them yet though.

[HockeyFan]

It's always good to have an extra person here that can exchange information.

[thundercloud]

Yes I would like to hear how you set them up homestead.

Around here we have those big nightcrawlers. I'm about 1/2 mile away from the Missouri River the house sits on a hill a short ways up from the river bottom. Sometimes when the river floods you can find thousands of them just at the edge of the water trying to escape the flood. In 1993 people would go along with buckets and pick them up in hopes of using them for bait. The fishing was actually terrible that year so a lot of them went to waste. Now that I think about it I have not seen near as many of them since. Before 93 I would see at least two or three on top of the ground when I would go out to mow.

thundercloud