I FOUND STRAW! LOTS AND LOTS OF STRAW!

HOMESTEAD ADVICE

Be ready always to utilize and source local materials for your homestead. A lot of times, these can be had a really good prices and much cheaper than you will find at the stores. Check out your local Craigslist ads and your local printed paper for deals on compost, mulch, straw, hay, sawdust, rice hulls and anything else you can get for cheap. Straw like this will help TREMENDOUSLY to build up poor soil if that is what you are working with in your garden.

Last year I got a couple round bales of straw for the garden. It's great at protecting your soil from drying out and adds lots of nutrients to the ground for future gardens. Not to mention, mycelium fungus love straw and having mushrooms in your garden along with your plants means healthier plant roots.

But this year, the guy who was growing straw in my area didn't really have a good crop and had too many weeds in this straw as well. So I needed to find another source. You can find some amazing deals on Craigslist when it comes to stuff like this and so I kept my eyes peeled. Sure enough, I eventually found a posting of a warehouse full of new wheat straw about 2 hours away.

So I hopped in the truck and took the recently rebuilt trailer put together by Hive account@hansjurgen and set off to get some straw that I could use in the garden as well as other things!

The warehouse was huge! They had other warehouses too of different materials. These big barns are actually owned by a Mennonite farmer who lives in my town but keeps part of his business up in Missouri where I had to drive to.

I pulled my truck up to prepare to get loaded. We had to wait about 20 minutes for one of the hired hands to bring around the loader.

This is the trailer that Hive account@hansjurgen rebuilt from an old 16 foot travel trailer. He put some recycled chicken barn boards on it along with some eye bolts and it was ready to go. He also put in wiring harness for the new trailer lights. Everything worked great for the trip.

We got the straw home and will be layering it over the garden in the next couple days. We are having a good bit of rain right now but hopefully when that lets up, we can finish this quickly.

So that is our straw for the year. I wish the warehouse was closer but sometimes getting good stuff like this means you are going to have to put forth a bit of extra effort.

We have been using Lasagna style gardening since we moved here and would not have it any other way. Our soil is very healthy and you can grow almost anything in it.

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