Doing things the old way !

 So this is our solution

for this problem 

There are a lot of potato bugs, and we have been picking them by hand, squashing them and feeding them to the ducks and geese .  We do not want to use any pesticides , even if it was not hard on the plants, I would be concerned with over spray for the bees, and the other animals on the farm, so we have been thinking about an alternative.
When I was a kid, I can remember that we would plant 
maragolds in our garden to repel the bugs, so I did a little research..

"Marigolds are supposed to be one of the workhorses of biological pest control. Plant them and plant pests will be killed or — if they are lucky — merely repelled."  

This is just one of several plants that help with the bugs.  We are going to start researching other plants available here. our plan is to try this in about 25% of the garden and see if there is a significant difference in the bugs .. and if it works we will do the hole garden. A solution from 75 years ago may just be the solution today.  

Over in the orchard we  wanted to utilise he space until the trees were bigger, as well I want the ground cover to grow there , so we needed strong plants that will do well in those conditions , so we planted the Cabbages and onions between the rows, and the roses between the trees in the rows .. They are all doing great .  The cabbages have a huge head start on the ground cover, and by the time the cabbages are done, the ground cover will be strong and resilient enough for us to let the chickens and ducks in the orchard a couple days a week.   the outside leaves are now over a foot across and the heads are starting to form. 

We had a couple groups come together in the spring to purchase us a truck for the farm .. It has been such a blessing.  Hardly a day goes buy that it is not working .. We are now cutting grass every day in the mountains and bringing it to the farm animals.  We use it for cleaning up and general work at the farm.  We have a large water tank that goes in the back and a gas pump so that we can bring our own water to fill the pool for the irrigation.  Tomorrow it will be going into town, we heard of a great deal on corn that someone is desperate to sell so we will be able to take advantage of that.. but the best thing about the truck is that the boys LOVE it .. every thine they do is the truck is more like fun then work as far as the boys are concerned .. Here they are today moving some patio stones from the boys house to a couple of the other farms.  I was looking at this picture and with a little photo shop it could easily have been taken in  in 1950, speaking of doing things the old way!