Thanks for the links to the Geoff Lawton and Cornell info about biofertilizer
@Indio -- I will check those out today. Sounds super interesting!
Garden planning coming along. We've staked out the future deer fence perimeter and I'm researching how to make a functional deer fence look good, if that's possible. :/ I'm reading about angled fencing, where you tip the fence out at a 45 degree angle, which apparently deer don't like to jump over. They say you can do this with a shorter fence (4-6 feet), and it works. To me it looks like it would be a real headache to mow around the exterior. I'm leaning (har har) toward an old school vertical 8 foot fence. We also have to bury the skirting because of woodchucks. We have one huge one the size of a Corgi that loves to mow down my kale.
Gotta get a move on here! The daffodils are 5 inches out of the ground already and the birds are starting to nest. Spring is not waiting for me!
One minor thing hindering me right now in the garden work is that our garden shed has temporarily been turned into a chicken shelter for a half starved Brahma cockerel and pullet we found by the side of the road. Some a$$hole in this area likes to dump his or her unwanted chickens. This is the second time we've found birds dumped like this at the same spot on the road, and I just can't figure it out. You would think most people would just eat unwanted chickens (?) Anyway the guest chickens are in quarantine in our shed, until they (maybe) can eventually be mixed into our flock. (We did successfully mix in the previous side-of-the-road chickens we found.) The Brahmas are doing great, gaining weight and looking good. They are maybe 4 months old -- and are BIG. The pullet is a doll -- very friendly. The cockerel is scared of his own shadow, but very pretty.