This 10 inch Pro-Tech bench saw has made some of the really hard cuts
for our latest building project a breeze.
I would say it's a must have
if you want to get clean and crisp cuts without wearing out your arms
using a hand saw.
You can use a reciprocating saw
to do most of these applications with a lot less accuracy and neatness.
Once you get a taste of the table saw you'll feel like you can't live
without one if you want to make the occasional building project
painless and fun.
The BFR
Mulch guy called this
morning saying he could only deliver us 6 scoops of
compost instead of the 9
that was mentioned last week due to the dump mechanism not being able
to handle the extra weight.
I was thinking it was still a
good deal that would save me from making 3 round trips to Norton. Add
the travel time with the time to unload each load and it equals up to
somewhere over a day's worth of labor. The delivery charge was going to
be 75 dollars.
I was very clear on the phone
that I needed them to cross a creek and requested the 4 wheel drive
Mitsubishi Fuso dump truck by name.
They made it as far as our
ford when they had to
stop and give up. It seems like someone decided to add a snow plow
attachment that shrinks the clearance down to a paltry 8 or 10 inchs!
I can see how they would want
to take advantage of this 4 wheel drive beast in the winter by pushing
snow, but why not install it so that you could unbolt it for the
summer? It was welded on and the only obstacle to getting the load back
to our garden.
I almost had them dump the
load out by our parking area, but decided that would be even more work
loading back on the truck and then unloading it at the garden.
The driver was a nice guy and
apologetic about the handicapped truck.
"I guess most people don't
live this far back in the woods anymore these days?" I asked the guy
while we puzzled over the problem at the creek.
I felt bad about sending him
back with the full load, but even felt worse over the wasted morning
with nothing to show for it. This still seems to be a good option for
mulch and compost delivery, just don't expect them to go up any sort of
hill or over a big bump.
They're still on the cross
country journey and have visited about 90 farming types.
I'm looking forward to
reading their book about these travels which now has a working title of
"Stewards: Stories and Perspectives From American Farmers".
We
tried a new mulch source that has more down to Earth prices than The Mulch
Company... including a
sale on compost for just 10 bucks a scoop.
Don't get too excited. Their
"compost" was just aged wood chips mixed in with average looking dirt.
I still took 2 scoops because
I wanted to believe the lady at the desk when she said it was just
"pure aged wood chips", and I was a bit fatigued from following a map
that was not quite accurate on what may have been one of the hottest
days of the year.
I knew right away something
was amiss when Anna didn't get that same giddy laughter of joy I've
become so accustomed to when I bring truckloads of compost home.
"We can still use it for
areas in the forest garden where the clay doesn't drain well," she
said trying to make me feel better.
BFR Mulch in Norton has a
distorted definition of compost, but I guess it's a subjective term that
will vary from person to person. The stuff will make okay raised bed
material, but was barely worth hauling home when you gauge it on the
Anna meter.
They have aged oak mulch for
21 dollars a scoop, which is what we'll try next.
We went to see our 2nd movie
of the year today in an attempt to beat the heat.
Inception is a non stop,
intellectual thrill ride that did not disappoint.
It was a little heavy on the
action scenes, but that's Hollywood for you. Christopher Nolan has
created a compelling story with one of the most convoluted plots I've
ever enjoyed.
I'd give it a solid 8.5 out of
10. Compare that to our first movie of the year....Avatar, earning a
rare 10 out of 10, and you get an idea of how I rate films these days.
It was easy to move the laser
dot to a desired location with just 2 adjustment screws.
The hard part will be
learning how to work within the limitations of the laser. I can already
tell you need to be lined up pretty straight otherwise the laser tends
to drift the further you tilt the angle up or down. There's also an 8mm
difference in the point of impact at 20 yards when you switch from
green to red, with the difference increasing as you increase the
distance. I think that can be solved by just using the green all the
time.
With a little practice I
think this laser aid can help to improve our accuracy under certain
conditions, but I think we should also be ready to take a shot without
the laser when the angle needs to be tilted beyond its range of
effective use.
Tuesday rolled around and I
made a big mistake by topping it off with some old gas. I thought the
fuel was fine due to just using some in the lawnmower, but I guess this
generator is more sensitive.
My first solution was limited
by our local hardware store and the Dollar shop. They only had STP and
Gumout, which I think is the same thing. I added both with very little
results to show for it. It would start up...but putter and stall due to
what I assume was the bad gas or water in there somewhere? My second
mistake was not deleting as much of the old gas as I could before
adding the supplements. The next round of repairs
involved a longer trip where one can find a proper auto parts store. I
went right for the Seafoam and after a short consult with
one of the clerks was off to the gas station for some premium grade
petrol.
Dumping out the old gas and
adding the Seafoam helped, but it continued to putter and eventually
stalled due to what I'm guessing is some sort of blockage. I think it's
going to take running it a while for it to smooth out.
Luckily the electric guy
showed up with a chainsaw and a smile and cut down the offending tree
that was hanging on one of our power lines. It was touch and go for a
while as I watched the line hold the entire weight of the tree and
finally allow it to fall without breaking. I let out a loud
enough cheer so he could hear me and we had power restored within the
hour.
Yes, It's one of the few
tools I still have from my copier repair days of the 1990s.
The handle is hollow and can
be used to store spare bits, but what I like most is the magnetic tip
and long reach. The additional leverage combined with the ratcheting
feature make this screwdriver in my opinion the best money can buy.
It's got a steep price of 67
bucks, but somehow I justified it by using it 5 days a week as the main
tool that began each copier operation.Could I have gotten by with a
cheaper one? Sure, but one stripped screw in a hard to reach place can
really ruin your day and once I started applying the added leverage the
days of stripped screws were long gone.
The
Jackson Titanium Xtra is hands down the best shovel I've ever moved
dirt with.
The soft rubberized grip makes it easy to hold, but what sold me was
the power step feature, which increases leverage by allowing your foot
and legs to do more of the work.
It costs over twice what a cheaper shovel goes for, but well worth it
in my opinion.
Yes...the Trake is one of
those garden instruments that when backed up with a twin can become
twice the tool if you've got the extra hands to wield them.
Books
in the popular press about permaculture are quick to sing comfrey's
praises, but they are much slower to give any practical advice about
how to use the wonder plant. When I discovered that an entire
book was written about comfrey in 1953, and that it can be downloaded
for free from the Soil and Health library, I had to check it out.
Lawrence D. Hills' Russian
Comfrey: A Hundred Tons an Acre of Stock Feed or Compost for Farm,
Garden or Smallholding
details the history and uses of comfrey from a British
perspective. I was surprised to read that comfrey has been used
for over two hundred years in the United Kingdom, where the plant is
praised for the high protein content of the leaves and for its prolific
growth. One farmer planted a quarter of an acre of comfrey, which
provided feed for three cows and two horses, while others
feed comfrey to poultry and pigs. The same qualities make comfrey
a great crop to create copious compost or compost tea.
On the other hand, Hills
is quick to point out that not all farmers love
the wonder crop. Comfrey was immensely popular in the mid 1800s,
but soon letters started appearing in agricultural publications and
newspapers. Hills wrote:
...the most
frequently quoted letter of all appeared in an Irish newspaper, stating
that no beasts or sheep would eat Comfrey, detailing the ploughing,
harrowing, hoeing, and finally picking up by hand into baskets
unsuccessfully employed, and finishing with the plea 'Can you or any of
your correspondents tell me how to get rid of it?'
So, what's the
deal? Is comfrey worth its salt? How should
it be grown and used? Stay tuned to hear the answers in this
week's lunchtime series.
(By the way, all of the
black and white pictures in this lunchtime series, with the exception
of the one above of Lawrence Hills, are taken directly from his book.)
Need clear instructions on how a Briggs and Stratton engine really
works?
Davidsfarm
channel on YouTube does a great job at distilling down years of
experience into minutes. I appreciate David's simple approach to DIY
videos and feel like I've already learned a thing or two from watching
what I've seen so far.
He reports the wood
breaking before the flywheel came free, which is a bummer. The way he
finally solved the problem was to take it to a local shop where they
used the crude but effective hammer and screwdriver approach to pop it
off.
I'm starting to wonder if
anybody out there uses these flywheel puller tools for the basic small
to medium lawn mower engine?
When
I was a youngster, our nearest neighbor's front yard was decked out
with a
huge tire, painted white and filled with flowers. A metal glider
and chairs, also painted white, stood nearby under the shade of a large
catalpa, just waiting for a visitor to come by and sit for a
spell. There were flowers --- nearly all annuals that were easy
to grow from seed, like marigolds and cockscomb --- and a blooming
bush. Across the yard was a pen of chickens, then the barn, and
in the other direction was the vegetable garden, laid out in straight
rows. The couple clearly spent considerable time, though little
money, keeping their yard in impeccable shape.
Although my neighbors
were white, their space could have graced the pages of Richard
Westmacott's African-American
Gardens and Yards in the Rural South,
with the notable lack of a hog butchering station and a swept dirt
floor. Westmacott analyzed the yards of 47 rural families
spread across
Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, focusing on folks who had reached
or passed middle age. If there was such a thing as a traditional
Southern, African-American garden, he wanted to find it.
And he did see similarities,
many noted in my opening paragraph.
Rather than being showcased landscapes, the yards were subsistence
gardens
where work and leisure intermingled. In most cases, the yard had
become an extension of the house, the spot for a family barbecue or hog
butchering session.
But where did the
similarities come from? Could they be traced
back to the families' heritage in western Africa, to their slave
background, or were the similarities simply the common byproduct of
being poor
in the South?
While you're waiting for the
next installment of this lunchtime series, check out a unique
deer deterrent method
I found in the book.
This post is part of our African-American Gardens and Yards in the
Rural South lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Steve
Solomon's Gardening
When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times is the opposite of Square Foot Gardening in almost every way.
While Square
Foot Gardening is
aimed at the suburban hobby gardener, Gardening
When It Counts is
written for the serious homesteader. I complained about pages of
fluff in Square
Foot Gardening
(which Ron
rightly reminded me
was useful information for the beginning grower), but I wish Solomon
had spent twice as much space on many of the topics in his book.
I'm going to attempt to
hit the highlights of Gardening
When It Counts in
a special, two week lunchtime series, but like my series on Growing Gourmet and Medicinal
Mushrooms and
Edible
Forest Gardens,
I highly recommend that you check the book out of your local library
and read it from cover to cover. Twice. If I'd read Gardening
When It Counts
two years ago, I would have saved myself a solid year of
experimentation. You can save that year!
Want to quit your job and
make a living on the land? Check out our microbusiness ebook.
This post is part of our Gardening When It Counts lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
I
was thrilled when Ron wrote me an email to tell me the other side of
the story on square foot
gardening. All
of the images here are of Ron's garden, which he describes as follows:
I feel
you’re a little harsh on square foot garden
method. Maybe in your permaculture centered / deep woods
homesteading environment, it’s not very effective. But I
live in “yuppieville” and we can’t
use what “don’t fit in.”
I hear constantly about property values. My neighbors pray
to the ChemLawn Gods. “Why grow your own when a
grocery storeis a half mile
away.” So sayeth the neighbors.
This started four years ago and I reside in Upstate NY.
While I live in suburbia, I have “pest”
problems.
Cats, dogs, grackles, squirrels, possum, raccoons,
even deer. Thus the covers made with PVC and
Insect screening. Keeps out most problems.
Even torrential hail!!!!!! Our heavy clay soil that turns into muck in
the rains.
Full of rocks and gravel.
Bad bugs aplenty and I don’t use pesticides.
PLUS feet and feet of snow!
Having absolutely NO garden knowledge, I recalled PBS show,
Square Foot Gardening. Started with first 2 – 4’x4’
beds. Amazing success. Second year, added 4 more, 4’x4’s
and a pea bed 2’x8’.
Such a success, 3rd year, I added, 6 – 3’x8’
beds
(not in photo). I also use containers. This year, I added
2 - 28”x5’ tabletop garden beds on sawhorses
(used for specialty greens and mesclun). Many
additional trellises as I try to “grow up.” Each year I add more compost. Also add other
supplements such as Alpaca manure, greensand, kelp, and
biochar.
Studying remineralization. I keep detailed notes each year.
I rotate crops / beds.
Pro vs. Con – every method has some of both.
Great for beginners!!!!
Cons – getting materials, costs, and very addicting!!!!
My goal is to try replicating the “Urban Homestead”
as outline by the Dervaes Family in the
“Path to Freedom."
Like them, will take years.
Are you familiar?
Also a strong follower of Mother Earth News.
Have been since a teenager.
I love growing a wide variety of specialty
items I can’t afford to buy / refuse to pay
the price for. Asparagus was great last night!
I’ve attached latest layout in .pdf format [one page of which is
reproduced above].
Hope this changes some of your thoughts.
Take care
Ron
I'd love to hear from
other readers who have tried square foot gardening. What did you
think about the technique's pros and cons?
In
addition to using permanent beds with small aisles and copious
trellises, Mel Bartholomew gets more vegetables in a smaller space
because he brings in a lot of soil amendments. I'm of two minds
about this part of his gardening strategy.
On the one hand, it's
clearly expensive (and not very sustainable) to
buy bags of peat
moss, potting soil,
and vermiculite to give your soil good drainage
and then add chemical fertilizers to boost the plants' growth.
Mel Bartholemew is basically creating a large container garden, which
means that he isn't tapping into the strength of a diverse soil
food web.
On the other hand,
Bartholomew might be able to get many of the same results by doubling
down on compost and manure. His point is well taken that if you
divide the size of your garden in half, you can double the amount of
soil amendments on each square foot, possibly resulting in a doubled
(or at least larger) crop in the smaller space.
However, I don't grow
vegetables just to get the largest fruits from
the smallest tract of land. I've discovered that the tastiest
(and, I think, most healthful) fruits and vegetables have to struggle a
little to find nitrogen, potassium, and
phosphorus. The fruits are often smaller, but they're jam-packed
with flavor, and I suspect have more micronutrients from their
roots' elongated journey through the soil. I'm not willing to
give up that
quality in favor of quantity; otherwise, I might as well just buy my
produce at the grocery store.
A permaculture
approach to soil is completely different. Instead of focusing on
the plants' output per unit space, a permaculturalist would focus on
maintaining a healthy soil ecosystem and on adding varied soil
amendments that would boost micronutrient levels. I would love to
see a study comparing the vitamins and minerals in a leaf of lettuce
grown in my type of garden versus one grown in Mel Bartholomew's.
Could science tell a difference?
I
think that Mel Bartholomew could have summed up the unique
aspects of square foot gardening in about fifteen pages. So in
order
to turn his idea into a book, he had to add about 300 pages of
fluff ranging from basic seed-starting advice to how to weed and
water. While I wholeheartedly agree with many aspects of his
method, none of them is really new. In addition to permanent
beds, he advocates:
Heavy mulches to keep down weeds
Starting only the seeds you're going to have space for in your
garden rather than planting dozens and thinning
Succession planting so that your garden is full from early spring
to late fall
Vertical gardening by running tomatoes and cucurbits up trellises
(which is a method I need to work a bit harder on myself)
On the other hand, I
can't get behind some of Bartholomew's other assertions. He
thinks that crop rotation will take care of itself since you're
constantly filling up new squares and are unlikely to put the same
plant family in a location twice in a row. In a mathematical
puzzle, that might be the case, but in a real life garden you'll
discover that your carrots like the spot with deep soil and the spring
peas like the sunniest area by the trellis, and you'll tend to
plant each crop in the same place from year to year. Keeping
track of planting
locations is
essential to prevent a buildup of diseases in the soil.
I think the point where
Bartholomew really lost me, though, was when he asked who
would want more than four heads of broccoli in a year.
Um, me?!!! I know that Bartholomew's goal is to cut down on work,
but after a while, I started to wonder if he really
likes vegetables.
I've experimented
with a lot of permanent bed sizes
and shapes over the past few years, and the four by four square
advocated by square foot gardening is one of
my least favorite formats. I like to be able to weed and plant
and harvest
sitting down, but I can't reach the center of a four foot bed without
either leaning on the bed or standing up and bending over --- hard on
the
back. My favorite beds are three feet wide but quite long.
In fact,
the best bed shape for me seems to be a long row that I can work my way
down it, never turning a corner, pushing the wheelbarrow ahead of me as
I go.
Which
brings me to the next flaw in Mel Bartholomew's garden design ---
the aisles. In order to fit his
garden into 20% of the space used by a traditional garden, Bartholomew
lays down 12
inch lumber and walks on this one foot wide path. I started out
with
aisles that are two feet wide, and I can barely fit my wheelbarrow down
them, often harm plants on
the ends of beds when turning corners, and can't get the lawnmower
through
some of the aisles at all. As with permanent bed widths, three
feet seems to be the magic number that keeps me from feeling cramped,
with four or five foot aisles along
main thoroughfares allowing for easier hauling.
Granted, my method uses more space than Bartholomew's, but I suspect it
saves time since I don't have to prop back up the plants I break when I
lose my balance and fall into the bed.
Despite
being very critical of square foot gardening, I do think it has a
place. If you live in a city and have only
a tiny bit of space out front but the neighbors would yell
if you put in a traditional vegetable garden, the formal lines of
square foot gardening might fit the bill. If you work forty hours
a week and always plant a huge rambling garden, only to see it
disappear into weeds in July when you run out of time, it might be best
to scale back to a smaller garden like Bartholomew's (but, perhaps,
laid out in a more ergonomic fashion.) On the other hand, if
you're a
homesteader with lots of land and a wish to grow most of your own food,
square foot gardening probably doesn't have much for you.
(All of the images on
this page are official square foot gardens from the Square Foot
Gardening Foundation. I'm actually a bit shocked that these
are
the best images they have to offer.)
Want to give your garden the time it
really deserves? Learn to make a living in a few hours a week
using our microbusiness ebook.
This post is part of our Square Foot Gardening lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
The
method's founder claims that square foot gardening allows you to grow
the same amount of food in 20% of the space, saving time and money in
the process. Although several people I know swear by it, I find
it hard to believe that square foot gardening lives up to the
hype. Is square foot gardening a trend or a useful technique?
Mel Bartholomew outlines
his method at great length (sometimes much greater then I'd prefer) in Square
Foot Gardening.
He divides his garden into beds four feet on each side, then subdivides
each bed into sixteen blocks, each one square foot in size. These
small sections are devoted to single crops --- big plants like cabbage
fill an entire square while smaller crops may have several evenly
spaced plants in the square. That's pretty much all there is to
it.
I first blogged about Mike
Turner towards the end of
July of last year.
Imagine my surprise when I saw him and his AeroCivic at a farmers
market down in South Carolina this past Friday.
Turns out he's got some new
ambitions on adding an electric 5th wheel
to push the car under certain road conditions. At the moment it's not
economically feasible due to the high cost of good batteries, but it
might not be too long before some clever engineer comes up with
a better and cheaper battery that perhaps is somewhat environmentally
responsible to produce.
If you'd like to learn more
about Mike check back in tomorrow to see a short video interview I did
with him where he describes what happened when he hit a deer with the
AeroCivic and how it just dented the hood and flipped over the top.
He's also got an excellent
website which has a
generous supply of construction images while the
AeroCivic was being born.
The new goat gloves
are breaking in better than the competition.
I suspect the smooth molding process is thanks to the elastic like
black fabric between each finger.
Instead
of playing the lottery, I play interlibrary loan. Each week, I
hit the library with a stack of request slips for books I've heard
about that aren't stocked by our tiny rural book-lender, and every week
something trickles down from northern Virginia to fill my voracious
book appetite. This is the saving grace of our tiny library ---
interlibrary loans are free.
I try to put in requests
for an equal number of fiction and non-fiction books each week, but as
luck would have it, this week's haul was entirely fiction. I
gulped in dismay, and headed back into the library's one small room of
non-fiction on the off chance that their linear foot of gardening books
included a tome I'd not yet read. And there in front of my snooty
nose was a book every bit as good as the ones I'd requested from afar.
In fact, even though I'd
never heard of Lee Reich's Uncommon
Fruits Worthy of Attention,
all of my permaculture gurus clearly had. Information about
species like the hardy kiwi and the Nanking cherry had eluded me
because these plants were nearly impossible to find on the internet
(even though every permaculture book mentioned them.) I flipped
open Lee Reich's book and found that it was chock full of cultivation
and propagation information for these and seventeen other unusual
species. By the end of the week, at least four of these species
will be adequately represented on the internet --- stay tuned!
One
of my goals for this growing season is to experiment with grains.
As I mentioned in my series on small-scale
grain-growing, I'd
eventually like to be growing most or all of the grains that we humans
and our chickens eat. But my goal for the first year is far less
ambitious --- I just want to experiment with a half dozen types of
grain to find out which ones like our climate and fit our lifestyle.
I got Sara Pitzer's Homegrown
Whole Grains on
interlibrary loan to round out the information I've been
compiling. The book is very handy because it provides a lot of
specifics I've been unable to find elsewhere about planting dates and
growing zones. That said, quite a bit of the information in this
week's lunchtime series has come from previous books and websites I've
read on the topic, so don't expect to pick up Homegrown
Whole Grains and
find it all. Still, the book has lots of pretty illustrations and
is a quick read, so I recommend it.
I also recommend our
innovative chicken waterer --- the best way to get
chicks off to a healthy start.
This post is part of our Homegrown Whole Grains lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
If you've been thinking about
gettng started with permaculture why not try a simple aquaponics
set up?
You take advantage of the
fish waste by having the water pumped up to a reservoir holding the
plants in place with some sort of medium like sand or gravel that
easily drains.
Photo credit goes to the CompostGuy.com who has a great section on his
experiences with do it yourself aquaponics. If that floats your boat
you might want to check out this short
video from permaculture expert Sepp Holzer and his impressive pond set up in
Austria.
A few months ago, we
checked out PBS's Colonial
House on
Netflix. The reality TV show plunks a few families down in New
England where they replicate what life was like in Plymouth Colony in
1628. Although the series was interesting, I was sorely
disappointed by the lack of time spent focusing on the gardens ---
that's the whole point of a reality TV show about the past,
right? Early
New
England Gardens: 1620 - 1840, a little booklet put out by
Old Sturbridge Village, filled in the
gaps.
The early American
colonist generally had two separate gardens.
First, a house plot (also known as a merestead) was equivalent to our
kitchen garden. It was placed right by the house and was full of
vegetables, herbs, and flowers used every day. Further off, the
settlement fields were planted with large-scale crops --- the staples
backyard gardeners don't often grow much of anymore, like field corn,
parsnips, turnips, beans (for drying), pumpkins, and cabbage.
Personally, I've found that putting a garden any further than two steps
out the front door means that it gets neglected (and eaten by deer),
but I guess these colonists felt the need to concentrate their houses
close together for mutual protection.
There were two general
patterns evident in meresteads in early New
England --- the cottage garden style and the formal garden style.
The former predominated in the Plymouth colony and among the poorer
colonists while the latter was more common in Massachusetts Bay colony
and among richer folks.
I've described cottage
gardens in a
previous lunchtime series --- you may remember that
cottage gardens are a very informal hodgepodge of plants and animals,
with herbs, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and even pigs and bees mashed
together in a small space. The people who settled in Plymouth
Colony believed that gardens should be austere and utilitarian, and
that flowers with no use were frivolous and extravagant. The
booklet notes, "There was actually an early Connecticut statute
declaring it unlawful to walk in the garden on the Sabbath."
In contrast, the more
prosperous Massachusetts Bay colonists based
their gardens on the English manor garden. There was usually a
long central path, ending at an arbor, summer house, or dovecote.
Beds along the side were usually linear (though still informally
planted with mixtures of plants).
As New England colonies
became more prosperous in the eighteenth century, the more formal type
of
garden became widespread. Soon, flowers were separated out
of the vegetable gardens and the layout began to resemble the American
landscape seen today. Most houses had a large front garden
composed purely of flowers and/or lawn running down a path to their
front
gate, with the vegetables tucked away out of sight.
As a final note, all of
the photos in this week's lunchtime series
come from Old Sturbridge Village's website. I got a bit lost
browsing their images and comparing colonial life
to my life. If you're bored, you might wander over and look for a
while too.
This week, I'm plugging my
brand new book, chock full of information about Appalachian ecology!
This post is part of our Early New England Gardens lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
When it
scrapes its bottom and almost swings free;
It is not
a carol of joy or glee,
But a
squeal that it sends from its deep rooted core,
But a
plea, that someday again it will swing-
I know
why the caged gate swings.
There's a lot of places on
the web that claim to be an authority on making your own gate, but Jeff
Greef's wood working site delivers detailed pictures backed up with
a real world explanation of each step.
If you've never built a gate
before, or remember how the last gate you built sagged and rubbed on
the ground then save yourself some grief and skim over these three
pages before you draw up your plans.
Frank goes into some detail
about a new project he's working on with a group in New Mexico that
wants to expand a program that teaches gardening skills to school
children.
It's a concept that is long
overdue and I can't help but to feel like a couple of hours working in
the dirt might actually help to calm down some of the more energetic
students that can never seem to stay in their seats.
I would take it a step
further and teach the kids some basic janitorial skills and put them to
work cleaning the school like students do in Japan.
The
Cottage Garden by
Christopher Lloyd is a pretty and chatty book, perfect for flipping
through when you're yearning for spring. It's nearly a picture
book, and doesn't have any in depth information, but the book is a
helpful look at the tradition that helped give rise to Robert
Hart's forest gardening. Cottage gardening
also has something to teach anyone who strives to be self-sufficient.
Microhydro:
Clean Power From Water
by Scott Davis is written at a sixth grade reading level...and that's a
good thing. I'm far from ready for an installation guide;
instead, I just wanted to know if microhydro is feasible on our farm.
Although most people
with an interest in alternative energy go straight to solar cells,
microhydro
can be a much more economical option if your terrain is right.
I've read estimates suggesting that consumer-level microhydro systems
are between 5 and 40 times as cost effective as photovoltaic systems,
in large part because water is much less intermittent than the sun so
you don't need as many batteries.
Scott Davis divides
microhydro systems into five levels, only two of which are of interest
to me. The bare essentials level will run lights and small
appliances (like a microwave, radio, telephone, blender, stereo, and
laptop) while the modern conveniences level adds in efficient
refrigerators, freezers, and well pumps. A microhydro system
running the bare essentials can be put together for as low as $2,000
(or possibly even less if you scrounge some parts) while the modern
conveniences level can cost two to three times that much.
Finally, an alternative energy source that wouldn't put us into debt!
If you enjoyed yesterday's
documentary on Arctic
homesteading then you
will most likely appreciate how Robert Long and his family get by
homesteading in the New Zealand bush.
It's a nice short video which takes time to interview the
13 and 16 year old kids and show how they feel about growing up in such a
remote and beautiful setting.
Heimo Korth grew up in the
suburbs of Wisconsin and when he was 18 wrote a letter to a random
trapper in Alaska looking for work. He got a job as a packer, learned
to love the wilderness of Alaska, and has been there ever since
homesteading with his Eskimo wife Edna.
A small 3 man film crew spent 10
days with Heimo and Edna to get a feel for what it's like to be one of
the last full time homesteaders in the 19 million acres of prime boreal
forest that is now known as the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge.
It's an excellent
documentary you can watch for free here that provides a glimpse into this
lifestyle and climate. The producers don't hold much back and you learn
first hand how to snare and skin a rabbit without using a knife. I
really liked Heimo and Edna and felt like I was visiting them with this
film. Makes our recent bout with a colder than normal winter look like
a day in the park compared to the struggles they've got to go through
to get by.
The last forest garden tidbit
that caught my fancy was Robert Hart's Bouche-Thomas hedges. He
planted apple trees diagonally so that they grew into each other and
created a rigid
fence like the one shown in the drawing here. Since I'm currently
in the research stage of including
hedges on our property, these looked intriguing.
Overall, I found Robert
Hart's Forest Gardening
to be a bit disappointing since it was low on how to information and on
plants suitable
for North American climates. His book isn't a reference work so
much as it is a dreamer's manifesto. But it often
takes a dreamer to bring an idea like forest gardening to a temperate
climate. The next generation of forest gardeners are still
working to make his dream a reality.
Although
Edible Forest Gardens is truly the
book to read for North American forest gardening information, I'm
always intrigued to go back to the primary sources. So I checked
out Forest
Gardening: Creating an Edible Landscape by Robert Hart, the father
of temperate forest gardening.
I have to admit that I
was sorely disappointed by about two thirds of the book. Robert
Hart was clearly a dreamer, a poet, and a philosopher, not a
scientist. His book jumps around through a discussion of how
important it is to eat your vegetables, how ley lines can impact your
garden, and through several similar topics. But in the midst of
all that,
he also documents his journey toward creating the first temperate
forest garden. As I suspected, there were some fascinating ideas
waiting for me in the book --- we all have something to learn from this
forest gardening pioneer.
Stay tuned for more
information in this week's lunchtime series. Meanwhile, if you
haven't already, check out our series about the
roots of permaculture
and our how to series about planning a forest garden.
Joe Dominguez, one of the authors of Your
Money or Your Life,
retired at age 31 using the formula he outlines in the book.
After figuring out the true value of his time and minimizing his
spending, he invested his savings in long term U.S. treasury bonds and
lived off the proceeds. Unfortunately, I don't know that his
success is replicable any longer --- treasury bonds are currently only
paying half of what they paid at that time, and I haven't stumbled
across any other types of investments that are as safe and stable while
paying such a high rate of return. I feel like it would take a
very determined person to save up a quarter to a half a million dollars
of investment capital and then manage to disentangle their souls from
the rat race.
While discussing the
book's anticlimactic ending with Mark, he pointed
out that we've really reached the same point using our chicken waterer
microbusiness. With just a few hours of work per week, we make
enough money to pay all of our bills and get to spend the rest of our
time pursuing our dreams. Basically, we're retired.
If you're still working
a full time job and dreaming that some day you
can retire and live your dream, now's the time to rethink your
priorities. You only live once, so you might as well enjoy your
hours here on earth! Here are a few more resources to speed you
on your way:
Your Money or Your Life
by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin --- a bit out of date now, twenty
years after being published, but most of the book is still right on
track. (There's also a new edition that might be a bit more
up-to-date.)
Financial
Integrity website --- the up-to-date and free version of the above.
The
Four-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss --- this is the book that
jump-started us on our own quest to leaving the rat race.
Microbusiness
Independence by Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton --- This
is our own personal story of how we created a small business that pays
all of our bills in just a few hours a week, along with lots of tips to
replicate our success.
This post is part of our Your Money or Your Life lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Did
you know that before the Industrial Revolution, the average person
worked for about two or three hours a day? Studies from a wide
range of pre-industrial civilizations show similar data --- it takes
only about fifteen hours a week to provide for all of our basic human
needs. And that's using hand tools.
So why is the average
American working a dreary forty hours a
week? I've heard from at least half a dozen readers who say that
they'd love to live like Mark and I do, but only once they save up some
large sum of money or bring their microbusiness up to a level where it
can pay them some other large sum of money per year. So, even
though it's a bit off topic, I want to spend this week's lunchtime
series talking about money --- how much do we really need and how can
we make it without selling our souls?
Most of the information
I'll present is drawn from Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's Your
Money or Your Life
and the loosely affiliated Financial
Integrity website.
You can find the same nine step program, complete with worksheets and
examples, in both the book and the website. (Download
the worksheets and examples from the website for free here.)
Both are highly recommended! I'm going to gloss over some aspects
of the program that seem old hat to me, so if you like what you read
here and want to learn more, I highly recommend you go straight to the
source.
Are you looking for some more blogs to
follow? I read over fifty, ranging from personal odysseys to
nonprofit newsletters, but only a few are so rivetting I want to share
them. These top three blogs are my personal picks based on:
posting frequently enough to keep me hooked, mixing personal and
informational in a fun proportion, and either being beautiful or well
written (or both.)
Causabon's Book is probably the blog I
discuss the most at the dinner table. Sharon Astyk is a Jewish
homesteader and peak oil writer who sucks you in with her tales of
family life and simple living but adds plenty of meat about how to
store your food and prepare for the end of civilization. Her
posts are thought provoking and mirror my own world while also veering
off in other directions. (She used to write over on her personal blog, but is mostly writing at
the link above.)
Sugar Mountain Farm is "stories from a small
farm in Vermont's mountains raising pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, dogs
and kids naturally on pasture." I started reading because we're
contemplating running pigs on pasture some day, but I kept reading
because Walter's photos were astounding --- really the best I've seen
on any blog. It's also fun to read about someone running a
successful small farm. Not Exactly Rocket Science is a new favorite,
interpreting new scientific discoveries into layman's terms. This
isn't precisely homesteading, but you need to know the science to make
it all work!
What are your top three
blogs and why?
Don't forget to subscribe to
our chicken blog where I'm currently going on
at great length about formulating homemade chicken feeds.
Kristie
Lu Stout has an interesting post about this exciting new product
that will allow everybody to generate their own hydrogen from water and
store it in a safe, low pressure battery-like container. No word yet on
how much it might cost, but plans are to have a tabletop model
available by the end of 2010.
Getting off the grid with
solar or wind has always come back to battery storage. If this
technology improves, it could replace most of those expensive and toxic
chemical batteries and bring alternative energy within the reach of the
common homesteader.
What
do you do if you want to install an automatic chicken coop door but
you don't have electricity running to your coop?
Chicken
coop door.com has
recently come out with a new solar powered option that will save you
the chore of letting your girls out in the morning and remembering to
lock them back up at night.
Masanobu
Fukuoka's The
One-Straw Revolution
is a hodepodge of advice for farming and living. To be completely
honest, I adored the first third of the book, but was annoyed by the
philosophical bent of the rest. Sure, I agree that we should
garden organically, eat locally, minimize our meat consumption, eat in
season, turn away from commercial farms and back to the small family
farm, reject growth economics, live simply, and work to live rather
than live to work. But those concepts are all old hat now.
Since I wasn't alive while he was writing the book, I don't really know
whether Fukuoka's ramblings were insightful and innovative at the time
or simply derivative.
That said, the first
third of the book was rivetting. His farming
method (which I'll describe tomorrow) clearly paved the way for the
entire permaculture
movement. Fukuoka dubbed his technique "natural farming", and it
went far beyond simple organic gardening. He advocated working
with nature and mimicking natural processes, positing that many parts
of modern agriculture systems are only necessary because the farms are
out of balance and we're working against nature. As a result, he
also used the inspiring phrase "do-nothing farming", referring to the
aspects of modern agriculture that he did without.
Although there was still
a lot of work involved in Fukuoka's farm, his
do-nothing farming was unique. He promoted no-till techniques,
green manure, and mulching. You don't hear much about
Fukuoka nowadays, but I wonder whether he wasn't as influential in the
birth of the
permaculture movement as its self-styled father, Bill Mollison.
Cosmic Cookout is a project that's been in the
back of my head for years now, and thanks to Anna's help as webmaster it's finally
ready to see the light of day.
It's a place to help me
distill down some of the more interesting and fantastic information
that has been gushing out of the physics of consciousness field the
past few years with some attention paid to the disclosure movement.
The intention is to stimulate
debate and conversation through a process of observation and questions
and hopefully increase awareness and understanding and perhaps move to
a higher level of consciousness.
Credit goes to Neuronarrative for the fine images above.
Carolyn Roberts from house of
straw.com has made a fun and informative 8 minute video
that takes you through all the hoops she had to jump through to make
her straw bale dream a reality. What sets this collection of
information apart from others I've come across is the level of detail
she shares when it comes to building codes and materials.
We considered the straw bale approach briefly, but decided against it
for multiple reasons, mainly the fact that we get a lot of moisture
around here, and it's not really as cheap as you might think.
Carolyn spent 50 thousand dollars and a good chunk of her precious time
to finish the above home, which was way out of our price range and
would have delayed our garden infrastructure building considerably. Her
Walden castle is hands down more beautiful and efficient than our
recycled trailer, but we would have had to go in debt to attain that
level of comfort, an option that shouldn't even be on the table for
anyone who prefers time over money, which goes to the very core essence of what the Walden Effect is all about.
As the next step in my pursuit of easy to grow
grains, I decided to
take everyone's advice and read Small-Scale
Grain Raising by
Gene Logsdon. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, although (as usual)
I felt it glossed over some very important aspects of bringing grain
growing to the backyard. Still, the book made me feel that
growing grain was within my reach.
I have to admit that
before reading Small-Scale
Grain Raising, I
fell into the category of folks who don't really think about where
their grain comes from. The only grain commonly grown in my area
is corn, and I grew up thinking that flour came from the store. I
assumed that grain-growing was an esoteric undertaking requiring vast
amounts of land, equipment, and know-how. And could you really
grow it around here?
But some rough and dirty
math suggests that I could create the three cups of flour I use in my favorite pizza
crust recipe from 22
square feet of soil --- about the size of one of my raised beds.
As I'll explain later, Logsdon has had success threshing and winnowing
grain on the backyard scale.
Many of you are probably
thinking --- why grow grain when you can buy flour so cheaply in the
store? My primary motivation is a bit geeky --- I just like
knowing how to do things myself. But growing your own grain has
other perks. When I read Farmers
of 40 Centuries, I
was a bit jealous of the endless rice straw these farmers seemed to
have on hand for mulching. Straw is a major byproduct of all
kinds of grain-growing, and I am always on the lookout for more sources
of mulch.
Growing your own grain
is also the key to independence from store-bought chicken feed.
And if you grow your own grains, you can make true whole grain flours,
without the healthy germ removed. All in all, it looks like an
endeavor worth experimenting with.
In doing some research for the home
made storage building I discovered the term garden office which is
how they describe some sheds in parts of Europe.
Shedworking.co
is a great place to browse pictures of other garden offices to spark
your imagination and learn new techniques.
I'm partial to this thatch roof design, but don't think it would work
for us here.
I've only just started using it, but I can already say I like it a lot.
It feels like I'm getting more splitting action for less energy input,
which is a very good thing. What I like most so far is the feeling of
increased safety. When there's not enough power to split the log
the Chopper 1 just sort of bounces as opposed to grazing off out of
control like the Super
Splitter has been known to do if your aim is a little off.
Credit goes to Anna for capturing the exact moment when the Chopper 1 is
completing a split.
Regular
readers will remember how Mycelium
Running
sent me on a quest to propagate our edible mushrooms cheaply.
Paul Stamets' enthusiasm was so contagious that I've spent the last
nine months experimenting (with semi-success, which I'll discuss
later.) I reached a point where I needed to know more, so I
requested another one of his books on interlibrary loan.
The 574 page Growing
Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms arrived at my library a few
weeks ago, and I've been reading it ever since. This book
is more technical than Mycelium
Running,
since the purpose is to provide the information new commerical growers
need to start their operation. The result is a book that is
slightly more tedious than Mycelium
Running, so I
can't recommend it to the general reader quite as whole-heartedly.
Nevertheless, Stamets'
enthusiasm shines through...along with so much
information that I'm struggling to pare it down to fit into two
lunchtime series! After reading the book from cover to cover, I
seem to have come up with twice as many questions as I started with,
but at least my original questions got answered.
The team at KMS
woodworks has made some interesting progress in bringing together a compact solar charger that can be used for several low
end power needs like a lap top. They are still in the testing stage,
but it looks like they might make them available for sale in the 300 to
350 dollar range in the not too distant future.
It would be worth that much to me if it could power our modem and both
lap tops for a few hours per day, especially during a power outage.
I really like the idea of having a portable off the grid option,
especially one that can be taken on a back pack to provide the power
for blog posts in some random ancient megalith site or more Mayan ruins.
A new layer of snow and some frigid temperatures kept us working inside
today. Brrrrr.
The movie Avatar
was a fantastic initiation into the new realm of 3D cinema. Science
fiction is the perfect genre for this new technology and Avatar was a
non stop ride that remains with you long after the house lights come on. A great way to celebrate the beginning of my 41st year.
A
few quick book-keeping notes for the new year....
First
of all, thank you
to everyone who posted comments this month to enter our daffodil
giveaway! I've
really enjoyed hearing all of your feedback and getting to know you
better. The grand prize winner is my father --- I swear it was
random! :-) We had a really good month selling automatic chicken waterers, so there were only about 20
daffodil bulbs left to give away. I'm tossing in some poppy seeds
to round his
flower bed out. Stay tuned for another giveaway soon!
On
another vaguely
chicken-related topic, I'm posting a long series about chicken tractors
on our chicken blog this month. Some of
the posts you've already seen over here while others are totally
new. My goal is to really think through all of the chicken
tractor designs we've used in the past so that our next tractor will be
awesome. I hope my musings will also help other folks design a
cheap and effective tractor and get those hens out of the mud.
You can subscribe to the RSS feed of that blog just like this one --- I
look forward to seeing some of you over there!
Finally,
I was going to post a review of the best non-fiction books I'd
read in 2009 over here, but instead decided to finally set myself up a
Goodreads account.
If I stick to it, I plan to post all of my fiction and non-fiction book
ratings over there (although I'll keep posting lunchtime series over
here.) Feel free to friend me and share your own books!
The Ford
Festiva stalling issue came back when the gas tank hit the 1/4
level point. Something the chainsaw repair guy said after he tuned up
our Stihl recently got me to thinking. His comment was that he had to
use his special carburetor bath 4 separate times to get all the gunk
cleaned out. This prompted me to give the Festiva another Seafoam
treatment, and it took over half the tank before the problem finally
went away, but it's running like it should now and it's all thanks to
Seafoam.
Old
timey apples are one of my oldest loves. The first June apples,
translucent against the sun, are far too tender to sell in the grocery
store. We used to gather them from abandoned roadside trees, then
Mom turned them into the world's best applesauce and pies.
In the winter, Daddy
would buy us Stayman Winesaps by the bushel.
We kept them in the basement with a bowl of sweet, tangy fruit always
at hand in the house. Since I was raised without sugared treats,
that crunchy fruit was like nectar.
When I grew up and left
the nest, I realized that most folks don't eat
real apples. They subsist on tasteless Red Delicious, insipidly
sweet Golden Delicious, or blandly sour Granny Smith.
Which is all to say that
I could see myself --- in another life ---
running an organic apple orchard full of unique varieties, just like
the one Michael Phillips documents in The
Apple Grower.
I've critiqued
his apple orchard microbusiness
over on our microbusiness blog, but over here I'm going to pull out the
gems that we small-time growers can learn from a master.
I was sucked into Teaming with Microbes by
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis this weekend. Teaming with Microbes took
the information from my Living
Soil lunchtime series and turned it into what felt like a fast-paced action novel,
complete with stunning photos of the characters.
As you probably remember, a healthy soil food web equates to a healthy
organic garden. If you have the right critters in your soil,
you'll have better nutrient retention, better soil structure, and
better defense against diseases.
But Lowenfels and Lewis took the story one step further, explaining
that not every soil food web is created equally. Nor will one
type of food web make all plants happy. The key is to come up
with the right fungi to bacteria ratio for each garden.
Looking for a gift for the
homesteader on your list? Our automatic chicken waterers
keep water poop-free!
This post is part of our Teaming With Microbes lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
If you enjoyed my
series on traditional Central American farming practices, you'll love Farmers
of Forty Centuries
by F.H. King. Precisely 100 years ago, the American author
visited the eastern sections of China (along with Korea and
Japan). He documented his journey with
anecdotes, photos, and vivid prose like the following description of a
Cantonese house boat:
Sometimes husband and wife and many times the whole
family were seen together when the craft was both home and business
boat as well. Little children were gazing from most unexpected
peek
holes, or they toddled tethered from a waist belt at the end of as
much rope as would arrest them above water, should they go
overboard. And the cat was similarly tied. Through an
overhanging
latticed stern, too, hens craned their necks, longing for scenes
they could not reach.
I'm excerpting the
portions of the book which appeal to my organic
gardening and permaculture leanings, but I highly recommend that you
read the whole thing as an ultra-cheap Asian vacation. Although
Farmers of Forty
Centuries is currently back in print, you can still read the
full text (minus the photos) for free on Project
Gutenberg.
The palomino grain cow
hide work gloves are still my preferred glove for handling heavy
jobs. I estimate that the work load here at Wetknee seems to chew
through them somewhere between 9 and 12 months, which is a good value when you consider the wear and tear you're saving on each
hand.
Lawrence
Weingarten was kind enough to share his oyster mushroom cultivation
secrets in an easy to understand web page with plenty of pictures. He
starts by shredding up a bale of wheat straw and then cooking it in
water at 160 degrees for about an hour. You've now made your own
pasteurized substrate. Drain it and carefully mix in the proper amount
of spawn, which is mycelium
growing on grain or cardboard. Stuff it all in a tall plastic bag
and hang it up somewhere safe. Follow his instructions on humidity and
temperature levels and you'll have a serious harvest of fruit to enjoy
in less than a week.
If
you raked back the leaves and carefully weighed out all of the life in
a forest's soil, the sheer quantity would astound you. The soil
invertebrates would add up to the equivalent mass of four to thirteen
sheep per acre. In a coniferous forest, where fungi are king, the
threads of fungi in a single teaspoon of soil would unspool to stretch
forty miles. Tickle out the tiny bacteria and they'd add up to a
few tons per acre as well.
That said, the volume of
soil microorganisms doesn't hold a candle to their essential
functions. This week's lunchtime series is based on Dave Jacke's
Edible
Forest Gardens volume 1. I didn't have room to present all
of the rivetting information there, so if you're intrigued by this
teaser, I highly recommend checking his book out and flipping straight
to chapter 5.
This post is part of our Living Soil lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
This home made cat door uses a low budget and clever way of taking a
picture just before the cat reaches the door to enter. If the picture
shows anything in your cats mouth like a mouse the computer tells the
door not to let him in. Same thing is true if a skunk or other animal
tries to get in. If he's all by himself the computer grants permission
and unlocks the door. You can also use this system to keep track of how
many times your cat goes in and out, complete with a fancy program that
will send a picture to your cell phone every time an event happens.
Our cats have always kept their hunting prizes outside, and Lucy does a
great job of keeping other small animals out of the yard, so we won't
be going to this extreme. Quantumpictures is working on a self
contained unit that will be available from their website in the near
future.
With an armload of new permaculture books
waiting on my attention, I figured it was high time to finish up my
series on traditional Central American farming practices. The
first half of Gene Wilken's Good
Farmers has already tempted me to to embark on a huge
leaf-raking project. Where will the second half lead?
To start with, the book noted that Central American farmers have been
forest gardening since long before the term was invented. Large
scale farms were usually all annual vegetables, but most farmers had a
kitchen garden that modern permaculturalists would approve of.
Coconuts arched over papayas and mangos which in turn shaded cacoa,
bananas, peaches, avocados, pomegranates, ad oranges. Enough
light filtered down to the ground to feed maize and beans, and chickens
ran free under everything.
Farmers noted that their kitchen gardens required more work than their
less diverse fields of vegetables, and that crop quality was often
lower in the crowded forest gardens. On the other hand, the
farmers seldom saw weeds or pests, didn't have to worry about erosion,
and enjoyed having a diversity of food at their finger tips.
Clearly, forest gardening was worth their while.
This post is part of our Central American Permaculture lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
The Spud Buddy is a device
that gets mounted to the side of an old broken freezer or refrigerator
and uses a fan and a steady supply of water to keep the inside
temperature and humidity where it needs to be in order to function as a
root cellar.
I've never seen one of these in action, but the concept seems solid
enough to work. Expect to spend about 160 bucks on the unit, and maybe
some extra pennies per day for the additional electricity.
I was experiencing some power trouble with the
Ford Festiva last week. It stalled out three separate times during a
short trip to town. My first thought was that the repair
last year with a dab of silicone to the ignition coil was giving
out, but then I decided to try a 10 dollar can of Seafoam. You put this
stuff right in your tank and top it off with whatever fuel you usually
use and presto...I noticed an immediate improvement. I could now get up
hills with only dropping down to 4th gear instead of 3rd or 2nd.
Technically speaking something happens that cleans some internal stuff
to make things run smoother. No more stalling! I'm now a believer in
Seafoam.
What makes the Highpoint
40 caliber carbine rifle a good choice for the modern day
homesteader? It's affordable...a bit over 200 bucks, it's easy to use with
minimal kick back, and it serves two roles on the farm as a weapon for
home defense and a tool for hunting.
We could have gotten by with hunting our garden raiding deer with the
trusty Winchester shot gun, but that thing has a hard kick to it and
you only get one shot before you need to stop and reload.
It's been almost a week now since we upgraded
the rear tires on the golf cart and the only regret I have is that we
didn't do this as soon as we liberated her from the nice and clean
campground that she came from. I would guess that our ground grippage
has doubled in comparison to the traction cables we had rigged on her
before.
Every
year, I let myself splurge a bit on new perennials for the
garden. Last year, my splurge
rounded out our traditional fruits --- a cultivated black raspberry,
blueberries, a plum --- and started exploring the world of nut trees (a
butternut.)
From previous years, we have young apples, pears, peaches, a nectarine,
a cherry, cultivated blackberries, ever-bearing red raspberries,
strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and hardy kiwis. We've started
grapes, a persimmon, wineberries, and a Chinese chestnut ourselves.
This year, Dave Jack's Edible
Forest Gardens volume 1 came in on interlibrary loan just as I was
starting to get my cold weather craving for new perennials. I
flipped to the back of the book, to the list of the top 100 forest
gardening species for the eastern U.S., and my mouth watered. So
many delicious species, some of which I'd never considered! This
week's lunchtime series highlights the four species I chose to splurge
on this fall to fill in gaps in our forest garden.
This post is part of our Splurging on Perennials lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
The collapsible lawn and leaf bag is a product that works and works
well. I imagine most folks would use it to support a big trash bag so
that your lawn and leaf material can be bagged up and hauled off to a
land fill. We use it in the raw to increase our mulch material, and it
makes the job a bit smoother than trying to
use a large tarp.
The best book I read while on
our cruise
was Brad Kessler's Goat
Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of
Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. The book traces the
first year in the author's life with Nubian milk goats, and I warn you
that after you finish it you will want milk goats too. I had to
remind myself repeatedly that I wouldn't have been able to leave the
farm if I got milk goats and thus wouldn't have been on the cruise.
The book was almost blog-like in parts, a format that I obviously
enjoy. One chapter ran through the highlights of a season of
milking, day by day, and another chapter was a blow by blow account of
cheese-making. He mixed in some monks, a visit to artisanal
cheese-makers in France, and the effects that herding has had on our
language and culture. When I closed the cover, I could almost
smell new hay, meadow flowers, and goat cheese lingering in our cabin.
A week from today, Mark and I will be
climbing the Uxmal pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula. So this
week's lunchtime series is actually a two week series, spanning the
days we'll be away on our honeymoon.
Luckily, I found just
the book to fuel two weeks of permaculture musings: Designing
and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik. This
book was written about the time I entered third grade, but the facts
are nowhere near out of date. Actually, I can see where the
fascinating forest
garden book I read a
few months ago grew organically out of the rich compost of Robert
Kourik's guide.
Robert Kourik's
flawlessly researched and referenced book is also based on his years as
a landscape architect, tempting clients to include edible plants in
their ornamental gardens. This week's first half of the series
sums up his wisdom about the foundation of permaculture plantings ---
soil.
This post is part of our lunchtime series reviewing Robert Kourik's Designing and Maintaining your
Edible Landscape Naturally.
Read all of the entries:
Secrets of
shed building.com is jam packed with information on building a wide
variety of sheds. You can tell the people who put it together really
have a passion for everything shed related.
There's a place you can ask questions about your shed project with
someone to give qualified answers for free.
If building it yourself doesn't sound like fun then maybe you could get
something out of their review section of available shed kits and shed
building companies.
I think I might incorporate a few tips I've learned from this site into
our next firewood shed, but that won't happen until we fill the first
one up with split logs.
If you've ever wanted to have a table that eats food scraps and
entertains you with visions of worms crawling about, then Amy Young
has an interesting design you can build if you've got the stomach for
it.
It's basically a fancy worm bin with a low light security camera wired
up to an LCD screen embedded into the table for your viewing pleasure.
I like the idea, but wonder about the smell level and the possibility
of a fruit fly problem?
Anna and I finally got a chance to watch a film my cousin was in a
couple of years back and I couldn't resist the urge to swipe the scene
under the fair use doctrine. He's the one sleeping on a bench. I slowed
down the video to half speed so you won't miss him.
The film was directed by Fred Durst and it's a period piece set in the
early 1970's titled "The Education of Charlie Banks". It was a good
coming of age story that unfolded nicely and captured our attention.
Great job Ben, can't wait to see what you star in next.
Having 2 medium ratchet
straps made it possible to hold the freezer in place while I used
the other strap to finalize the mount.
Speaking of freezers, We saw a fresh independent film last month by the
name of Freezer
Burn. The hero is a quirky scientist who sells his house in order
to raise enough money to modify a freezer so that he can be frozen for
15 years in an effort to capture the attention of a girl he has a thing
for. It's that good kind of whacky that makes you feel just a little
bit more alive after viewing it. I give it 2 thumbs up for its charm
and wit.
I've had a few of those small ratchet straps
for a couple of years now and they really come in handy...but they also
have a problem getting hung up and stuck in some pretty nasty tangles
if the load shifts.
We got a set of the medium sized ones a few weeks ago and I'm still
kicking myself for wasting so much time on the small version. No more
pinched fingers and frayed straps with the bigger more substantial
mechanism.
Fowlvisions.com
has an interesting picture of an automatic chicken waterer one can
build from scrap material in 5 minutes or less.
This might be fine for small chicks who aren't strong enough yet to
knock it over, but once those little chickens start growing up they're
curiosity increases and eventually the clown of the group will get out
of hand one day and spill everybody's water all over the pretty wood
chips.
For just 15 bucks(shipping included) they could have ordered a do it
yourself kit from us and installed an Avian Aqua Miser in about
the same amount of time it took to throw a 2 liter plastic bottle into
a mixed nut container.
Today was the day our windshield wiper blades decided to give up the
ghost, and after stopping by 3 different auto part stores on our way
home we discovered that our Toyota Previa is rudely excluded from the
computer list of replacement wipers.
4 dollars worth of Rain-X solved the problem nicely. This stuff really
works. You just apply the transparent polymer to a clean and dry
surface, let it dry, and buff it in for a coat of near magical
protection.
If you have ever wanted to know more about
the mechanics of the mind and how consciousness works then you might
find a new website I discovered a few months ago of great value.
It's a husband and wife team that have struck out on their own with
what they call the Conscious
Media Network. They interview authors of books in the growing field
of consciousness and awareness and varying degrees of finding the
truth. They have hours and hours of interviews going back to 2005 and
it's all free at this time. You need to become a member to view the
interviews the same month they come out, but the archives are
generously offered as a gift to the public. I've heard enough really
good free interviews that I'll probably get around to sending them a
donation as a show of gratitude for a job well done.
Each interview is like a juicy sample snack of what new and or old
concept the author is exploring in their book or documentary. It's a
great way to taste a book and its essence before dedicating your
valuable time and resources to actually obtaining the book and finding
the time to read it. I dare anyone out there to listen to the Bob Dean
or Jim
Marrs interviews of the most far out and fantastic material
out there and try to dismiss what they're saying as "fantasy" or
"crackpottery". If anything it's going to really make you
think...Question Everything is the Conscious Media Networks motto and
it's a simple way to sum up this kind of search for truth at its most
fundamental level.
We tried incubating some eggs with an
incubator a couple of winters back and didn't have any to make it
because the outside temperature was fluctuating too much.
Chickenschickens.com
has a nice set of free plans to make your own brood box for the typical
Styrofoam incubator.
If I didn't have the Cochin hen to
do most of the mothering work I'd be building one of these to get ready
for operation brood.
I've had this 18 volt Black and Decker
Firestorm drill for over 4 years now and it's still as strong and
dependable as the first day I got it.
Its taken some serious drops and bangs over the years ...proving itself
in the heavy duty tool league at a price well below the heavier brands.
I've worn out one battery so far...but still have 2 more that provide
more than a day's worth of work at an impressive charge time.
1491's
summary of American Indian agricultural practices reveals societies
full of people a lot like current farmers. Neither Indians nor farmers aren Noble
Savages who live in totally harmony with the land, but we are constantly striving to achieve
a more sustainable system. I hope that recent forays into
permaculture show that we are on the cusp of reaching a new
relationship with the natural world.
Although I'm a bit sad to see my childhood image of Indians dashed, in
a way the reality is much cooler. I wonder what other ancient,
permaculture-like techniques scientists will turn up in the years to
come?
This post is part of our American Indian Permaculture lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
Mycelium
Running
- This is still one of the most fascinating books I've read this
year. Although my morel cultivation didn't work out, I'm going to
keep experimenting.
Edible
Forest Gardens, volume 2 - I'm still incorporating
this book's information into our gardening lives and I rank it right up
there with Mycelium
Running.
That reminds, I wanted to order the first volume in the set from
interlibrary loan....
The
Backyard Beekeeper -
I pored over this book for weeks when we started out with our bees, and
I still dip back into it. A keeper.
The
4-Hour Work Week
- Some books you love at the time, then forget about. This book
was the opposite. At first, I wasn't so sure that I liked it, but
I kept coming back to its advice as we developed our
microbusiness. Now I'm about due to re-read it.
The Good
Life - Bits of this
book keep popping back into my head, though it's not one I'd feel the
need to own.
A heavy
duty tarp has a million uses on a farm. Don't waste your time or
money on the lower grade tarps that barely last a few months before
they start showing signs of wear.
We put ours to use today on the roof over a trouble spot that insists
on leaking in the middle of our kitchen. With any luck it will stay dry
long enough to finish up the repair tomorrow.
TC1840H
Garden Cart
- I would recommend this cart to anyone. We've ridden it hard and
put it
to bed wet, and still it keeps right on hauling all of our household
and garden supplies.
Ridgid 1 HP Sump
Pump - This is our
well pump, and it keeps right on pumping like a dream!
Trake - I'd like to give this tool
six stars, but it would mess up my rating system. The trake makes
weeding a joy!
Heavy
hauler
- The heavy hauler continues to hold up under serious abuse. The
only downside is that it's hard to maneuver by hand --- keep it hitched
up to the golf cart or your lawn tractor and you'll be in good shape.
Mintcraft garden sprayer - A competent gadget for the
price. For under $20, what would you expect?
Everett sent us a Redi-Set Go Indoor
Grill to test out last week. While the recipes included were
aimed at the culinary illiterate, the grill itself worked like a
charm. I tested it out on fish patties and banana muffins and was
very impressed by the quick and easy cooking. Both came out
pleasantly browned with a crusty exterior and a moist interior. I
did have to use some oil despite the pans being non-stick. (This
may be par for the course --- I know very little about non-stick
surfaces.)
I think the grill may fill a nice niche in our cooking lives, fixing
small dishes which only Mark likes (such as the fish patties) or which
I want to whip together quickly in the morning (like the banana
muffins.) What I like the best is that the grill stores on its
end, so it only takes up about three or four inches of counter space.
My biggest warning --- don't open the enclosed recipe book and get
excited by the picture of lava cake muffins. That recipe is not
included. I guess I'll be looking for a good lava cake recipe now
--- anyone?
Fuji
Finepix S100fd
- We both still adore this camera. We've yet to use all of its
features, or to reach many limits in its abilities. The only
thing it
doesn't seem to do well is extremely low light conditions without a
flash, but I suspect we just haven't found the proper setting for that
yet.
Liquid
nails - I think that
if Mark had to choose between me and a lifetime supply of liquid nails,
it might be a hard choice....
Skil saw - This electric saw keeps
right on going. We often bring it with us when we need to do home
repairs away from the farm. Ultimate
sink strainer
- a piece broke off the bottom of one strainer under light wear, but
the lost piece didn't seem to affect the strainer's performance.
A great replacement to the dishrag mashed in the drain with a pint
canning jar.
pStyle - I thought the pStyle was a
great idea, but I forgot about it after a week. Must have been
the return of warm weather.
Champion
3000 watt generator
- It's sitting in the barn looking pretty. We've yet to have a
serious power outage, so haven't revved it up. We probably should
give it a spin, though, just to see how it works.
This post is part of our Re-Reviews lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
I like Chris and
Keri's automatic chicken door solution for several reasons. The design
is simple, solid, and cheap to do for under 20 bucks, and they have
detailed pictures with videos, and a wiring schematic to make the
process easy for someone who might want to follow in this direction.
I've been looking at several different versions of these automatic
doors on the internet and this is one of the first to use limit
switches, which might come in handy for future experiments.
This is a plan I would favor because of the low cost and easy to
follow directions. Thanks for sharing Chris and Keri.
Agroinnovations
podcast - Mark's
still listening regularly and enjoys their high quality archives.
Carcassone: The
Discovery - I still
adore this game, probably because I've only gotten to play it a half
dozen times when Joey and I get together.
Star Trek - still one of the best
movies we've seen all year. I suspect we'll watch it again a time
or two once it comes out on DVD.
C-realm
podcast - Mark
still listens to it every week when it comes out.
The Field
Lab
- He gets four stars just for showing up every day. The
information can be a bit repetitive, but Mark keeps going back for
more, watching the day by day unfolding of an American dream.
Yoga videos -
the winter retreated and yoga fled with it. I may go back to
these videos
when the cold weather returns, but we'll have to wait and see.
Countryside Magazine - seemed like a good
magazine, but I only have room for so many magazines in my life, so I
stopped reading.
Royalty free
music - Mark
thought this was cool, until he realized that it was far from
free. The music was vastly overpriced, and he won't be going back.
This post is part of our Re-Reviews lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Mark and I enjoy reviewing interesting
products, books, and other things which pass through our lives. A
lot of them seem really cool at the time, then fade into
obscurity. Others become integral parts of our lives.
Like a love affair, what counts isn't the first flush of lust, but the
lasting joy of togetherness. This week's lunchtime series
revisits some of the top products we've reviewed over the last ten
months to see which ones have sticking power.
This post is part of our Re-Reviews lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
ChickenCoopDoor.com
takes the guess work out of building your own automatic chicken coop
door opener with its complete kit for 150 dollars.
Could you build something cheaper that does the same thing? Maybe...
depending on your skill level and access to tools and supplies...and
then there's the time issue. I think we all can imagine a project like
this taking more hours than anticipated to get it just right.
Chances are if you are in need of such a device you want it right away
before some hungry raccoon decides to make a midnight snack out of your
best laying hen.
It seems like it would be worth the money, time, and emotional anguish
to splurge for the door if you prevent even one attack from happening.
Of course another solution is to abandon the coop concept and make your
birds a chicken
tractor, but I know that's just not possible for some folks.
While you're simplifying your chicken care lives, you might check out our homemade
chicken waterer.
I forget the name for these flip pliers. I
bought them during a stage of my life when I was doing industrial
fencing...that's chain link fence...not fancy sword fighting for some
corporate pirate outfit.
Some days I would spend hour after hour securing long lines of chain
link fence to its respective post. These pliers were good for that, but
not optimal. They mainly functioned as a back up to my heavier duty
set.
I thought this particular tool was gone forever in that vast vacuum of
nothingness that tools disappear to. It showed up earlier this week
when we were helping my mom with some home repair jobs. Somehow it got
mixed in with her tools and she was happy to match it back up with its
previous owner. Thanks Mom!
What I really like it for is the help it provides while I put together
the hanger portion of what I think is the best chicken waterer money
can buy. I used to use needle nose pliers, and then channel locks
to finish each hanger. Now I just give these flip pliers a West Side
Story switchblade twist and I'm switching tools without setting one
down.
I think this tool is on par with the Trake...yes,
it's that good.
This one is made by Scotch, and it's considered heavy duty. It was
about 10 bucks, which includes a small roll of tape.
It works better than the cheaper model we bought back in the winter,
and it has a nice feature that hides the cutting blades until one puts
pressure on the top guard.
I learned today not to leave even a little amount of water in the
sprayer after using it. It doesn't take long to get some algae buildup, which will clog the end of the sprayer that reaches the bottom of
the container.
It's pretty easy to clear the clog, which is another selling point for
the MintCraft garden
sprayer I reviewed last month.
I just found out about a fun new
website last night. (Thanks Maggie) It allows you to build a short
animation complete with your own custom dialog.
That's right. Just type in whatever you can think of and the actors do
their job. You then have some choices to spice it up.
A basic account is free. Anna and I played with it for about 20 minutes
last night and came up with the episode above. A premium account is
only 5 dollars a month.
I've been waiting a long time for technology to make computer animation
easier and more fun. It seems like that day is almost here if places
like xtranormal.com keep up
the good work of bringing esoteric image manipulations down to a cookie
cutter level.
Check out this one by rcg if
you want a good laugh.
The Boing
Boing crew pointed me towards the amazing results achieved by Mike Turner and the new aero
modification of his 1992 Honda Civic.
He's spent around 400 dollars and 250 hours of his time making the car
more aerodynamic. The inspiration came from some of the older designs
from the past that help to streamline air flow while decreasing fuel
intake.
This bit of tinkering has changed his drag coefficient from .34 to .17,
which can equal 90 MPG on a good day!
He claims that hitting a deer with a car like this scoops them up and
over with minimal damage to car and deer. That would make it worth the
400 bucks right there. Watch this 8 second video
if you have any doubts.