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.

Harbor Freight in Johnson City is an awesome store!

The manager was in a good mood and gave us the additional 2 year warranty on each solar power kit along with the portable power packs.

Stay tuned for more details as I unbox and set up this new technology.

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.

Big thanks go out to Travis and Kacy for the nice post they wrote about us.

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".

I went back to BFR Mulch for two scoops of aged oak mulch today.

It's an excellent product that made Anna smile when she noticed the rich organic smell.

It was 21 bucks per scoop, which is about half of what The Mulch Company demands for their mulch which is made from pine.

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.

The new NcSTAR red/green laser is now mounted and ready for action.

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.

I first discovered permaculture pioneer Sepp Holzer when I posted about do it yourself aquaponics back in the spring.

The guy from Richsoil.com got a chance to spend 12 days with Sepp and he did a great job of documenting his visit with pictures, videos, and detailed descriptions of the Sepp Holzer style of permaculture.

Richsoil.com also has an in depth section on his experiences and observations with raising chickens that I found informative and useful.

The K9 electric pet barrier continues to keep Lucy from even coming close to the chicken pasture area.

It seems to have taken only one zap to get the point across.

I'm thinking of unplugging it to see if the threat alone is enough to keep her away.

Our Black and Decker 18 volt drill has been replaced with a DeWalt.

You can feel the increased power and torque the first time you use this beauty.

Well worth the extra cost if you find yourself delving into more advanced projects.

The Champion generator started on the second pull Monday night when the power first failed here.

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.

Was that a Snap On magnetic, ratcheting, screwdriver I saw in yesterday's picture of the plastic hose repair kit?

Kevin, Carlsbad, CA.

You've got a keen eye for quality.

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.

Did we really need the extra Trake?

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:

 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.

When I first discovered that I'd ordered the wrong flywheel puller I had a brief fantasy of fabricating one of my own to get the job done.


I never could figure out a decent direction to go in and decided to give up on it for a while and just mow with the semi un-balanced blade.




Well some guy with an interesting blog named Ed had a bit more gumption than I did and almost made his own diy flywheel puller tool pictured here.

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?

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!

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 store is 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, 3^rd 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.

The meat of square foot gardening is permanent beds, but Mel Bartholomew didn't invent the concept.  Alternative gardeners have been using permanent beds for a long time --- for example, camellones have been used in Central America for centuries.  My own garden is completely made up of permanent raised beds, both because our soil tends to get waterlogged and because I want to concentrate the topsoil and prevent soil compaction.

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.)

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.

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.

I know why the caged gate swings, oh me,

When its frame is warped and its hinges sore,

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.

 

I really enjoyed the recent interview with Frank Aragona on the Diet Soap podcast.

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.

As you've probably surmised, I'm intrigued by traditional methods of gardening and farming.  In previous lunchtime series, I've explored Central American farming, Chinese farming, and tropical forest gardens from around the world.  This week I want to look at a gardening technique that is much less exotic --- British cottage gardening.

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.

 

There's a really good wiki-how that sums up what you need to know about sharpening your chainsaw with a hand file.

It seems the experts suggest a machine grinding at a shop after every 5 hand sharpening episodes.

You can buy small attachments for a Dremel to make the job easier, but these little hand files are a lot cheaper.

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 Ultimate Cheapskate's Roadmap to True Riches by Jeff Yeager --- if you need some more help learning to save money, this book should be on your reading list.
• 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.

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?

 

A perfect complement to yesterday's solar powered automatic chicken coop opener would be this portable hyrdogen generator.

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.

The price is 324 dollars and maybe worth it if you don't have the skill and time to build an automatic chicken coop door yourself.

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.

We got the Chopper 1 axe up and running thanks to a couple of replacement springs and clips from the Chopper 1 website.

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!

And have a great 2010!

This hand saw might look a little on the cheap side with its plastic handle and small size...but it cuts like the Dickens.

You will be impressed at how fast this thing can cut through a tree limb.

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.

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:

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.

 

In doing some research for an upgrade to the home made cat door I stumbled upon this fascinating project by Quantumpicture.com.

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.

 

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.

A clever solution for someone with limited time and space who wants to turn their old broken refrigerator into a functional root cellar.

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.

We've been using these light duty water hoses for about 3 years now and the only disadvantage I can see is the ease at which they tend to kink up.

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.

 

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.

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?

Books:

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.

Letters from the Hive - A fun book, but I passed it on and didn't miss it.

Full Moon Feast - Falls into the Letters from the Hive category.  A good book to check out of the library.

The Ultimate Cheapskate - I enjoyed this book at the time, but I honestly can't say I remember much about it.

  

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.

Garden and water tools:

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!

Thousand gallon tank - Still plugging right along, making our life easier.

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?

Kink-free flex hose adapter - still keeping our well hose kink-free many months later.

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?

Home and shop tools:

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....

Palomino grain cowhide gloves - Still Mark's all-time favorite gloves.

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.

  

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.

While we're on the topic of automatic chicken care, check out our homemade chicken waterer which gives your birds clean water for days.

Podcasts, games, magazines, movies, and websites:

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.

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.

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.

We upgraded to a second packaging tape dispenser recently to speed things along in the Avian Aqua Miser building process.

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.

  

These small turnbuckles pack a lot of punch for just 2 dollars.

It's just the thing for getting a grape trellis post nice and taut.