Pondering the Big Picture as the year begins
Posted: January 14, 2013 Filed under: 1. Philosophy, 3. Food Security Comments Off on Pondering the Big Picture as the year begins
Homemade crackers
So an arch druid and an economist walk into a bar…
Being stuck inside due to our weather, I tend to read/plan more in the winter. This fascinating interview by a serious economic mind and the head arch druid leader in North America is one of the more interesting things I’ve read in recent months. It relates to my annual reconsideration of the Big Picture and how we are relating to the world both professionally and personally.
I’m finding it exhausting to pursue both Lifeboat strategy personally and Powerdown strategy professionally (both useful terms from Richard Heinberg). Since I’m not really sure what the alternative is, I plan to continue this for 2013, but the danger is I don’t do either one really well.
This month’s highlights and lowlights…
- My wife’s ability to make the most amazing things, like the $50 in crackers you see pictured here from about $3 worth of store-bought flour/oil and our herbs. This combined with her kale butter is amazing. And preparing it as a family is a good reminder of what life can be. Simple conversations. Simple preparations.
- Toby Hemenway’s latest essay on nomads and the culture of fear we’ve created.
- Our new flock of Golden Comet chickens are cranking out the eggs. 20+ eggs per day from a flock of 30. In the middle of winter. With no heat nor light supplements. Just happy free-ranging birds on pasture with an open sided chicken tractor to protect them from the elements.
- Our greenhouse has literally every surface covered in healthy lettuce, but with the lack of heat and sun, the growth is stunted. They’re in excellent soil in 6″ pots. Think I need to thin the trees nearby to get more winter sun.
- We lost two of our three bee hives yesterday. One to the cold and the other (perhaps) to Nosema. Given that all three hives were literally humming with activity three weeks ago when I last replaced the feeders, I’m going to rethink my strategy of minimal harvesting to help them overwinter. On the plus side, one hive had left plenty of food left, so we get to harvest honey from a full box of frames this week.
Buying nothing new (except toilet paper)
Posted: November 4, 2012 Filed under: 2. Water Security, 3. Food Security, 5. Alt Transportation, 6. Personal Training Comments Off on Buying nothing new (except toilet paper)
As our rains and colder weather invade, we button up many of our outside projects and batten down the mini-hoop houses, cloches, and Agribon paper to extend our growing season. The remaining chili peppers – full grown but still green – will be brought in to ripen inside, and the water cisterns will be flushed/cleaned so they can quickly refill for emergency water storage during winter storm power outages.
And so we turn our attention to inside projects like bread-making, cheese-making, and another One Year experiment (our last one was on transportation). A few months ago we began a one year experiment of Buying Nothing New other than food, vitamins, and toilet paper to see how we would fair on 12 months of salvaged, repurposed, or used items. For example, we’ve shifted our apparel purchases to consignment shops (both local and online) for our fast-growing kids and for ourselves as we wear through items working in the garden.
The effect of “buying used” has had an interesting affect on us of actually acquiring *more* stuff in my life. Yikes! We’re actually buying more stuff now than we were before, because our brains were thinking “Oh, I’m saving money because it is used!”
But of course, we’re not. We’re spending cash where we were not before. And we now have more stuff coming into our lives, which is the opposite of the our previous simplification focus. Now that we recognize the behavior change, we’ve corrected it. But for several months, this experiment was clearly a wash (at best) on our finances. I expect we’ll begin making gains now.
Highlights:
- Lessons learned re: our Buy Nothing New experiment. Time to combine a repurpose focus with a simplification focus!
- Cool weather crops coming on strong; warm weather crops still doing well under their cold frames.
- Addition of a Kenyan bee hive (aka Top Bar) that I’m bee-sitting for a friend who is injured. Fun to learn a new style of beekeeping.
- Giving away our honey to friends and family as gifts!
- Renewed interest in finishing my book on Prepared Neighborhoods (citizen-led emergency preparedness at the neighborhood level) and reinvigorating our own town’s preparedness activities.
Lowlights:
- The biggest lowlight for our country is seeing the suffering of our East Coast neighbors from the superstorm. So, so, so wish more towns had citizen-led preparedness projects underway. We can’t rely on our government to bail us out; they are going to have their hands full just repairing the core infrastructure.
- The biggest lowlight for me personally is literally the low light. Time to start taking Vitamin D supplements and St. John’s Wort to ward off Seasonal Affective Disorder.
- Learning from our failures for the Buy Nothing New experiment that were not always so fun. Example: had to buy a new car tire jack in a hurry (no time to search for a used or salvage option) when I discovered our Nissan Leaf does not ship with a spare tire nor a jack. It was a bit of dumb thinking on Nissan’s part that was not fun to discover as we blew the tire away from home – surprising given the Nissan engineers got so many other details about the Leaf correct.
True Wealth; True Health
Posted: October 1, 2012 Filed under: 1. Philosophy, 2. Water Security, 3. Food Security, 4. Energy Security, 8. Wealth Management Comments Off on True Wealth; True Health
True Wealth – Winter Warmth
Our heat (and sun) is leaving us too quickly for my taste. I find myself going outside every chance I get while taking work phone calls to enjoy the last days of our sunshine and mild weather.
Hoping we retain enough heat in the next few weeks for our chili peppers to ripen on the vine but they’re all huge so finishing them off inside would not be so bad.
This month’s learnings to share with both highlights and lowlights…
Beauty Set Into Strength
Highlights:
- An appreciation of true wealth (2-3 winter’s worth of good Douglas Fir stored) and true health (a year’s worth of garlic in storage).
- The entrepreneurial spirit I see in my son with his care and responsibility for our chickens and his egg business
- The joy on my daughter’s face as her toes wiggle out another huge potato. We had several 5 gallon buckets worth of gorgeous red-white-blue volunteer potatoes despite planting no new eyes this past year.
- New woodsheds were made by a local woodworker father-son crew and purchased via barter. Love barter deals!
- Steady supply of salad through the heat weeks where normally everything bolts. My wife’s brilliant idea was to create a new bed in the shade, and the lettuce transplants there did wonderfully!
True Health – Garlic and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Lowlights:
- Almost blowing up myself and my house. Nicked the copper feed line for my generator’s propane tanks when trimming the bamboo surrounding it. One little spark from my shears before I got the tanks shut down would have been a disaster.
- Another failed corn year (four in a row!) after a promising start. Think my problem this year was lack of water. Will push out drip irrigation to the corn next year and tie into my timer system.
- Actually, it’s hard to think of many lowlights from this past month. It’s gorgeous and pleasant most every day outside this time of year and we’re not suffering from the droughts plaguing the rest of the country. Sunshine, blue skies, white clouds, gorgeous mountains, and deep healthy forests. It all goes a long way to erase work stress, crop failures, and any other problems. Feeling very grateful at this time of year as we head into Harvest Festivals and the celebration of this season’s bounty.
End of summer summary
Posted: September 3, 2012 Filed under: 1. Philosophy, 2. Water Security, 3. Food Security, 5. Alt Transportation Comments Off on End of summer summary
Well, our summer here does not really end until late September, but for most of my friends around the country, Back to School means Summer End.
A quick summary of learnings to share with both highlights and lowlights.
Highlights:
- Successful brooding of next batch of laying chickens. All 25 Golden Comets survived and transferred well to our Andy Lee style of day ranging chicken tractors.
- Very high production continued for berries as well as many of the vegetables.
- Learned why our 30+ blueberry bushes were just doing mediocre (surrounding strawberries too healthy and grabbing all the nutrients at the same shallow soil level) and how to fix it (transplant strawberries down to food forest and surround each blueberry bush with aged sawdust, which I can get for free).
- Fruit trees bore a decent amount of fruit for the first time. That taste on some of these like the cherries and asian pears is amazing compared to store bought (even organic + local). The ability to wait until the exact day of full ripeness makes an enormous difference in the taste.
- Surprising crop of volunteer potatoes. For planting zero seed potatoes this past year, we’ve got enough of a crop of volunteers to last us several months.
- A monster amount of tomatillos and tomatoes are coming in, which combined with our cilantro and hot peppers, is making for some awesome salsa.
- Bumper crop of peppers, both sweet and hot. Not much makes me happier than cayenne and habanero peppers.
Lowlights:
- Lost another bird to an eagle attack, despite the ceiling. Found the hole that the eagle did after the fact to close it up. Bummer.
- Forgot to switch from my rainwater harvesting cisterns over to the well water at the beginning of the irrigation season, and promptly drained my backup water in just three weeks. Won’t get to refill them until the rains return in force this fall.
- Another year of multiple failed carrot plantings. I lose some to wild rabbits, some to potato bugs, and some to I-don’t-know-what. Top of mind to fix for next year. Trying a different type of carrot for overwintering this year.
- On the alternative transportation front, finally broke down and bought a replacement battery for my electric bike after I toasted my old battery. $450…ouch! But love being back on my bike, especially in these sunny months.
Mid-summer update
Posted: July 2, 2012 Filed under: 3. Food Security, 6. Personal Training | Tags: colony collapse, Golden Comet chickens, greenhouse transplants, raccoon attack, scythe Comments Off on Mid-summer update
Planting soil blocks with daughter
As we finish “Junuary” and hope to see the sun more in July, here’s a quick mid-summer update:
Highlights:
- We have 25 new Golden Comets in the brooder. Should be ready to head outside before winter weather sets in.
- Most of the transplants from our new greenhouse are now surviving – including typically tough ones like corn – as I’m learning how to do soil blocks better.
- We’ve got very heavy berry production this year (thanks bees!), including some first-timers like honey berries. With my wife’s diligent harvesting, we’re putting 1-2 gallon bags of berries in the chest freezer per day, and still have plenty to share. I’m seeing the direct benefit of berry management techniques like pruning and directing.
- We’re seeing excellent growth on the kiwis (hard and fuzzy) and grapes (table and raisin). We’re adding trellis structures to guide and support, as well as learning grape management techniques. And seeing our first clusters this year!
A single day’s harvest of strawberries
Lowlights
- Experienced my first bee colony collapse, which was puzzling and frustrating as it was the “strong” hive that made it through the winter, but other two new hives are thriving.
- I learned painful lesson of what happens when a farmer gets lazy. I knew the grass under the electronet was too high and likely shorting out the electricity protecting the chickens from raccoon and coyote attack. Two raccoons killed three chickens and mortally wounded two others before I got down there. Very upset with myself that our birds suffered the brunt of my lesson learned about laziness.
- Cracked my primary scythe blade went hitting an unknown piece of rebar in 3′ high pasture grass. Purchased two replacements that are more appropriate sizes, both of which are awesome.
Hope your summer is going well!
Cloche experiments
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: 3. Food Security Comments Off on Cloche experiments
In an effort to both reuse the plastic jugs in which we buy our raw milk, and to protect seedlings from marauding rabbits, we’re trying an experiment with cloches this year.
Some early transplants out of the greenhouse are seen here on their cloches (spiked down for wind), along with the secondary security system against all things rabbit-y, the German Shepherd.
On the anatomy of thrift
Posted: April 26, 2012 Filed under: 1. Philosophy, 3. Food Security Comments Off on On the anatomy of thriftFrom the island just south of ours. Brilliantly done.
Four year old beekeeper installs new queens
Posted: April 23, 2012 Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: beekeeping with kids, no bump bee installation Comments Off on Four year old beekeeper installs new queens
Using the no-bump method again this year, my four year old helped me install two new colonies of bees this year.
She was thrilled to hold two queens in her hand (still in their travel boxes of course) and to wear my suit.
No stings, happy bees, and a happy future beekeeper. That’s a good day.
Open source blueprints for civilization
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: 2. Water Security, 3. Food Security, 4. Energy Security | Tags: farmhack, Marcin Jakubowski Comments Off on Open source blueprints for civilization
Do you love farm hacks as much as I do? If so, check out this mother-of-all hacks architected by Marcin Jakubowski.
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, Jakubowski is open-sourcing the 50 most-used farm machines that can be built cheaply from scratch.
TED Talks calls his Global Village Construction Set a “civilization starter kit.” At just $10K that could be shared among several micro-farmers and permaculture enthusiasts, I call it affordable.
The greenhouse is a spring board
Posted: March 31, 2012 Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: greenhouse Comments Off on The greenhouse is a spring board
What a great tool a greenhouse is for rapidly launching healthy seedlings into the garden and food forest.
Our current work flow consists of seeds started under grow lights in our garage, then potted up into the unheated greenhouse, and then on to the raised bed gardens or food forest (although the heat lovers may stay in the greenhouse indefinitely).
Best of all is the space we have to grow seedlings for other folks; I’ve begun paying folks with bartered seedlings as folks in our zone begin thinking about setting out food plants for the spring.
This is the view out our bathroom window into the attached, lean-to style greenhouse. Makes me smile every morning.
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