KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Tag: starting from scratch (page 2 of 2)

Pig Tractors?

We cleared some land this weekend, opening up a large area under an old, probably coppiced oak that was dying. We cleared out the underbrush of pines, black cherry, small oaks and briars, and cleaned up some old trash that had accumulated over the years. Were not sure what we’d like to do with this spot, maybe some combination of extending the garden, terracing the bottom slope, and adding some nice fruit trees and shrubs to stabilize the upper slope while provided a nice treat to enjoy while savoring the view from the oak stump seats.

Whatever we decide to do, the area needs some work first. There is a patch of poison oak nearby, and I don’t know if opening up the area will discourage or encourage its growth. Also, by removing the big oak and letting in all that sun, I’m sure we will see some interesting things popping up this spring/summer. Most likely, if left to it’s devices, this area would success to blackberry, pine, and Bradford Pear seedlings like the big field across Bridey’s Run. By planting productive species early, we should be able to stay 1 step ahead of this pioneer stage, and not have to deal with a tangled up thorny mess.

This brings us back to pigs. Pot bellied pigs to be exact. These little rooters could be a huge asset to the farm by rooting out undesirable species, clearing brush, and adding copious amounts of fertile manure to the land. I can envision sitting a Joel Salatinstyle pig tractor, similar to a chicken tractor, right over our patches of poison oak and ivy and letting them go to town. Then, after a week or so, we can plant fast growing shrubs and trees, or lay down mulch and transplant tomatoes into the freshly prepared soil.

So that’s what I’m thinking right now. About getting a few pot bellied pigs to raise as breeding stock, and eventually bacon, in a movable pasture/woods based forage system. A pig tractor. Details to come on its design, size, and construction.

 

Hand Dug Pond: Stage 1

First off, happy birthday Heidi!

Today felt like spring. I was excited and invigorated, so I decided to do some outdoor chores.

I pruned our dwarf apple trees, and started my apple propagation by cuttings experiment (more on that another day). While walking around the yard and enjoying the weather, I revisited an idea I had about digging a small garden pond near our raised beds.

hand dug pond

Some of the tools I used to dig our micro garden pond.

I’ve researched and Googled tiny ponds a few times, and I just felt like trying. I used a few different tools; a shovel, mattock, maul for tamping, and some post hole diggers, as well as a wheelbarrow. I moved from one tool to the next depending on what worked best at the time, for about 3 hours, and the end result is a nicely shaped, roughly 5 ft. diameter oval pond that is 3 feet at the deepest below ground level.

I’m not yet sure if I will impound any water with a dam, but I did separate the topsoil from the subsoil, which is primarily mineral rich clay.

hand dug pond

The beginnings of our new 5 ft. diameter and 3 ft. deep tiny pond.

There are a few options for the final layout of this small pond, and It has the potential to interact with all of our garden swales. I may even have it completely surround our yaupon holly onto an island. We’ll decide soon.

I learned a few things today, that hand digging a micro pond is not that difficult, and that you can accomplish significant water capture very quickly. Also, don’t overload your wheelbarrow in muddy conditions. It will get stuck and tear up the land, or worse fall over and spill it contents in the wrong place. This concept would apply to bigger earth-movers as well in any other permaculture mainframe installation.

I’ll keep you updated on the hand dug pond, and I recommend getting out there and playing in the mud. You can really, really learn a lot about your land when it’s up to your chest!

our first mushroom adventure: which mushrooms will be magic for us?

we will begin our first homestead mushroom adventure next week, when my father comes to help me cut 30 to 40 red oak mushroom logs for our spring mushroom inoculation!

my father has raised mushrooms before and he is going to be a great resource when we start this mushroom adventure.

on the eve of cutting our mushroom logs–in 3 and 4 foot lengths–i’ve been doing some research on which mushrooms we want to begin raising this year.

here is a summary of what i’ve found on the 4 mushroom types we’re interested in raising, including the health benefits, flavor profile, and the meaning of the mushroom names (how i love to learn about the meaning of names!).

shiitake

drying shiitake mushrooms, photo courtesy jmurawski

shiitake (lentinula edores)

  • shii is the name of the tree, related to beech and oak, that these mushrooms naturally grow on in japan, and take simply means “mushroom.”
  • this mushroom is the species that my father has experience raising and we plan to inoculate most of our logs with these spores.
  • shiitake, like all of the mushrooms mentioned here, are anti-tumor, help to detoxify the body, boost immune function, and regulate blood pressure.
  • to me they taste like calamari when sauteed and are excellent cooked in mass  quantities with nothing more than soy sauce!
  • their fruiting temperature is 50-80 degrees F.
  • their favorite wood is oak.
reishi

red reishi mushrooms, photo courtesy Wendell Smith

reishi, ling chi, or ling zhi (ganoderma lucidum)

  • this mushroom’s scientific name means “shining skin, shining,” named for its glossy sheen.
  • reishi mushrooms contain ganoderic acids which alleviate allergies by inhibiting histamine release. they also improve liver function, and thus help with detoxification.
  • eating this mushroom is said to provoke feelings of peace and relaxation.
  • their fruiting temperature is 70-80 degrees F.
  • their preferred wood is oak.
maitake

a delicious maitake mushroom, photo courtesy Janet Hudson

maitake (grifola frondosa)

  • grifola refers to the mythological griffin. it is also called “hen of the woods.”
  • it is very popular among mushroom lovers!
  • this mushroom stabilizes blood sugar, blood pressure, and may have an effect on free radicals.
  • their fruiting temperature is 50-65 degrees F.
  • their preferred wood is oak.
  • click here for a great article on maitake mushrooms.
mushroom

lion’s mane mushrooms, photo courtesy Wendell Smith

lion’s mane (hericium erinaceus)

  • in korean it is called “deertail mushroom,” and you can see why. how cool!
  • this mushroom helps with memory and can even ward off dementia by stopping neurological breakdown. it also relieves digestive tract issues such as ulcers, and can aid is fighting digestive tract cancers.
  • their fruiting temperature is 60-75 degrees F.
  • their preferred wood is oak, but they also like maple.
  • click here for a great article on lion’s mane mushrooms.

for more information or for placing your own mushroom spore order, check out fungi perfecti and mushroom people.

.:.

our new egg labels: kuska wiñasun gets fancy!

egg carton

our new egg labels!

i’m so excited about our new egg labels.

they are simple, but perfect for us right now. these new labels are adhered to the top of blank egg cartons. so far we’ve given away about a dozen dozens of eggs–most of them in our new packaging.

on our labels, we’ve noted the chicken breeds that are producing the eggs and the name of our eggs: aurora eggs. aurora means dawn in spanish and also reminds jason and i of the northern lights. we’ve named our eggs after the dawn because of the color of their yolk: bright orange (especially after breaking open the yolk)!

at first i wished for a colored label, but since we do not have a color printer i realized that a colored label might not be worth all the effort and/or cost. now i’ve come to love the simple, black-and-white label with the easy-to-read design. plus, i think our eggs are colorful enough!

we’re excited to share our eggs and to see if any of our pals will be interested in procuring any more from us in the future…

.:.

children’s homestead books: it’s never too early or too late to start collecting

jason and i are still a few years off from having children but we started collecting children’s books 2 years ago when we worked, for a short time, organizing thousands of books for an old book store.

both of us have always loved books, and i especially have always cherished children’s books. when he and i combined our libraries, we ended up with a double serving of every harry potter book and various other folk tales, fairy tales, myths, and legends for children.

courtesy of abee5

after viewing many kid’s books at the old book store, we realized that a lot of them were in alignment with the life lessons and science/nature topics that we really hoped our child would have in their children’s books. so, we decided to buy a lot of them for our future child(ren)!

among the ones that drew our eye the most were those that were set on a farm, homestead, or in and among nature. some of the titles that i was most excited to see and read were:

  • henrietta and the hat, written by mabel watts and illustrated by joan miller–in this tale, henrietta the horse desires a farmer’s hat. but, once the farmer is done with it, he uses it for other things and does not give it to her. over time, the hat gets worn out, all the while becoming more and more perfect for henrietta. in the end, perhaps she gets the hat after all…
  • the great race, written and illustrated by paul goble–based on cheyenne and sioux mythologies, this beautifully illustrated tale tells how humans gained control over the mighty buffalo, with the help of a certain magpie ally.
  • stopping by woods on a snowy evening,written by robert frost and illustrated by susan jeffers–this beautifully illustrated version of robert frost’s classic poem is illustrated in simple, black-and-white with splashes of color throughout. a treat!

although we chose many fiction books (oh, how i love fiction–especially fantasy and/or magical realism), i noticed that we trended toward choosing books that were based around the animal world (as many kid’s books are) where the main characters prove to be very brave and/or kind and unfailing loving.

the non-fiction that we chose were very science and fact based, usually also about animals or nature. some of my favorites of these are:

  • bats, written by celia brand–this book is one of many of the eyes on nature series, which features many species of animals and includes dozens and dozens of fantastic bat close-up photos and interesting facts.
  • desert discoveries, written by ginger wadsworth and illustrated by john carrozza–this book hosts beautiful drawings of desert animals with accompanying factoids. kids are also asked to find certain animals in a picture, and the book thus becomes a where’s waldo? of the desert!
  • water dance, written and illustrated by thomas locker–this peaceful text talks about the water cycle in a rare, poetic form. this book certainly inspires awe in me.

also, we selected some books from the early 1900s which amazed us! one of these is called trees every child should know by julia e. rogers (copyright 1909) and it is a full length, 250+ page guide to identifying trees native to the united states. i was immediately excited about the potential for this book to educate me about trees just as much as my children. and, what a concept that needs renewing… the fact that there are trees that every kid should know!

i’ve realized through the process of creating a children’s library in our home, how selective i actually am about the kinds of books that my children will read–at least at first. of course our library will grow once these children actually exist, and the shelves will undoubtedly be lined with ballerina and/or zombie tales, but for their early years i would like them to start off by connecting to reading in a different way. i want their reading to be linked with learning, awe, and the true nature of the world–that’s why i am drawn to books about nature, science, “magic,” and relationships.

the way i see it, there will be plenty of time for them to identify other exciting themes and topics that they want to read about (and i by no means plan to limit their interests in any way), but in the beginning of their understanding of reading, i want to be able to read them books into which i can graft my own awe and joy, so that my excitement about nature, animals, loving, and living will be palpable for them.

later, when they can read the words themselves, i fully expect to see them reading some books that i would not have been caught dead opening in my own childhood (really? the power rangers?).

it would seem that the books we’ve chosen supplement very well what we have chosen to do here on our homestead: work towards self-reliance, build relationships that last with each other and our land and animals, value nature and all that comes with that, and find awe and joy in the little (but very big!) things in life.

this is my sense of peace and happiness and i hope to instill that in my children, in a small part through the books that they hear me read to them as babies and as little, young, monkey kids.

.:.

our garden: just the beginning

since we moved to our new, 16 acre land in march of 2013, we’ve added the first portion of our backyard garden. it took time and effort, but all of the work has been rewarding and all the fruits of our labor (vegetables, really) have been delicious!

the picture below shows what our yard looked like before we started digging…

backyard before garden

a picture of the backyard of our home a few months before we purchased it in march of 2013

and here is the first step we undertook in building the beds:

hugelkultur experiment

digging the first, and most downhill bed

since we wanted raised beds, first we dug down about 8 inches and scooped the soil out. as you can see from both pictures, we decided to line a portion of this bed with small, felled trees and dead brush. this was jason’s hugelkulture project and he wanted to experiment with how much the slow rotting and decomposition of the wood would benefit the roots of the plants growing above. the portion of the bed that is unfilled was later filled with leaf mold from the woods. this was my project: i wanted to see how the decomposing leaf mold would benefit the plants in much the same way as the decomposing wood. after filling the ditch with these materials, we layered all of the dirt on top and dug out an adjacent path (also about 8 inches deep) and placed that dirt on top too.

making a hugelkultur raised bed

the base of the bed–half filled with small trees

the reason for the half-and-half bed liner was simple: i wanted to do it one way and jason wanted to do it another way. so, we compromised and split the bed in two. this way, he could have it his way, and i could have it my way!

later in the season we planted tomatoes, peppers, basil, amaranth, chia, squash, potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, and various other crops. considering that we started everything much later than desired, the garden made quite a bit for us this year (much more on this later).

you can see our small dwarf apple tree in the foreground of the the picture below, and the tomato cages; we use woven wire bound in cylinders and pinned to the ground with bent electrical piping (my father’s tried and true method).

the first season's planting in our garden

the first season’s planting in our garden

our sweet potato vines really took over and yielded around 120 pounds of “wild man candy bars,” as my father calls them. you can see the lush vines in the second nearest bed.

raised beds with sweet potatoes, chia, peppers and tomatoes

the first season’s planting in our garden. you can see our barn in the background.

all in all, it was a great year for our first garden together. we learned something about compromise and also what you do when groundhogs threaten to eat all of your sweet potato vines…

i also documented each of the planting and harvest dates for our crops and whether or not each crop was deemed a success or a dud.

i will be posting the calendar that we followed this year and the outcome of our different plantings soon. this way, perhaps we can start a dialogue about planting and harvesting in our region!

.:.

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