Day 28: Learning, Doing and Getting It Done.

No, the raised beds aren't done yet. I am in the middle of a two day headache. Who knows how far out it's going to go? I am not having a migraine, thank goodness, but it is keeping me down. I might finish up attaching the stakes to the long sides of the bed frame, and drilling the holes where the ends of the long sides screw into the braces. I don't think I'll get them put together and on the ground today. It  just feels as though my brains are bleeding out through my eye sockets.

Last week I sent a letter off to the Zoning Officer. I haven't heard back from him yet. Sometimes I think it is just easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission. No one would have been any the wiser had I just gone ahead and gotten the chickens and rabbits. Now they're going to be looking at everything I do. Honestly, I detest living in a society that seeks so hard to protect its citizens that it smothers them. I would think my neighbors and I would be able to figure something out together. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking. Maybe we can't count on each other being reasonable anymore, and living in such close proximity to each other requires a person to be either reasonable, or regulated.

I have been reading a rather good book about seed saving and growing heirloom fruits and vegetables. It is called, Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. It is very complete, almost a text book on the subject. Unlike a text book, it is fairly easy to understand. Much of it I already knew from various biology classes I've taken, but it goes over pollination in greater detail. Also, population size has a great deal to do with successfully saving healthy, genetically diverse seed for future generations. I am not sure that I can overcome that hurdle. If I have to save seeds from 20 - 100 plants to ensure genetic strength, I will be using most of what I grow just to produce seeds, not for eating. Maybe I can make arrangements with other gardeners. I'm not sure another gardener would trust the seeds of a newbie though, and for good reason. It could wipe out everything they've worked hard to achieve.

As far as the raised beds go, I have the short ends completed. I bought 14 pieces of 5/4" x 6" x 12' cedar planks, 7 pieces of 5/4" x 6" x 8' cedar and a bunch of lengths of 2" x 2" cedar to cut 6" braces from. I bought a bunch of treated wooden stakes to help keep the long sides from bowing. I cut the eight foot lengths in half and drilled and screwed them into the 6" brace pieces. It was a fairly easy process, but I did break one bit, and an older bit seemed to be very dull and it eventually became so clogged with wood bits and sap that it no longer functioned. I already said what I have left to do, but with this headache it seems a bit daunting. My youngest daughter is going to help me tomorrow. That should make the task a bit easier and also provide some needed motivation to get it done. There's nothing like an audience to get you putting out an honest day's work! The photos here show the work I've done on the beds so far.

Day 19: I've Done It Now!

Here is where procrastination meets terror. I have all of my plants ordered, including 13 fruit and nut trees. The only things I have not ordered are raspberry canes and blueberry bushes. What I have not done, is terrifying. I have not got the raised beds constructed, nor have I physically gone out into the yard to place where the trees will be planted. And I have not started my seeds yet. This is the ugliness of my adopted nature. I am a terrible procrastinator, or Terribilis cunctatrix in Latin. I absolutely have to finish the beds this week. Even if I don't have everything I need for the fence, the beds must get done. I also have to start the seeds. I hope they all get here today.

I spoke to the local Zoning Officer for my township and found out that I cannot have chickens or rabbits on my one acre. It seems some few years ago, before this draconian ordinance was adopted, it was perfectly legal to have farm animals on your property. Now you must be the proud owner of 6 or more acres of land. What happened to make the council adopt such a drastic piece of law? Apparently a resident decided that they wanted to operate a hog farm on their one acre plot. He had 50 pigs at the time the council put their foot down. The Zoning Officer did tell me that all ordinances are written to have variances considered, bless his heart! So I have to write a letter to him the describes exactly what I want to do, and he will deny my request. That is what then gets the ball rolling on a variance. I am relatively certain that I can argue for a limited number of chickens and rabbits on my land. Then again, you never really know how immovable people are until you try to reason with them.

I have thought about the design for my smoker and have settled on using our old chest freezer as the "house" part of the smoke house. I bought some of the piping and fitting that will be needed. I even bought the cutest little chimney cap for it! I need to find some screen material to keep bugs out of the house, but that is all I need to get it built. Oh! I need something for the fire containment, but I haven't found that yet. I'll try to post photos of the project or maybe a video. It should be fun!

It's supposed to rain for the next few days. I expect that means I'll be paying the price for putting off building the beds for my garden. Terribilis nego Cunctatrix!

Day 15: Thinking Out of the Box For Daily Solutions to Problems.

I hate to admit it, but I am agreeing with liberals on something. We are living an unsustainable lifestyle. I have been groggily pondering this for several years, but I didn't wake up until my iPod Touch died. Rather it suffered from reduced usefulness. The battery is going bad in it and it no longer holds a charge. I had heard that Apple has a program for refurbishing old iPods and then selling them for a reasonable price. Apparently reasonable is a term that takes meaning in the mind of the individual considering its meaning. To me, charging nearly the same price as new was not my definition of the word reasonable. They have purposefully engineered their product to die and be useless after 2 - 3 years. I refuse to do that anymore. And then it struck me that for years I had been joking about planned obsolescence, and now I was clearly seeing it in action. What else do we commonly buy that follows roughly the same pattern? I really don't want to play that game anymore. I don't want to make myself poor in order to make some twit rich, all for the purpose of filling my life with crap that I can easily do without.

The difference between the liberal and conservative method of dealing with the problem is that a conservative will say that it is up to the individual to wake up and stop doing stupid things. The liberal will agree with that but go one step further. They will form a committee which will suggest that a new Government agency be formed that will have the authority to make people stop doing stupid things. Gah!

Now that I am well off of the path I wanted to take for this post, I will try to swing it back on target. What the heck does all that have to do with thinking out of the box? Just this: The other day I was on a forum lamenting the fact that I had just spent close to $400 to buy materials to make the raised beds for our new garden. One person reply to my post and asked, "Why'd you do something so stupid?" That's a paraphrase but his point was that I should have gone to the junk yard and found stuff I could have re-purposed. You know what? He's absolutely right! I could have saved a fortune on lumber, that in 5 years time will need to be replaced. Here's a video link which he sent me. I am looking for free stuff now, on Freecycle.org. I hope I can find flagstone and cinder blocks. I am also re-purposing an old chest freezer. One of my projects is to build a smoke house. This chest freezer will make an outstanding smoke house! And that is what thinking out of the box really is! I could easily have used the old freezer as a root cellar as well. These are simple examples of what we can do. And they can be made to look nice as well, if there is a need to do that.

And now I am off to do some work in the yard!

Day 15: Homesteading Book List

Gardening:

All New Square Foot Gardening

Mel Bartholomew

Cool Springs Press

Companion Planting:

Everything You Need to Know to Make Your Garden Successful

Dale Meyer

Atlantic publishing Group, Inc.

Root Cellaring:

Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables

Mike and Nancy Bubel

Storey Publishing

Seed to Seed:

Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

Suzanne Ashworth

Chelsea Green Publ. Co.

How to Grow More Vegetables*

(and Fruit, Nuts, Grains, and Other Crops)

*Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine

John Jeavons

10 Speed Press

Animal Husbandry:

Chickens in Your Backyard:

A Beginner's Guide

Rick and Gail Luttmann

Rodale

Keeping Chickens

(Self-Sufficiency Series)

Michael Hatcher

Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Barnyard in Your Backyard:

A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep and Cattle

Ed. by Gail Damerow

Storey Publishing

The Hive and the Honeybee

Ed. by Dadant & Sons

Dadant Publications

General Self-Sufficiency:

The Backyard Homestead

Ed. by Carleen Madigan

Storey Publishing

Back to Basics:

A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills

Ed. by Abigail R. Gehring

Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Self-Sufficiency For the 21^st Century

Dick & James Strawbridge

DK

Food Preservation:

Cheesemaking

(Self-Sufficiency Series)

Rita Ash

Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Putting Food By

Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan

Plume (Penguin)

Independence Days:

A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation

Sharon Astyk

New Society Publishers

Charcuterie:

The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing

Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn

W. W. Norton

Miscellaneous:

Good Meat:

The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat

Deborah Krasner

Stewart, Tabori and Chang

Day 13: Another Day, Another Expenditure.

It's been 13 days since I started this homestead endeavor in earnest. If I am honest about it, I would say it is all proceeding at a snail's pace. That is good enough for me! Actually, in not too many days, I will have far too much to do all at once. Why is that? To begin with, I ordered a lot of vegetable seed from Victory Seeds. Then I ordered some plants from Burpee Gardening. And today I ordered fruit and nut trees from Jung. I am sure there will be a few more plants I will want to add to the garden over time, but they will have to wait. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew with what I have already ordered. I will suffer the Wrath of Hera should that happen. Translated: My wife will be miserably vexed and flayed!

I must begin construction of the raised beds tomorrow, rain or shine. Once those are completed, I will need to raise the fence around the garden area. Then I'll lay down the weed barrier cloth and cover that with the shredded hardwood mulch I have yet to purchase. A lot of what I have already done and am still doing is planning. It seems the more I read, the more my garden layout changes. At some point, I will just have to say, "Enough!" and just do it. Then I can make needed changes to next year's garden.

One of the books I'm reading right now deals with companion planting. Yes, I know it sounds sort of hippy-dippy, but I think there is some merit to it. And you really never know about something until you've tried it and worked at it a bit. Another gardening technique I'm reading about is succession gardening. When a crop dies off in the garden, you can follow it up with another crop, but you need to make sure that they are compatible. Apparently certain plants perform better or worse if they are planted after other plants in the same patch of garden. I suppose they shouldn't be planted next to each other in a bed either.

There is so much to consider in starting a homestead. The garden is actually the least of our challenges. What I really need to work on is energy considerations for both running electronics and energy for heating sources. If we can't keep the house warm in the winter, then we are in bad trouble. If we can't keep the freezer and refrigerator running in the summer, we are in moderate trouble. Later this summer I will start looking at options in earnest. Hmm... I seem to like the word, earnest. It's the second time, third including this time, that I've used it in this post. I suspect we are looking at solar power and maybe a wind powered back up. There are other things as well, but further down on my list. If the goal is to be as independent as possible, then we need to move away from a sceptic system and to a composting toilet. I'm not sure what that looks like, but the idea of the radical changes to our home scares the heck out of me! I'll have more to say about these other things later.

It's been a good day today! It's time to make dinner for my family and cart my youngest off to piano lessons after that. God is good!

I Guess It's A Start!

Today, or rather yesterday by the time I publish this post, I will have begun the physical work of transforming our humble patch of sand and weeds into a homestead. I went and purchased most of what I need to expand the current two raised beds into nine raised beds. I have all the lumber needed, which was not inexpensive, and most of what I need for the fence. I hate having to spend money on a fence, but there are almost as many deer in southern Jersey as there are people. All I need to do now is buy the mulch for the paths between the beds and the soil mix for the beds. Oh! And seeds would be good too! And a few plants here and there, like rhubarb, strawberries and raspberries, blueberries, apples, and so on...

So tomorrow, which will be today by the time I post this, I will construct the beds, and go buy the ingredients I need for the soil as well as mulch for the paths. How does one make soil, you ask? That is a very good question. You are very bright. I will simply follow the instructions in Mel Bartholomew's book, "Square Foot Gardening." He recommends a mix of equal portions of vermiculite, peat moss and compost. It is light, holds water well and is packed with nutrients needed by the plants. I must admit, in my experience with it from last year, it was a pain in the neck to mix, but it started the plants out well.

Although I have most of the seed I will be planting, there are a few last minute things I want to buy. This is where I can redeem myself in the eyes of my darling wife, or DW. If I can produce a good crop of Waltham Butternut Squash, I may be forgiven for spending half of our childrens' college fund on materials for the garden. There are other treasures I hope to coax out of the garden this year. I think all of my vegetables will be of the heirloom variety this year. I am a little bit concerned about this, because I don't know if I can grow different varieties of the same species only separated by a couple of yards distance. Once I figure that out (sources should be easy enough to find) then I can plan what to plant in each of the 9 beds. This is only a problem if I plan on saving seeds to plant again next year (which I do plan on) or if I want to trade seeds with other gardeners. I think that is more critical, because I don't want to gain a bad reputation among my peers.

I have to admit that I am really excited for this gardening year to get into full swing. I do hope that I will have enough produce to pickle and can and dehydrate. These are all skills I want to practice, and it would be so much more meaningful to practice on my own produce rather than items from the Farmer's Market. I am looking forward to tomorrow, or would that be today?