Bees – En – Place!!

Thinking back to my time spent in culinary arts school, and the endless days and nights of slinging eggs and hash browns, burgers, and wall-eye fillets, one phrase sticks in my head, mise en place, or everything in its’ place. This is the motto of any good line cook – know where your knife is, have all your ingredients and preps in their proper places and stations, and above all work clean. Even though I am no longer a Food Service All-Star, the idea of mise en place is still with me. When starting a new hobby, project or task, I like to make sure I have done my homework and the necessary research to insure a job well done.

This is the stand of elm trees at my in-laws where our small apiary will be!

This year we are getting back into bee keeping, a hobby we have taken some time off from. About six years ago we got our first hive with some friends of ours. Both my wife and our friend Bill took the famous bee keeping class offered at the University of Minnesota that is taught by Marla Spivak, a world renowned bee breeder. That catapulted us into backyard, urban bee keeping. That first year was a big success for us. There was plenty of nectar and pollen for the bees, and we actually got a few quarts of honey for ourselves that fall. Another big success for us and the bees was over wintering them. Wrapped up in a jacket of tar paper, our hive of bees made it into the next spring, healthy and happy. But that is when disaster struck our hive. Right as we were expecting their population to start building up for the summer honey flow, our bees disappeared. This is also when Colony Collapse Disorder started to take over hives across America. Since then, much research, and many theories have been brought forward to explain the collapse of the honey bee population across the country and the world. Ranging from pesticide use, climate change, and cell phones, no one has been able to pinpoint the exact cause of CCD.

Owen giving the bee smoker a test run!

This brings us back to the present. Now that both of our kids are a bit older (6 & 4), we have a bit more time to pursue another hobby (along with all the gardening, cooking and preserving, brewing, etc…) that we already do. And like all things I do, this winter has been spent reading books, checking online sources and forums, and talking with people about bee keeping. I will start with the bees. The most common honey bee used in America is the Italian. They are gentle, build up their numbers quickly, and are good foragers. They are also bred almost exclusively in Northern California. After talking with my friend Matt who is a professional bee keeper and owns the company Old Soul Honey, most of the bees coming out of Northern California are essentially “factory farmed”, or as Matt said, “It is like the Wal-Mart of bee breeders“. They come with a large amount of varrao mites already established, have been chemically treated, and really have had the cards stacked against them from the beginning. There is also evidence of a new parasite that is affecting honey bees in northern California. This article does a great job of explaining that, and it also has some more insights into CCD. So if our packaged honey bees are being shipped from an area that is infested with two of the worst mites for honey bees, why order our bees from them I asked myself? This put me on a quest to find a better bee. Enter the Russian honey bee, also apis mellifera, originating in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia. These bees are not really any better than Italians, or Carnolians, Minnesota Hygienic, or Buck fast (all different races of honey bees), they just have different traits that make them unique in their own small way. The Russian honey bees have lived with the varrao mite for more than a hundred years, so the theory goes they have had time to build up some evolutionary tricks to help them survive. They are not immune to the mites, but they are resistant and scientific trials show they have a higher survival rate than other strains of bees when dealing with the varrao mite. The Russians are also a very frugal bee, they over winter with a smaller cluster and use less of their stores. And being from a similar climate as Minnesota, the Russian honey bees should be a good candidate for surviving our winters here. Also, I was able to find honey bee breeders, not in California, but down in Tennessee and other southern states who have these Russian bees for sale. They are a bit more expensive, but for now I think it is well worth the risk. I ordered my bees from Arnold Honey Bee Services and talked with the owner Tess Arnold on the phone and feel very confident that I will be receiving a high quality package of Russian honey bees from him in the first week of May.

Our brand new bee hive! It still needs a coat of paint though!

Moving on to the hive equipment. We purchased all of our equipment from Mann Lake, a Minnesota company that specializes in all things honey bees. We went with the Growing Apiary, 10 frame kit. Included is two deep hive boxes, two shallow honey supers, all the frames, bottom board, inner and outer covers, and the entrance reducer. We also ordered an unassembled honey super and extra frames, a screened false bottom (this allows the varrao mite to fall off the bees and not get back on), a queen excluder, two hive tools, and another veil. We are starting small, but we have big dreams. My main goal this first year is to keep the bees alive and healthy. If we can do that and get them through the winter, I hope next year to be able to split the hive into a second one that will be housed in home made Langstroth hive boxes. So between now and then I hope to start making my own hive boxes and other accessories and also experiment with Warre’ top bar hives, an older type of hive that tries to mimic how honey bees might live in the wild in a hollowed out tree.

Preparing for this new adventure has been a lot of fun and very enlightening. The bees need our help, and I want to do my part. I also hope this can become another tool to add to my kit of self reliance and the quest to move away from wage slavery. The further I dive into living a real life without the distractions of TV and junk food, I realize that everything we do has meaning. Keeping honey bees, grafting fruit trees, growing gardens and community, all have real impacts on our daily lives and those we choose to associate with. I am looking forward to a sweet summer and hopefully I have all my Bees-en-Place! Cheers!

Upper Midwest Scion Exchange

As if I am not busy enough with all the projects I already have going on, once again I have started another new one. With the help of my wife, we set up a Yahoo group website that is entitled Upper Midwest Scion Exchange. The idea behind this site is to hook people up, via the United States Postal Service, who have a common interest in fruit trees and grafting. As anyone who has ever bought a fruit tree from a nursery knows, they are expensive and usually come in a limited number of varieties. By participating in the scion exchange, you can offer fruit tree genetics that you have to share, but also put up varieties that you are looking for. The format of the Yahoo group website is new to me, so I will be learning with everyone else, but I think this will be a really great tool for those of us into grafting fruit trees. Any comments, questions or concerns can be emailed to me, or posted right on the Scion Exchange message board. I hope that the exchange can be a bottom up effort, and that participants can arrange scion trades on their own. Although the name of the exchange is specific to the upper Midwest, feel free to participate even if you are else where in the country or even the world. Below are a few links that will give you a great overview of grafting, which is an essential skill to have if you want to participate in the scion exchange. Happy grafting! Cheers!

This is a great video of Dan Bussey, a apple historian, showing how to graft - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37KdQHL9koo

Here is my friend Steven’s !Frankentree!  Another good tutorial on tree grafting - http://turkeysong.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/113/

Here is the Wikipedia page on grafting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

And one last one from the University of Missouri - http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G6971

 

 

 

The War Continues…More Thoughts on Seed Catalogs and Urban Farming

Last year around this same time, I entertained ya’ all with The Battle of the Seed Catalogs. Well the war continues, once again we were flooded with seed catalogs, and once again we spent many hours contemplating on what to purchase and from who. I am happy to say that we narrowed down our seed selections to just three catalogs – Seed Savers, Baker’s Creek, and R.H. Shumway. All the catalogs are fun to look at, but honestly, a seed catalog is a seed catalog, but with a few exceptions. As mentioned last year, Baker’s Creek is absolutely beautiful to look at – great photography, good descriptions of the plants, and even better, the damn prices!! By far Baker’s Creek offers the highest quality seed for the best price! As always, I also made seed purchases from Seed Savers, but not quite as much as I have in the past. I still whole heartily support them and their cause, but their prices are higher, and you definitely don’t get quite as much per packet. The dark horse candidate, and my new favorite seed catalog is R.H. Shumway. Their prices are totally reasonable, they offer some really neat varieties (some hybrids, some heirlooms), and their catalog is really fun to look through and read! It is hand illustrated with old-timey drawings and makes shopping for seeds quite fun!

A big difference this year concerning our seed purchases is how we plan on gardening. We are hoping to make the transition from just backyard, hobby gardening into a small urban farm that will be offering produce for sale to the public. With a few exceptions, we are planning on growing more of what we are really good at, and less experiments. Our main for-profit focus this year is going to be salad mix and other greens, braising greens like collards and kale, garlic, radishes, turnips, tomatoes, zucchinis and whatever else that we have a good season with. We have gotten to the point that we have excess amounts of certain crops and want to parlay that into a small home business on the side. Eventually we hope to turn the farm stand into an urban CSA, and make more of a living off of our passion for growing food.

Due to these grand dreams and aspirations of becoming a high-volume producing urban farm, we have had to change the amount of seed we order. Instead of just small packets of radishes, we ordered a few varieties in the quarter pound packs. The same goes for salad mix, carrots, and beets. Along with the added amount of seeds and plants we hope to grow, we are also going to need a little bit more space to actually garden in. We are lucky, we have space to grow into, and if time and energy allow, we will be adding just shy of a thousand square feet of garden space this spring. These garden expansions will consist of an addition to our side garden (approximately 200 square feet): two terraced raised beds in our back garden (about 60 square feet), and the big project – raised bed gardens equaling about 650-700 square feet of new garden space. These new raised beds will be in our “new” side yard that we purchased a few summers ago and will become the main work horse for the urban farm project. Other hurdles we are going to encounter are successive plantings and crop rotations to make the most out of our available space. The good news is this – these are the best kinds of hurdles to have, ones that you can plan for, ones that fall within in your capabilities and talents, and ones that are inspirational – not just for yourself, but for others. This world is not getting any easier to feed, we just welcomed our 7th billion citizen and most of us live in cities and first ring suburbs. We are the farmers of the future – citizens taking their food security into their own hands and providing our families and our communities with healthy, fresh food. I am really looking forward to this upcoming growing season – a chance to get even more calluses on my hands, less sleep and a sorer back, and the chance to provide something that is truly positive to my community and the world. Cheers!

So, What The Hell Season Is It Anyways!!!???

Chickens!!

I have lived my whole life in Minnesota, and being a dedicated Minnesotan, the weather is always something we talk about. If it ain’t 90 degrees and humid with mosquitoes buzzing in your face, it is 10 below zero and you had a near miss with frost bite on your toes while shoveling the side walk. Now anybody who has spent as much time as I have up here in the great white and wooded north, knows we have had winters where we have not received much in terms of snow fall, but nothing compares to the winter we are experiencing right now. Since the autumn equinox through now, we have had the most mild, and temperature – record setting winter to date. We have been breaking records for high temps almost weekly. Tonight as I write, it is the ninth of January, and depending on where you were earlier in the day here in the Twin Cities, it was almost 50 degrees!! 50 degrees on January 9!! We spent the afternoon outside in our backyard watching the chickens, enjoying the warming rays of the sun in just sweat shirts, and wondering to ourselves what the hell is going on with the weather.

Collard greens that have never quite died!! We were still picking off of them up until about a month ago!

We are not the only ones wondering what is going on with the weather right now either. The plants are also starting to get confused. Here is one article about a maple sugar producer whose trees are starting to have their sap flow. This would be great if it were March, but right now it is a little too soon. Being new to maple sugaring, I don’t know how this will impact the sugar season, I am not sure if anyone does at this point. Another example, a friend of mine who is only a few miles from my house told me that his irises and tulips are starting to pop up. Seasonally, irises and tulips are always some of the first things to green up and come back to life, do they know something we don’t or are they as clueless as the rest of us. Another concern of mine, due to the extremely nice temperatures we have been getting, and the almost non-existent snow, how are certain perennials and fall sown plants going to fair this winter. Because of the constant freezes and thaws and no snow to insulate the ground, will bulbs like garlic or potato onions be harmed or not? How about the hop and rhubarb rhizomes? How about the larvae of my arch enemy, the Japanese beetle. Those little bastards over winter in the ground and if we never get a huge ground freeze like we should, are they going to strike with a vengeance this coming summer? There are a lot of questions I have right now about the weather, and not just here in Minnesota.

Look at all that snow!!

2011 set a record for extreme weather events, events and storms that cost over a billion dollars each in destruction and other economic losses. This past year there were at least twelve of them. Gigantic snowstorms and record snow falls here in Minnesota and elsewhere, tornados, floods, wildfires, and huge droughts. The kicker, these extreme weather events are not isolated to just America. This is a world wide predicament that in my humble opinion is all the evidence we need to prove human influenced climate change, or as I once heard it put, not global warming, but global weirding! As much as a 50 degree day in January is nice and comfortable to be in, it also scares me a bit. Are we seeing the beginnings of a rapid climate shift? In my life time am I going to see a more temperate or Mediterranean climate here in Minnesota? Whose water tables are going to permanently dry up and see the rest of their topsoil blow away? Whose forests and wild areas are constantly going to be jeopardized by over harvesting of resources and wildfires? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but I do know one thing. It is all the more reason to be prepared for the unexpected. Having a wide variety of seeds to plant is always a good idea. Variety equals success! When one thing dies because it can not handle drought, having another one already planted that can survive a dry spell will insure some kind of harvest. Something I have learned this year is that having some way to extend your season (cold frames, large and/or small hoop houses, and greenhouses) is a great option to have ready. If I would have been more prepared and could have known about the mild winter we have had so far, I would still be pulling salad mix, spinach, and other greens from the garden! Maybe next year! Well, I hope everyone gets through the rest of the winter with a little bit of normality, I for one would love to see some real snow and at least be able to pretend that things are still somewhat normal! Cheers!

Thoughts on Home Schooling, Occupy, and More

Owen and Freya at the pumpkin patch this autumn.

Welcome, all my dear and loyal readers. After an unplanned, and too long of a hiatus, Autonomy Acres is back! I am glad this blog is not one of my kids, I would be arrested for neglect and punished properly! However, I do not live a life of regrets and will not apologize too much for not posting for the last four months or so. Life has been busy, with some unexpected road bumps and hurdles, ups and downs, and tears and laughter. Life is amazing in the fact that nothing is guaranteed, nothing is written in stone, and the most unexpected things can happen. An example – this last fall, our son was suppose to start kindergarten. We were excited and nervous at the same time, Owen is a challenging kid who is very stubborn and strong willed, smarter beyond his years, and is the bane of any authority figure. We walked him up to the bus stop, said good bye holding back tears, and drove to the school to meet him and make the transition easier for him. We walked him to his classroom, said hi to the teacher (whom we had already met), made sure he was ready, and then said goodbye. We drove home with the expectation of seeing him in a few hours at the bus stop, but our plans were thwarted. We received a phone call in less than an hour telling us to come pick up our son. They couldn’t get him to go to the kindergarten rally and he had proceeded to shut himself in his locker. Without going into every little detail about what else happened, I will just leave it at this: The school fucked up in a bad way – the proper steps were not taken to help our son in adjusting to his new environment. Without the advice and consultation of trained social workers, we were told he needed to see a doctor if we wanted him to come back. We were told he had disturbing behavior and all this was said in front of him by the PRINCIPAL!! Needless to say we pulled him out of school and decided that day to start home schooling. It was not a decision we made blindly, it was something we had already been talking about, but we just weren’t sure if we were ready to commit to such an endeavor – well our mind was made up for us. After a period of extreme anger (at the principal and the school district) and mourning, we are the proud parents and teachers, of an awesome six year old! It hasn’t been easy, and some days it can be very frustrating, but we are figuring it out as a family. One aspect of home schooling that is hard for us is finding cool people to connect with. The majority of home school families do fit a stereotype – strict religious zealots that don’t want their kids taught evolution, want prayer in school, etc, etc… Here at Autonomy Acres we are atheist leaning agnostics, so it makes it hard to find like minded people to do home schooling projects/field trips/events with. But we are figuring it out as we continue moving forward. That is one of the main reasons I have not been posting lately, my brain has still been coping with, and trying to adjust to our new situation. Moving on…..

The sacred cow of Anarchy!

World events lately have been both inspiring and incredibly scary at the same time. Some days it seems like we are teetering on the brink of world wide revolution. The middle east and its’ Arab spring, the uprisings in Greece, the Occupy movement that has been sweeping the U.S. and other western countries. A general feeling that people know something is wrong with business as usual, and that something has to change. It is awesome to see so many people getting active – people coming together and marching and having their voices heard, people taking control of where their food comes from, having real conversations with their families, friends, and neighbors. When people start living – when they wake up from their TV shows, and their designer drugs, their Franken food, and their shitty jobs and long commutes, real change can happen and it is!! We don’t need talking heads to tell us that the economy is still in shambles, it is on the face and minds of everyone who has decided to wake up. The economy is not getting better, and most likely never will. This is the hard reality, we blew our load and now we got a huge mess on our hands. The answers don’t lie with more bailouts or a new president. Look what our congress is capable of – NOTHING. If congress had their heads up their collective ass, they would not be able to even agree upon that. This system is finished and I think we all kind of know it; it is just a matter of what comes next. This is where I get scared; I am not one for conspiracy theories, but there are a lot of powerful corporations and ruthless people out there who are still making a ton of money off of the sweat of the 99%. They don’t want this power and control to go away and are doing things to ensure they keep it. I truly believe they are scared by the potential power, we the people have if we can just stop fighting amongst ourselves and start creating the world we want to live in. This is where our power lies. It is in our refusal to keep playing their games, and by following their rules that gives us the power to change the world. Our power is in boycotting where ever we can the giant corporations that control our food, our communities, our abilities to think for ourselves, and our personal lives. Our power is in the DIY ethic – experts are overrated and we are all capable of so much more than what we have been told by all the “experts”. Our power is the realization that the bosses, the 1% need us, we do not need them. We are capable of changing this world on our own terms into a place that is based on mutual aid, respect for the natural world and its’ resources, a place that people are well fed and have access to real food. I don’t think this is too much to ask, in fact I believe it to be the only option if we are to move forward as a human race. Facing these challenges head on with all of our own unique talents is not an easy task to accomplish, but at least it is real. It is time to unplug the TV and get our hands dirty.

So, enough of the soap boxing. Yeah, we have a lot of challenges ahead of us – social, economic, and environmental/climate change issues are all demons lurking in our closets and hanging out underneath our beds. This brings it back to one of the main reasons I started this blog in the first place; to share my ideas about what I do in my personal life to confront these issues. I have some projects in the works that I hope to discuss in upcoming posts. Beehive construction, our plans on starting up a CSA, possible greenhouse/hoop house plans and designs, some more on DIY home brewing, basics on making your own soap, more From the Garden to the Table recipes and stories, and other topics that will be familiar to all you homesteaders out there. It is great to be back! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!! Cheers!!

Baking Bread in the Heat of the Summer

Two loaves of finished, summer baked bread, Yum!!

Last August I wrote an article concerning excessive summer heat and cooking outside. Well it looks like we are experiencing the same kind of weather, and this time maybe even worse. Where ever you live in America (maybe except for Alaska) everyone has been experiencing temperatures in at least the 90′s, and more likely up past 100 degrees. This kind of heat, along with the humidity, can be oppressive and deadly for many people. Window fans and air conditioners are working over time, swimming pools and beaches are packed with people, beer sales are up, and it is definitely not the time of year to be baking bread, unless….

This evening we tried another new experiment with cooking outside. My wife is a wonderful baker; breads, cookies, muffins, etc, but with this kind of summer weather, we are not real fond of the idea of turning on our oven. So we thought we would try baking bread on our grill. Karyn got the dough started in the afternoon, giving the yeast time to work it’s magic – to make the dough rise. About an hour and a half before we wanted to eat, I started to prepare the grill. I got out my bag of Royal Oak lump charcoal, an arm load of bricks and set to work. For this project I used more charcoal than I normally use because I knew I had to reach a temperature of between 300-350 for at least forty five minutes. My big grill is a Chargrill, and is basically a barrel set on it’s side, with an additional fire box for indirect heat grilling. I started coals for both the main grill and the fire box and was able to maintain a temperature of about 305 degrees. Not bad in my opinion!

You can see the brick perimeter, the Dutch ovens, and the side fire box at the top right of the photo. Not a fancy set up, but it baked bread very nicely!

Once the coals were going nice and hot, I built a perimeter of bricks to help hold in the heat and make it more oven like. Once that was completed, I also placed two, well greased, deep cast iron pans (Dutch ovens) onto the grill and let them heat up for about ten minutes. Once the pans were hot, we slid the doughy loaves into them, and covered them with lids. One piece of cast iron that we are missing in our arsenal of cast iron pots and pans is lids, so we used enamel canning pot lids, and they worked just fine. We did not open up the grill for about the first thirty minutes, and the first time we did check on the bread we were a little worried, it appeared to not be baking properly. We gave it another fifteen minutes before checking it again, and magically it was starting to look like a finished loaf of bread. After ten more minutes, we removed the Dutch ovens and flipped out the bread onto the cutting board. Wow!! The two loaves looked terrific, the bottoms were not burned, the tops were nicely browned, and when we cut through the first one, it was perfectly baked all the way through! Needless to say, the bread was delicious and we did not have to warm up our kitchen to bake it.

I think this way of baking will lend itself well to most bread recipes, but only a little trial and error can prove that. As far as the fuel is concerned, the lump charcoal I buy is about five dollars per bag. Unless I am smoking big pieces of meat for long periods of time, a bag usually lasts quite a while. For the bread, I used maybe a quarter to a third of a bag of charcoal. In terms of cost for fuel and for ingredients, my guess is that it cost us about five dollars, not bad for two big loaves of bread! So for any bakers out there, baking bread in 100 degree weather is not impossible, you just have to get a little creative, and experiment. Find your favorite bread recipe, some bricks if you got them, fire up your grill, crack open a cold one, and bake some bread! Cheers!

DIY Compost Tea

This summer has been hot, hot, hot! After such a cold rainy spring, it is actually a really good thing for the gardens, all the plants are vigorously growing now and are making up for lost time. Staying with the theme of growing plants, this post is going to be about brewing up your own compost tea. First, a brief overview of what compost tea is. The name says it all – it is essentially compost steeped in water. The use of compost tea has far reaching benefits; it makes all the minerals and nutrients highly available to whatever plants it is applied to, it goes a lot further than just using straight compost, and supposedly it suppresses many plant diseases. On top of all the benefits of compost tea, it is also really easy to make and to use. What follows is a very basic, DIY, tutorial on brewing up your own batch.

An aquarium pump will keep your compost tea full of oxygen and from going stagnant.

The first thing you will need to do to start your compost tea project is to assemble all of your materials.  You will need one aquarium pump, three buckets (one with holes drilled in the bottom), a few good shovel fulls of compost, dechlorinated water (this can be tap water that has sat out for a few days or rain water), and a couple tablespoons of unsulphured molasses.  Aquarium pumps can be found at pet stores, but you might be able to find them cheaper at garage sales or thrift stores.  The important thing is that they work.  The aquarium pump shoots air into the water and keeps it moving and from going stagnant.  This is a very important part of brewing up compost tea, without the movement of the water, your tea will go septic and get very stinky.

These are the buckets I used, the photo on the right is once the water was added.

Once all of your materials are assembled, it is time to get brewin’.  I ended up using one round bucket, and one square one.  This allowed for the aquarium pump tube to get down into the bottom of the lower bucket, and for more water movement.  I filled the upper bucket about half way full with compost, and then started to add my water (I used rain water).  I added water until all the compost was submerged, and also when it was about an inch from the top of the bottom bucket.  At this point I also added about two tablespoons of unsulphured molasses.  This boost of sugar is supposed to get all the micro organisms really rolling, and to help all the minerals and nutrients dissolve into the tea.  At this point you are somewhat finished for a few days.  Aside from occasionally stirring the brewing tea (when you think to do it), let it bubble away for two to three days.

Filtering the compost tea!

Now you are ready to filter the compost tea.  I used an old bed sheet, but an old pillow case or any  large, somewhat heavy piece of fabric should work just fine.  You want to filter out the largest of the compost, especially if you are going to be spraying your plants with the finished tea.  I lined another bucket with the bed sheet and poured the contents of the top bucket into it.  As the pictures show, I then removed it and let it drip into the bucket ( I also tried to squeeze as much of the tea out of this as I could, but you would end up standing around doing this for hours if you tried to get all of it!)  Once that was done I deposited the contents of the filter sheet into my compost bin (there is still plenty of good stuff in there that will just be used again in the future), I then found another clean spot on the sheet and filtered the contents of the bottom bucket.  There was sediment in this, but not nearly as much as I thought there would be.  Now you are ready to use the finished compost tea.

Pouring the tea into my garden sprayer!

Something worth noting about finished compost tea, because it is something that is alive, you do not want to let this stuff sit around for too long.  I would recommend using it within one day of it being finished.     My main purpose and use for compost tea is as a foliar spray fertilizer for my plants.  When this tea, or any other fertilizer or pesticide is sprayed onto a plant, the leaves readily take it up and you can see the effects of it very fast.  This is what makes compost tea so awesome.  The batch I made came out to almost two and a half gallons exactly and fit perfectly into my garden sprayer.  Two and a half gallons was enough to spray 16 tomato plants and about the same number of peppers.  One word of caution when applying this stuff to plants – do not use it if you are planning on harvesting anytime soon after spraying it on.  It is not nearly as bad as industrial farm fertilizers and chemicals, but it is alive and could get you sick.  So once you are getting tomatoes and peppers that are nearing ripeness, I would stop using compost tea, unless you are feeding it directly to the roots.

Compost tea is one of those things in the life a gardener that is really awesome.  It is easy to make, and once you have the aquarium pump and hopefully dumpster-dived buckets it is virtually free!  You can see the results almost over night, at least that’s what it seems like to me.  It also fills an important role for those of us trying to grow as much food as we can on a small amount of land.  When we are trying to squeeze as much out of a short growing season with multiple crops in the same garden, compost tea is great to have in your arsenal of gardening techniques, tools, and ideas.  It can help us to not deplete our soils, and also a great way to use excess compost.  So for those of you already brewin’ your own compost tea – keep brewin’, and for those of you who haven’t tried it yet, get some buckets and a pump, dig into your compost pile, and watch your garden grow!  Cheers!

Tomatoes, Human Slavery, and a Local Response

Outside it is dusk; the sun is going down, the chickens are finding their way into their coop, I have rhubarb cooking on the stove, and here I am in front of the computer, writing down thoughts of the day, or maybe of the season or of the world.  As I was doing my nightly Google news reading, I came across this article.  Modern tomatoes – worse than factory raised chicken and CAFO raised beef and pork.  Human slavery, a condiment on the all American California burger and BLT sandwich.  Who cares if it is January or February, give me my ripe tomatoes, and give them to me with extra mayo.

It is too easy to not pay attention to the fact that the tomatoes on that sandwich are harvested by hand; hands that are taken advantage of, hands that are poisoned, hands that are starved and are cold with pain, and hands that are over worked and underpaid.  It is these hands that make our home gardens so important and relevant to our times.  It is these hands that make Urban Homesteading/Farming a lifestyle.  It is these hands that we need to help.  We need to lighten their load by making ours a little bit heavier.  By growing our own produce, even if it is only one tomato plant out on the deck, we take a little pressure off these hard working people.  By adjusting and changing our lifestyles and diets, we can start to eat more foods in season that are grown in closer proximity to where we live.  Maybe those tomatoes on your sandwich aren’t so important; you know what, maybe that fast food sandwich isn’t so important either!   Maybe we need to rethink our whole setup!

It is only in the last 60 or 70 years that Americans started to step away from the production of their own food.  Many things came out of both WWI and WWII, one being the advent of modern industrial agriculture.  Synthetic petroleum based fertilizers, refrigeration, food preservatives, an ever SUB/urbanizing population, and the American idea of instant gratification.  There was no longer a need to stay on the farm, or to keep a backyard garden going.  The cities are where the new modern jobs were, lawns were a sign that said, “Yeah, I made it into the big time!”  Along with the suburbs came the advent of the fast food joint.  Burgers, fried chicken, pizza, and tacos could now all be purchased from the comfort of your car on your way back home from work.  Food no longer came from the farm or from the garden, or even from the local corner market, but instead from the big box grocery store or the fast food joint.  And this is where we are now.  Food shipped for thousands of miles and out of season to fulfill our American desire for instant gratification.  Asparagus and pears from Argentina, tomatoes from Florida – all just a quick car ride away.

In response to all this modern, high speed consumption are many positive steps we as individuals and communities can take to lighten the load of migrant farm workers and the planet alike.  Be aware of what you eat – check ingredients, pay attention to where it is coming from, is it in season?  Move towards a more local diet – join a coop, shop at an all growers farmer’s market, support local restraunts and bakeries, and do more cooking for yourself at home.  And lastly get your hands dirty – plant a garden if you have the room, if not find a community garden to join.  Get a few backyard chickens (they are great entertainment, plus you will get eggs!), start a compost pile or build some rain barrels.  It is those of us who have a privileged lifestyle that will have to make the most changes in the near future.  Peak Oil is a reality and we can either evolve to the circumstances of the near future, or that future will force changes upon us.  Either way big changes are coming, it is just a matter of if we are ready for them or not.  Go out and plant some tomatoes, enjoy the time in garden, and know that you can help lighten the load of someone who can use a little bit of help.  Cheers!

Some Thoughts on Dumpster Diving, Salvaging, and DIY Garden Hose Repair

As the old saying goes , “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, is more or less my personal motto and I am the first to admit that I have a love affair with dumpsters and discarded items.  I have found many useful things in dumpsters and by the side of the road that were destined for the landfill – quality lumber, a multi tool (I use this everyday), chain link fencing, shovels, fire wood, a bike trailer, a great hand saw, five gallon buckets and too many other things to list them all.  This love affair of mine, saving discarded items, comes from two places from within me – the thrifty anarchist and being a good steward of the Earth.  I work hard for the money I make and I don’t like spending it on useless shit if I don’t have to, so when I find something useful that won’t just collect dust in my garage for the next ten years I usually take it.  Some examples: the chicken coop I built is made out of all salvaged lumber, our chain link fence is 95% salvaged, old window screens that I use for drying garlic and herbs on, etc…  Not only does this habit save me money, it also prevents perfectly useable materials/tools from going into the land fill.  The sad fact is this – the majority of Americans live a disposable lifestyle.  Fast food, cheap plastic products, and instant gratification.  If you want something now you can go out and get it, and when you are done with it or when it breaks just throw it away and it is gone – out of site, out of mind.  Living this lifestyle allows us to not take responsibility for our actions or our planet.  Nobody is perfect (including me), but at some point this behavior of a throw-away lifestyle needs to be addressed.  As we enter a cheap energy challenged future (Peak Oil), products that we take for granted are going to become more expensive and more scarce.  The earlier we can start to voluntarily change our habits, the easier this transition will be. So now, onto to a real world example… garden hose repair.  On my way home from work today I spotted a nice looking garden hose in someone’s garbage.  I stopped to check it out and see if it was worth taking.  It appears this person must have had this garden hose to close to their bonfire and ended up burning it.  Aside from a semi-melted six inch section, this hose was in great shape.  I threw it into my car, drove to the hardware store, and purchased the hose repair kit that I would need to fix it.  I bought a few extra pieces just in case the hose had more than one leak, and all said and done it cost me about $12 in repair parts – far cheaper than buying a new garden hose.  I am glad I bought extra parts, it had a second leak and on further inspection the people also must have ran over the female end of the hose with their car tire trying to put out the fire because they burned their hose (it must have been a great bonfire)!!  What follows is the incredibly easy process of fixing a leaking garden hose.  It will save you money on buying a new one, and it will help (at least temporarily) of the hose going to the land fill.  And remember, there are many treasures to be found in the discard pile, you just have to look with a different set of eyes – Happy dumpster diving!!  Cheers!

Here is the garden hose in question - "What were you doing the night of the bonfire?"

Here are the parts you will need to rebuild a garden hose - male and female ends, and also barbed hose couplers and clamps to fix mid hose leaks.

 

The burned section of the garden hose has been cut away.

 

Using a little WD-40 to lubricate the barbed coupler, the garden hose has been put back together.

 

Here is the finished fixed garden hose. This should last for atleast a few more years before you have to mess around with it again.

Early Summer thoughts: More on Apple Grafting, Clonal Rootstock Production, Horseradish and more…

Hey, look at those horseradish roots 'mon!

Although we are barely into June, and the Summer Solstice is still two weeks away, the weather went from a sort-of spring like season to the dog days of summer overnight. The bulk of our gardens are in: 15 tomato plants this year and about the same number of peppers ( a mixed lot this year – jalapeños, Bulgarian carrot, Hungarian hot wax, and Wisconsin Lakes), the corn/squash/beans are in, spuds, lots of onions and leeks, direct seeded okra, collards, cabbage, Asian cabbage, bok choy, beets, turnips, garlic, herbs and other perennials. We are trying to do a lot more succession planting this year, so when the spring peas are done, in goes more beans and turnips (or beets, greens, or more radishes). Our gardens are always an experiment and we are always trying new ideas, techniques, and varieties of plants. Here are a few examples: this year I am mulching some of our garden walkways with cardboard buried in wood chips. The cardboard will help to suppress the weeds, the wood chips will hold in moisture and help break down the cardboard, and both will add organic matter and nutrients to the soil throughout the coming years. Another new addition to the garden are trellises for growing squash. One is a vine habit butternut squash, and the other is a vine habit zucchini that can be used for summer or winter squash recipes.

The start of our small apple tree nursery!

Up next are some updates on one of my new hobbies, grafting apple trees. As mentioned in an earlier post, I went to a grafting workshop this spring at the Seed Savers Exchange farm down in Iowa and was completely inspired to learn this skill. Since the time of the workshop, I mail-ordered rootstock, received a ton of apple genetics(scion wood) from a comrade in California, and have proceeded to graft another 13 trees. I am learning that grafting is a craft and not an art. Yes there are numerous ways to graft a tree, but there is not really room there for individual expression. Whether you are bud grafting or using the whip and tongue method, there are right ways and wrong ways and right tools and wrong tools. So far, from the three trees that I brought home from the workshop, only one graft has taken and is actively growing, the other two are either still dormant and healing or they are dead. The other thirteen trees were grafted about two weeks ago and just potted up today. I am a little more confident with the success rate with these ones than with my first three. My technique and patience got better with more practice .

A grafted Gano apple tree - An old time, yellow skinned apple flushed and striped with red, is crisp, juicy, and long storing!

One mistake I have made has been using the wrong kind of knife. A true grafting knife is beveled on only one side which allows for a very uniform flat cut. I have been using a pairing knife that has a sharp bevel on both sides of the blade. This makes for more of a chopping cut rather than a clean slice. Between now and next year I will hopefully either have bought a proper grafting knife, or grind down and resharpen (with only one beveled side) my current pairing knife. Overall I give the skill of tree grafting an A plus. This skill allows you to create and build new trees for a fraction of the cost of buying already grafted trees and will provide food for you and your family for years to come.

Staying on the subject of apple trees, grafting, and saving money; producing my own clonal rootstock for grafting apple trees has also become a fascination of mine. Why purchase rootstock when you can grow it yourself. After seeing instructions in the Raintree Nursery catalog, The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips, and talking to a few experts on apples, I realized that this too was within my skill level.

Suckers coming up from the rootstock of the Prairie Fire crabapple. The mulch will promote root growth and turn it into next years rootstock for grafting!

The Prairie Fire crab apple that I got this spring is grafted onto some kind of apple rootstock (most likely full sized apple tree rootstock), and it is sending up sucker shoots like no one’s business. Rather than cutting them off, I am leaving them and piling up rotted wood chips around the growing suckers. The idea is this: by adding a layer of organic matter that promotes root growth, these suckers will turn into next years rootstock. They will start growing roots where there are wood chips, I will add more rotted chips throughout the year, and next spring cut them free and graft onto them. At this point it is still just an experiment, but we should know in the next few months if roots are growing where I want them to, we’ll see.

The horseradishes' new home!

Last up for right now is horseradish. Armoracia rusticana is a hardy, vigorous perennial most likely originating in Russia. Well adapted to cooler climates, we thought horseradish would be a good addition to our Minnesota garden. We first planted it last year and have now moved it to its new location due to horseradishes ability to spread and take over. Horseradish propagates itself through its roots; any root that happens to get cut off and left in the ground will form a new plant. To solve this problem, we cut out the bottom of a giant plastic pot, dug a nice big deep hole, and buried the open bottomed pot in the hole. This should do a good job of containing the horseradish roots and prevent it from spreading. We will harvest for the first time this coming fall and will make a number of recipes with it. Mixed with white wine vinegar, sugar, spices of your liking, and whipped cream or mayo, you have a traditional sauce eaten with roast beef. Horseradish grated into a tomato based sauce (ketchup) is great with fish and shrimp, and one of my favorites is using it in the filling for deviled eggs. Horseradish also has traditional medicinal uses for coughs, toothaches, and many more. If using medicinally, always remember to do your homework, check with numerous sources, and if you still have questions consult with a professional.

Going into June most of my spring projects are done. The gardens are in, the chickens have a good home, my trailer is finished (so I can start hauling stuff), and the heat has been turned on. The temp right now is about 93 degrees and tomorrow will be about the same as today. I will be a happy gardener if we can get one good rain a week this year, I am keeping my fingers crossed. I hope everyone has a good growing season this year with bountiful harvests. Cheers!