Ending and Beginning

STILL haven’t turned on the furnace — just amazing. It’s not only because we’re putting up with a chillier house or that we’re being especially diligent, it’s also that the weather has been exceptionally mild. I’m still harvesting collards and kale from the garden, without doing anything to protect them. Kinda weird, but hard to complain….

I took a vacation day today since it was supposed to be a nice day and I’d have a chance to work outside. So I did the biochar thing (see above) and also finished connecting the two West beds into one nice big garden space by digging up sod. Corn and tomatoes will go there next year.

Also put 10 gallons of coffee grounds on top of part of the freshly-dug sod there, then a wheelbarrow of leaf compost on top of that. That’s a good way to add coffee grounds without having to dig a trench (which is hard to do where I’ve just turned over the sod). Too bad I’m almost out of leaf compost and the county composting site is closed until April. Maybe in the Spring I’ll hire someone with a dump truck to get the compost for me — sure would save a lot of time and effort.

Turning over sod for 2 or 3 hours is hard work, and I’m fantasizing about a rototiller. I’ll need something if we get much more land under cultivation. It’s hard for me to imagine maintaining a garden even one acre in size without power tools.

Also put 10 gallons of stabilized gasoline into storage today — NOT in the house or garage. I plan to change it once a year.

The warm November weather continues, with the high today around 60°F. I dug up another couple of rows of sod in the West beds, and am about to connect two of them. Will plant tomatoes and corn there next year, so I want to make the soil as rich as possible. I’ll do some sheet composting with coffee grounds and leaf compost and straw until it snows. Since corn and tomatoes go in pretty late, a lot of decomposition will happen in the Spring after it warms up but before planting. As I’ve mentioned before, the soil on the slope up to the house gets pretty shallow and gravelly, so it needs some help.

Dug another 5 gallons of coffee grounds into the West bed just outside the back door, so that one is done. Also moved a couple of wheelbarrows of leaf compost to the West beds and one wheelbarrow to the garden.

We still haven’t turned on the furnace and have been using the woodstove every day, so we’re making lots of wood ashes that I’m dumping on the garden beds. I’m making charcoal whenever I can, because of its beneficial effects on garden soil. I do that by shutting down the stove as much as possible and letting it go out before all the wood burns completely. It’s not always convenient to do that, but I do it when I can. I started using the old painted-on-the-inside cast iron dutch oven to carry the ashes outside, so I can do it even if there are still some live coals, which I then bury in the soil to extinguish them and make charcoal.

Reloaded the back porch with firewood. Broke up a 5-gallon bucket full of apple sticks for kindling.