First Seeds Planted Indoors

3 April 2010

The boys and I planted onions (Johnny’s Hybrid Onion, Yellow Storage, Gunnison F1), ground cherries (Jung’s Husk Tomato), tomatoes (Johnny’s Hybrid Tomato, Red Short Vine JTO-99197 F1), and peppers (Jung’s Margaret’s) in newspaper pots today.

Planted 18 pots onions, 7 or 8 of each of the others, two seeds in each pot. We’re going to be ruthless and if more than one comes up, we’re going to pull it up. We’re not going to do any of this bare-root transplanting of seedlings from pot to pot. Probably.

I put the flat down in the greenhouse and put the heating pad under them. We’re a month later this year than last year, and having a much warmer spring, so they should be fine down there and we don’t have to have the seed-starting table in the living room, which M didn’t want. I just have to be vigilant and make adjustments if the forecast overnight low is under 25°F.

Also spent a couple of hours digging more dandelions, catnip, and clover out of the garden. Had some help from the boys and M. We’ve really made good headway getting rid of these perennial weeds. Have also been leveling out the high and low spots in the garden. All in all, the main garden is looking good.

Saved some of the catnip plants to make a tincture. Chopped them (should have chopped them more finely), put them in a quart jaw (about 1/2 full). Added vodka to cover and put on top of the refrigerator where they’ll sit for the next 6 weeks, shaken daily. It’s supposed to be soothing and calming, a fever reducer, and a digestive aid. We’ll see how it goes.

We only got about half an inch of rain last night, so it dried out early. The rain barrel by the garage is only about 2/3 full. We still need more rain, but showers are forecast in the next couple of days so maybe we’ll luck out.

I was looking around the back yard today, and even though we have what most people would call a big garden, we still have way more grass than anything else. If worse came to worse, there’s a lot of grass we could dig up to grow food. Of course, as I’ve been reminded over the last couple of years, that is much easier said to done. It’s like a lot of self-sufficiency-related tasks: the ideas are easy to understand, but you can’t implement them overnight. And some of them that involve a lot of learning-by-doing take years.

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Dandelion Digging Day

2 April 2010

The boys and I dug dandelions in the garden today. We got about a 5-gallon bucket packed full of them. Later, I cut off the leaves and ended up with about 2/3 of a bucket of leaves.

Rinsed them twice with water from the hose, then again inside, and had some for a salad for lunch — very good. M cooked some for dinner as well, but they were kind of bitter, don’t know why. The ones I had in my salad weren’t bitter. Put a bagfull in the fridge so I can eat them for a few days. This qualifies as the first fresh garden produce of the year.

It’s a great year for daffodils (which I think means that early last summer was great for daffodils).

We’re supposed to get some rain this evening through tomorrow am — sure hope we do, we had a very dry and warm March.

Also mixed up some potting soil for the garden vegetable seeds we’ll be planting this weekend. Mixed the commercial potting mix I bought a month or two ago with worm castings from the basement worm bin. It should be excellent stuff.

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Getting Ready for Growing

28 March 2010

Another Sunday work day.

  • Watered hazelnuts I planted last fall.
  • Dug up area where collars and kale were last year, since it didn’t get dug last fall. Dug in a couple of gallons of coffee grounds. Pulled up the remaining collard roots and stalks and put them in the compost pile. Found lots of worms.
  • Several of the kale plants I planted last July made it through the winter (without any shelter other than the snow) and are growing new leaves. I watered those. I wonder if they’ll try to go to seed right away. If they do, I will let them and harvest the seed.
  • Dug a trench around upper edge of new west beds and dumped in contents of char/urine/fish emulsion bucket. Looked like not so much char and a lot of small pieces of uncharred wood. Sigh.
  • Dug up some clumps of sod in what last year was the new potato ground, and a few potatoes with it. I never got around to digging all the potatoes last fall. It was just so labor intensive and I was getting barely more potatoes out of it than I had planted. It was discouraging and put me off the idea of surviving on potatoes, although it would have been easier to dig them up if the ground had been worked properly. Corn. Corn is the answer.
  • Put a plastic tarp over some of the grassy area north of the fence, near the hazelnuts. I want to kill that grass over the next two months and plant some corn there.
  • Found a big piece of black plastic folded over next to the foundation of the garage. I started to unfold it and realized there was a nest of carpenter ants inside. I quickly dragged it to the back fence and threw it over, then went around and opened it up, hoping the birds would eat them. I hate carpenter ants. At least they weren’t inside the garage or house, although having them that close to it is kind of a bad sign.
  • Turned over the soil in the three raised beds. It’s in very good shape, and is ready for planting as soon as we dare.
  • Did the composting.
  • Removed the plastic trash can from under the SW drainspout, as it was cracked and not holding water. Extended the downspout a couple of feet to keep the water away from the foundation. I need to get serious about rainwater collection this year.
  • Untaped the two inside house windows I had taped last fall to keep out the wind.

And in a sure sign of a warm, dry spring, the little brown ants have re-invaded the kitchen.

But we’re only gardeners. If we don’t have animals, we’re not farmers. It’s pathetic, but I want to be a farmer, even though I am clueless about animal husbandry and haven’t the heart to do what needs to be done.

Posted in Biochar, Composting, Gardening, Water | Leave a Comment »

BAU and the Double Life

26 March 2010

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve worked extra-hard to separate my thoughts at work from what’s happening in the world. At work, I think about my job and the tasks at hand, I immerse myself in the world of computers and software and rules and releases and what’s allowed and what’s not. I think of business as usual and pretend to believe that what is now will always be.

That’s as it should and must be, even through it’s weird. I can’t forget that my job is an important part of our prepping. If we didn’t have a decent disposable income, we wouldn’t be able to afford any of the stuff we need to buy. If we had to pay all of our own health insurance, for example, we wouldn’t be able to get ready for the future at all.

And so I spend five days in a kind of denial of what I believe and of what is happening in the world, then, on Friday, I emerge from my cocoon and open my eyes. That separation of work and life not only helps me keep my job, it also reduces the depression and stress that could result from thinking about the next ten years too much. But every Friday it feels as if all the systems of the world — energy, political, economic, climatic — have lost more resiliency and become more fragile.

The feeling expressed in that last sentence…is it because I see more of a change in a week’s time than I noticed when immersing myself in it every day? Is the outlook actually deteriorating faster? Or am I just freaking myself out more effectively than I used to? Or perhaps all those global declines — in the energy, political, economic, and climatic systems — are combining with my thoughts and feelings about the rest of my life, possibly declining health, my boys’ futures, approaching retirement, and, eventually, death, to set off the alarms in my head.

Posted in TEOTWAWKI, Working | Leave a Comment »

More Firewood

21 March 2010

Spent another afternoon chainsawing and moving firewood around, also some brush clearing. I cut up all the oak that got rejected during the winter because it was too long to fit in the stove, so I’ve got some oak to burn again. I also moved all the rest of the wood from the greenhouse to the porch and cut up a few stray pieces that were still outside. So we are just about out of wood, which is what i wanted and, after looking at the wood we had on hand last Fall, what I predicted.

Also cleared brush south of the fence on the southern edge of our property. I didn’t want that area to become completely shaded. A big branch off a box elder had fallen into the farm field, so I cut that and got it out of the way of the farmer.

That land to the south of us is owned by someone who does not live nearby and leased to someone else still who actually farms it. That’s our best hope of adding more land to our property. Although it’s extremely unlikely, I fantasize about buying a strip of land as wide as our property all the way down to the river.

The chainsaw is acting wonky — won’t run at full power unless I let it warm up for a couple of minutes, and even then it’s finicky. I rinsed out the air filter (just a screen) in gasoline, but that didn’t help. The next thing I’m going to do is get new gas. The gas I have is not fresh, and even though it has stabilizer in it, it could have gone bad. Although now that I think about it, it seems like it’s only one year old, which shouldn’t be too bad. If new gas doesn’t fix it, I’ll start fiddling with the mixture. Or maybe I’ll just take it someplace.

I want to fill a trash can with small wood sized appropriately for the twig stove:

Rocket Stove

and get it under cover so it will dry out and be ready to burn. We do have a ton of brush, a lot of it in the 1-2″ diameter range for which that stove is designed, so it should work well…but I want to get some dried out and test it to make sure.

Anyway, I’m always surprised at how tired I get after cutting wood and moving it around for a few hours. Even though I work out every day, I’m just not used to working on my feet for that long.

Posted in Burning wood, Cooking | Leave a Comment »

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