handicrafts & small victories

   Work finally picked up again and, in the home repair and remodeling business, when it rains it pours so i've been a little busy, but we finally got the camera.  It must be made of some kind of magic because even i can take a clear picture with it.
   My bamboo t.p. holder still isn't finished-finished, but we're using it anyways, and here it is:

nifty, n'est pas?

     I also got a little wild for pizza night the other week and made myself a pizza peel out of a scrap of birch plywood.  I tried a new kind of dough: slow fermentation.  It's the best pizza dough i've ever made and the best part is it holds up as a frozen pizza. For less than $10 we were able to make 5 pizzas (could of been 6 but i wanted one big one). We ate 3 with friends for pizza night, and the other 2 i tossed, topped and froze.  Delicious home-made frozen pizza was the result, 10 minutes on the pizza stone in the oven at 450degrees satiated my insatiable craving for convenient pizza action.  The flavor and the cost made it a winner. I'm making it again later in the week so i'll take pictures and post the recipe for my soon-to-be-famous Paper Plate Pizza.  In the meantime this picture of my pizza peel will have to tide you over.
 
In other news, me and my neighbor are the proud parents of lots of seedlings, pretty much everything we put out in his yard has sprouted.  See our baby broccoli:

we were a tad liberal with our sowing, so all the plants need thinning out.

  Last but not least, I have finally achieved hot compost!  I made a temporary compost bin a couple weeks after we moved into the house...once we had too many kitchen scraps basically. As you can kind of see from the pictures, it's 4 straw bales sitting on a 3-tiered grid of bradford pear prunings.  The branches raise it of the ground enough to allow airflow but not so much as to separate the compost from the earth, where all the beneficial microbes are already living.  The straw bales insulate (and provide airflow) so you can make hot compost without having to fill the 3feet cubed dimension that most folks say is required for the compost to heat up (which breaks down organic matter much quicker).  The result of this slap-dash composter after 2-3 weeks is amazing. I wish you could smell it...it smells like summer in the woods, with tree nymphs and everything. I guess since i can't upload olfactory hues a photo will have to do...

now that's what i call black gold.

If you can believe it, that was a pile of grass clippings, leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells and vegetable waste just a few weeks ago.  I love facilitating decompostition.

Geeking out on planning

As you can see from the time stamp, i got a little wrapped up with planning this evening.
   I've worked out my master plan for our house by laying a sheet of tracing paper over my detailed drawing of the lot. Check it out:

 My goal is to have the 3 raised 4'x12' vegetable beds, the keyhole bed and the herb spiral installed this fall for spring planting.  The 3-bin composter should be built in the next week or two. 
  The herb spiral and keyhole bed are my permaculture 101 projects.  If you're interested in learning more about them on your own you can google-wack them, or stay tuned for future posts.
  I'll be taking cuttings from the fig trees in February for fall planting next year.  The worm bin is a spring project and i'm percolating my thoughtscicles to remedy my drainage problems.

I also got cracking on my crop plan for the raised vegetable beds.  The 3 beds subdivide into 6 plots so i can implement the 6 bed rotation i worked out for my ma's house.  I'll be using the Square Foot method in these beds like we do over at mom's.  It's pretty exciting to see how much variety you can grow in a relatively small space.  If all goes well, the front yard should keep us well supplied with fresh food from April to November.  Here's the planting plan for next spring:

 


Thats packing:

• 12 cucumbers
• a plethora of mustard greens
• 4 squash plants
• 6 broccoli
• 48 pole beans
• 92 bush beans
• 46 soybean plants
• 27 leeks
• 12 celery
• 96 storage onions
• 48 sweet onions
• 108 scallions
• 24 garlic bulbs
• 12 tomatoes
• 12 pepper plants
• 54 shell peas
• 54 snap peas

into 72 sq.ft. of space.

Am i biting off more than i can chew?
Better start practicing my mastication technique.

That's all i got. Backyard Beddies to beddy-bye.

Call me Planty McPlantpants.

This is my wild-card seed drop:
   Still haven't made it back to Ma's.  What    a            jerk.
   Work's been unexpectedly slow recently, but i've been keeping myself busy.

• the Workshop is essentially functional.  Some organization is required, but it's the kind that organically organizes itself, seemingly spontaneously, as various projects are undertaken in the space. 
• Rainwater collection has begun!  i went out and paid too much for a 275gallon tote and rigged it up at the potting shed before the runoff from tropical storm Lee hit us.  That thing was halfway full by the time we saw sunshine again:)
• my first bamboo project is nearly complete.  As part of a general push in the direction of building things instead of buying crap, i built a toilet paper . . . (rack?stand?dispenser?_ _ _) . . . thing for our bathroom with Joe-Knee playing resident 3-D consultant.  I have a little bit of finishing work to do on it, but it's functional now.  Should be done by the time we get a camera, then i can show you.

• A windfall salvage day fell into my lap.  One day brought me 5 buckets from grocery-chain bakeries; 2 metal trash cans, a wedging table (for pottery) and two wooden pallets from the dumpster of the local university; and around 300 decent bricks and a dozen or so cinder blocks from a house that got demolished in the neighborhood.  While i may have tendencies leaning towards hoarder-hood, i will put all of this to work soon. 

  A couple days ago i planted out some fairly old snap pea seeds.  There's 8 in containers and a random sowing around the mail box and along a low brick wall near the honeysuckle bush.  In our porch container, i cleaned out the sad little tomato and basil, added some more soil (because my filler materials are composting down) and planted dill, cilantro,  bibb and butterking lettuce... and left a small spot open for a succession.
  Today i went over to my neigbor's house to help plant the bed he keeps in the front yard behind his pitcher plants (awesome, right?).  Earlier in the week we pulled up a bunch of turnips he grew this year, so today we cleaned up the bed a bit and planted some seeds i bought during the garden-supply store mid-summer lull.  I was a little concerned about not amending the soil prior to planting, but i'm also concerned about planting too late.  Maybe I'll top-dress with compost when the seedlings start coming up.  We split his bed (maybe 3'x18') into 6 roughly equal sections (measured by stride length) and planted:

• Beets, Tall Top Early Wonder
• Radish, Cherry Belle
• Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield
• Kale, Red Russian
• Broccoli, Waltham
• Georgia Collards
• Pak Choi
• Mesclun Salad Mix

  The radish is sown among the beets, so we'll get a small crop of them in October, then the beets can fill in.  These are mostly cold or frost tolerant varieties once they're established.  My thinking is that should we get some frosts before they can reasonably handle it, we can just coddle them a bit with some plastic protection.  We're planning on just splitting the harvest and sharing surplus with other neighbors.
   My mama says that food gifts go a long way for the suburban grower (whose compost may smell for a day or two before it heats up, or grows food instead of grass, or might want some outlaw laying hens and wants prior consent of potential tattle-tells) and, after knowing her my whole life, i'm inclined to believe her.

P.S. After some research, i've amended my hypothesis about our unripened figs. While i still believe that they're not getting enough sun, i think the hot, dry weather this summer probably stunted their fruiting cycle.  There's not much i can do about it now, but i can direct more rainwater to their root systems during the dry spell next summer.

making plans

   The fall planting season is upon us and I'm running a bit behind. 
   In addition to my experiments at our new house, I'm also working with my Ma to maximize production in her garden.  Over the years we've put in 6 raised beds that consistently produce, plus a double-dug bed by the front door, the landscape island where she grows cucumbers, and a spot on the other side of the front door where she's been growing tomatoes.  With the tremendous help of Stepfather Steve, we've begun work on 5 hexagonal keyhole beds in the backyard as well. 
  While we've attempted to grow our plants in different places in the 6 raised beds over the years, we've never really kept good records about what grew where, what varieties were grown and which ones produced the best.  After taking the Organic Growing Class at Cane Creek Farms through Georgia Organics, I've realized the importance of good record keeping for the micro-farmer (a term I prefer to "gardener").
    That being said, I post a plan for your perusal.  Any ideas or insights would be most appreciated.

There's that.
    I planted some snap peas, kale and broccoli yesterday, but I haven't even ordered our garlic yet.... I'm a bad kid...  here's hoping catastrophic climate collapse extends the season for me.

   As far as our house goes, I'm still working on the plan, brain-hurricaning and daydreaming, but I have my practical side as well (thanks mom) so I've measured our lot and created a drawing to work from:

i think the measurements around the berry bushes in the back may be a lil wonky.

   So now you should have a basic idea of what I'm working with...which is pretty much what I have too.

p.s.  hopefully we'll get a cheap camera this weekend and i'll be able to post pics of projects i've been working on recently. woohoo!

taking stock

first thing second: taking stock of our current resources....
   The house we moved into is awesome.  A 3 bedroom ranch affair with a fireplace, great insulation and two outbuildings, one an insulated shed with a covered porch that we've designated as our workshop and the other an open air shed that will be our potting and pottery shed, both with power and gutters.
  The front yard gets plenty of sun which is surprising considering the abundance of oaks in the neighborhood and the fact that it's on the north side of the house.
  The backyard harbors 4 fig trees, muscadine vines on a trellis attached to the open-air shed and a little circle of 2 maybe 3 small blueberry plants and another plant that might be some kind of raspberry.   Unfortunately the back only gets a little sun in the day which made me curious about the well-established figs and grapes.  Our next door neighbor grew up in the house and said they used to have a full-fledged garden back there when she was growing up, so my hypothesis is that the oaks in both backyards adjacent to ours have filled in in the intervening years and affected the fruit set (very few grapes and lots of figs that won't ripen).
   Which brings me to my next diatribe: the importance of neighborly relations.  I've lived in many places in suburbia and for some reason have never made the effort to really get to know most of my neighbors.  This is something I've resolved to rectify.  By talking to my next door neighbors and neighbors across the street I've learned about drainage patterns in the neighborhood, gotten permission to prune and take down trees to allow sun into the backyard, and been allowed to harvest an immense supply of rampant bamboo.  Holy crow, we've only been here a couple weeks.  It's time to integrate with our community, and I'm not talking about a community of like-minded individuals, I'm talking about embracing those who are geographically close regardless of ideology in an effort reclaim what it means to be human... working together not just to survive but to thrive.  Doing so will surely be beneficial.

preface

 This is how it is:
   You can call me "Shua," because you are the internet-machine, and i will call you, "You," so we can feel engaged in intimate dialogue despite our digital disconnect.
  Ok.
  Maybe i should tell you a little about the situation:
  Recently married, my partner-in-crime and i have decided to stay in the suburbs until she can finish her degree.  Our goal together is to ultimately live, work and play on a small, virtually self-sufficient homestead.  To this end, i've done enormous amounts of reading, taken classes and workshops and done some small-scale gardening.
    i am a capable craftsman with artistic tendencies, plus i love getting dirty.
   she is a talented artist with a lot on her plate as she wends her way through the hallowed halls of academia.
The experiment:  can we survive in suburbia fantastically?  can we live more sustainably, intentionally and justly in a commuter-consumer environment?  can we systematically remove ourselves from consumer-culture and become producers of goods and services not just for ourselves, but for our friends, family, neighbors & community?
                                        i sure hope so, cuz i never really liked the 'burbs
                                                             but i love a good challenge.