It's A Weird Spring

    It's been quite awhile since I've done an update on our place here at EarthSong Retreat. This is a pretty strange Spring season we're having this year. Temperatures swinging from near 90 degrees (F) to mid 30's and back again. We have had a few nice but light rains and I've been expanding the garden. 
    I've finally gotten another scythe from Ebay. I enjoyed my old one, but it was lost several moves ago. It works really well on the giant ragweed and other grasses that I need to cut here and there. We try not to mow at all, especially while we have wildflowers for the bees. 
    Speaking of the bees. We're looking forward to our first honey harvest.
    We also added some more chickens to our small flock. Six pullets were purchased a few weeks back, three Rhode Island Red and three Ameracauna. My personal favorite breed is the Rhode Islands, but we have some diversity. That will bring our flock to 18.
    The free-ranging chickens are a valuable part of pest control, as well as composting.
    The compost system is simple. I have a pair of bins made from pallets.
    We add kitchen scraps, garden and yard trimmings, to either bin. We also add newspaper from the macaws' cages and other compostable material. As you can see, the bins are open and accessible to our free-ranging chickens. They do an excellent job of further shredding the paper and mixing it all together. I rarely turn the piles, but do add water to help decompose the paper if needed. Before long, I have usable compost!
    I select a pile, it really doesn't matter much which one. I move the top layers over to the adjacent pile until I reach the good compost. It goes through a mesh screen into the wheelbarrow. Whatever doesn't go through the screen goes back on the pile.
   The compost goes straight to wherever it's needed. 
   I like this system!


I'll leave with a picture of Cooper the Wonder Dog and his footbaths. He likes our rainwater collection efforts.

First Spring at EarthSong Retreat!

Here we are, end of May, 2012. The aircard is renewed and it's time to post an update and some pictures of what's going on here at EarthSong Retreat. 


As you can see above, the wildflowers have been in full swing for some time now. Below is another shot of that field. The bees are loving it!

The stick you might see standing near the middle of this shot indicates the location of the new mulberry tree that is planted there. That field also has an escarpment black cherry, a paw-paw, and a couple of comfrey plants. This is a sort of narrow patch of land between a small tree belt and the larger field where our new orchard is located. 

Speaking of the orchard, above are two shots of the new hugelkulture swales in progress. Swales are berms or ridges made along a contour line. They slow down water flow and let it soak in to the soil gradually. Water in the soil is down where the plants need it, and doesn't evaporate so quickly. The swale above is near the high end of the orchard. A ditch is dug, limbs, sticks, logs are placed in the ditch. Dirt is thrown back onto the stack. The woody matter adds organic matter back to the soil. sequesters carbon, adds water retaining material, and allows you to make a somewhat higher berm with less soil. Plus, it gives us a nifty way to dispose of limbs and trees that died last year. The main idea, though, is to keep the water here where we can use it and not let it run off.

While we're on the orchard subject, the nearly ripe peach on the left is on one of our new trees we recently planted in the orchard. The picture on the right is a grafting experiment I am doing. A cutting from the tree on the left has been grafted to the tree on the right. As you can see, that tree also has a peach. 

This tree was a volunteer, arising from the roots of an old, dead tree on the property. Usually, that doesn't necessarily produce a very good tree. Root stock is most often a more "native" strain of fruit that is hardy but perhaps doesn't make the best fruit. However, we had a lot of these volunteers, so they were free. Regardless of the fruit, they will have blossoms, and that means it's good for the bees. Therefore, I separated a lot of the volunteers so they had more room to grow, replanting a few in different spots. Those transplants seem to be doing well. We'll see what happens in the fruit department. Like the one above, several have set fruit. Worst case scenario, I'll have sturdy trees to graft onto! The volunteers are scattered around the rest of the property, many near the beehives. 


The pecan, apple, peach, pear, and persimmon trees we've planted in the orchard area are doing well also.

At right is another addition. One of several fig transplants I rooted and set out. I'm not a huge fig fan myself, but several in my family are. They are also pretty easy to root from cuttings and grow.

At left is the array of bathtubs that will make up our greywater/wetland setup eventually. I'll post more pictures as that develops. I was set on getting three tubs and it seemed to take forever to obtain that last one!
Not too visible behind the tubs are new grape vines planted along the fence to the left, and berry vines along the fence across the back. This fence runs down the back yard. A long wicking bed garden will run there as well to make use of the treated greywater.

The same backyard hosts our solar clothes dryer, also known as a clothesline. This was constructed by Michael and Silas. 

I've mentioned our hens before. The adopted rooster that we had got nabbed by something one night. The hens are carrying on without him. One of the hens also died mysteriously on the nest one day. The other twelve are fine and doing their chicken thing. Here they are starting the day. I let them out of their coop (remember the coop?) into the pen as soon as I get up. Around noon I release them to roam the rest of the property.  I feel this minimizes their laying elsewhere since they seem to do the majority of their laying in the morning. We're averaging about 5 eggs a day from the twelve, so it's possible one or two are still sneaking off somewhere. Oh well, keeping them penned is NOT the agenda. 

One of the hens became broody and got argumentative when we came to collect the eggs. The rooster being gone, the eggs were no longer fertile. We got six fertile eggs from a friend for her to incubate. The required time for hatching passed and no chicks! We went to our nearby feed store and bought five baby chicks to place under her. Between that morning and dusk when we put the chicks in, three of the eggs hatched. So, we now have 8 baby chicks. Here is the brood all snug in the brood house. Since then, the mama got rambunctious and I put her back with the other hens. No more broody, and the chicks are doing well. The new chicks are a mixed bag including Rhode Island Red (my pick) and Americauna. We're figuring that at least one will be a rooster, too. I didn't intend to have a rooster, but that other one adopted us and we sort of missed him after he left. I named him Lord Popinjay. He'd walk me to the pen and we'd talk while I let the hens out.

The current manifestation of the garden is coming along as well. At left is one of the two 6x4 "square foot garden" raised beds. Visible are squash, broccoli and beans. The squash is HUGE after our rains! There is still room in the beds to add plants. The picture on the right shows a pair of "three sisters" tire gardens. They have sweet corn, beans, and squash planted in them. Looking good as well, although the corn in the farthest one hasn't come up. Re-planting that.

Here to the left is another tire garden, this one with strawberries. We've already picked a few from it. Sweet!


I'm still making beehives for sale, and planning to build a few top-bar hives as well.

Bottle and Food Trees

Both here and in my writing blog Criminal Mischief I've mentioned the Blue Bottle Tree, both the novel in progress, and the actual tree above, which is my own rendition of one. It was for looks only and, alas, it is no more. It is not a wise thing to use a dead peach tree for this, as they tend to rot just below the ground. I removed other dead peach trees on the property by simply pushing them over by hand and then it hit me. DUH! The blue bottle tree is in the same boat! I'm surprised it survived the high winds we've had lately. I removed the bottles and it only took the lightest of pushes to topple the tree. I'm glad I saved the bottles. I mean, the blue wine bottles are nice enough, but there are a few collector type bottles in the bunch. Traditionally the blue bottle trees I've known from childhood were on dead fig trees, which must be more durable at root level. Lately I've seen several manufactured steel pipe trees for the purpose. I don't know. I'll think about it. I have the picture, anyway.


Besides all that we've been planting live trees here at Earth Song Retreat. In the past month we've planted three pecan trees, three peach, two apple, one pear, all in the new orchard along the contours. Plus, along the back yard fence I've planted asparagus, artichoke, raspberry, blackberry, and grapes.

Last weekend the City of Bastrop, with Apache Nurseries, gave away free trees to residents in the area who lost trees last summer to either drought or fire. I was busy at Sherwood Forest Faire (opening weekend), but I broke away long enough to get in the looooooong line for free trees. It took about an hour and a half to finally get up to the site and they had cut back to two trees per household. There was a fair selection, mostly shade trees. Mindful of our food forest plan, I selected two Texas Persimmon trees. I don't really have much experience with these, but I do know they bear fruit and are drought tolerant, so they'll do! I haven't selected a site to plant them yet, but recent rains (YAY!) have the ground a bit muddy for planting anyway. In fact, a good bit of yesterday was spent unsticking the pickup from a muddy patch.


Part of today was spent pruning existing fruit trees.


Two of the three graywater tubs have been set in the ground. We are still looking for the third one. With a bit of drier digging conditions we can begin on the wicking beds. All of this is going on around the efforts out at Sherwood.


Never boring!

Use Those Limbs and Twigs!

(Today I'm re-posting something quite good from Paul Wheaton with his permission. Check out his great stuff at www.permies.com!)

Keep those branches, twigs, rotton logs and Christmas trees!

That stuff is gardener's gold!  Organic matter! 

Winter is the season for pruning trees.  Sometimes taking out dangerous trees.   I am mystified when people haul the wood away and in the sping they spend money for mulch.    And equally mystified by people that rent an obnoxious, loud, smelly chipper.

here is a quick list of a dozen things that can be done with that wood, keeping it on your property and not having to fool with a chipper.

1.  Make your own mulch:   A huge branch can be reduced to flat mulch in about two minutes with a pruner.  I usually clip at the bends in the tigs and branches.  A huge pile of branches and twigs will become about 30 times smaller in 15 minutes. 



2.  Cover it in soil to make hugelkultur.   This is best with the logs (green logs work too) and thick branches.   This makes for a richer soil that needs less watering.  Some people have built tall raised garden beds with this technique and they have a normal garden that doesn't need water all summer.   This is an excellent use for a stump - no need to pull it or grind it, just cover it with soil.



3.  In Finland they use small branches and twigs between muddy spots and the house.   You can make a muddy spot less muddy, or you can create a place near the house to wipe your feet.



4.  Put the wood in a dry place for a while and then use it for firewood.  Rocket stove technology can heat a home with 90% less wood than a conventional wood stove.   So little, that many homes are heated with nothing but tree trimmings that come out of a small yard.



5.  If you keep chickens, nothing makes better deep chicken bedding than pine, fir or spruce boughs. 



6.  Butterfly/bird/wildlife habitat:  Just make a big brushpile.  This provides habitat for butterflies to lay eggs, and a variety of beneficial insects and other critters.   Most permaculture practitioners keep a brushpile somewhere in their yard because they believe that it reduces pest damage for the rest of their garden.  

6.1.  Snag or stump for wildlife

7.  Criss-crossing branches in a compost pile helps to aerate it.

8.  With a bit of jute, it's a snap to make a twig trellis or arbor for your garden.  Usually in about ten minutes.  And when they get old, you can mulch the branches and the jute together.

9.  If you have some wood shop skills, you can make chairs, furniture, name tags, coasters, bird houses, benches, planter box, tool handles, coat racks and so much, much more.    And if the wood is living black locust wood, whatever you do with that will last about ten times longer outdoors than cedar without a drop of paint or stain.

10. garden stakes

11.  Throwing branches and logs into ponds will usually reduce algae problems and give fish and amphibians a place to hide from predators.



12. marshmallow/hotdog sticks! 

A lot of this stuff is effectively sequestering your own carbon!  It could be a massive step toward your own personal carbon neutrality.

Back From Eden

I just got back from the first Teacher Training Course at the Permaculture Institute site at Pojoaque, New Mexico. (Pronounced, I learned, as "Po-acky" according to the shuttle driver.) Close to Santa Fe, the trip requires flying in to Albuquerque and a 90 minute or so shuttle ride. Since I arrived at night, lugging my tent which I turned out not to need, I really didn't see my surroundings till the next morning. It was a delight to the senses! Just outside the property was arid desert land. Inside was a completely different story. Green everywhere! 
I came there from my home near Bastrop, Texas. When I made my trip the Austin/Bastrop area had been through 69 consecutive days of "above 100 degree" temperatures, as well as way too many months of drought. In short, everything at home was frying and drying out. Casa Las Barrancas, on the other hand, was verdant and blossoming.


The Permaculture Institute was founded in North America by Bill Mollison and Scott Pittman in 1997 to be a sister organization to the original Institute in Australia. Since then, Scott and Arina Pittman, Larry Santoyo and many others have worked to uphold the standards of Permaculture, teach Permaculture classes, show by example the Ethics and Principles that Bill Mollison and David Holmgren originally set forth.


The class surroundings were wonderful. So were the assembled classmates who came from New Mexico, Nevada, California, Colorado, Bermuda, Texas, and Venezuela.  They were quite an interesting group of 22 students. The teachers, Larry Santoyo and Scott Pittman, have an enormous amount of experience between them of teaching and using Permaculture. Arina Pittman, Scott's lovely wife, is another invaluable resource of knowledge of Permaculture, gardening, and life in general. 


Most of the members of the new Teacher Training class  were previous Permaculture Design Certificate (or PDC) students of Larry and Scott. I may have been the only exception. I came across the class by accident. I made a lot of great friends and contacts, though, as well as learning a lot about teaching and living Permaculture. I owe a lot of thanks to my friend Merry Henderson and my partner Cat Dancing for their support in my taking this class. 
Thanks!

Spiraling Inward, or is that Outward?

Flower Spiral at Sherwood Forest Faire: Cat Dancing Creations #309

The spiral garden shown here represents several principles of Permaculture. It is an efficient use of space and resources. It maximizes "edge" which is where the most diversity of life is located in any system. The spiral is one of the natural forms that life takes. It even approaches "vertical" gardening, albeit in a small way.

Think about edge. Most yards are examples of of monoculture. Usually it's grass, grass, shrubs, grass, and so on. Even open fields, while more diverse overall, have that diversity spread over a larger area. What happens at the edge? Along a fence row, a creek bed, the edge of a wooded area, or even a road? Usually you see much more diverse life compressed in a small area.


There are lots of reasons for this. Birds roost on fences and trees and spread seeds of all kinds. Mowing and cultivation are undertaken more randomly along the edges. There are also varying amounts of water, animals, and shade along those edges. We can find many, many explanations but the overall observation is valid, life is more diverse along the edges.


In many people's view, the most dynamic and growing segment of human life exists among those who are living "on the edge", whichever edge they are speaking of. Face it, that is where growth happens. Let's grow some today!

Somewhat Late Gardening

We finally got our garden in today. We're in a rented space, and with efforts out at Sherwood Forest Faire and other such we got a late start on our garden. However, we found that, by the moon, today was a good day for planting most things, besides, last frost here usually lands around March 15, and this year was no exception. So, we weren't necessarily THAT late! 
Soil here is red brick clay, I  mean literally! They make Elgin-Butler red bricks from it just down the road! It really does not lend itself to gardening directly in it.
In the past I've enjoyed gardening with the Square Foot Garden method in raised beds, and that is what was called for here.
Last year we were looking for sand for the Sherwood booth on Freecycle and were given a 6' x 6' sandbox made from 2x8 lumber. We had also been given a lot of 2x4x8'-0 lumber that was used for shipping crates by UPS. I cut several of those in half, combined them with the 2x8x6'-0 lumber and made up two 4'-0x6'-0 raised beds. Cat and I sat down and decided what we wanted to plant and made a plan for the two beds. One more thing, we are both totally committed to gardening organically.
We went over to Bastrop Gardens in Bastrop and got some of their garden soil to fill our beds. Cat also picked up several of the plants we needed. We got organic plants there, and organic seeds at Home Depot and Whole Foods.
It took two trips to get enough bag-it-yourself soil to do the job. The first trip yielded some very sandy loamy garden soil mix. Through some misunderstanding the second trip brought almost straight compost. I mixed the two together and made up a pretty nice mix of garden soil. It really wasn't worth bagging it back up and making another trip, and I think it worked out pretty well. I also put down a layer of pasteboard from some old boxes under the beds to keep unwanted weeds from sneaking in from underneath, as well as keeping the good soil on top.

This bed holds lettuce, sugar snap peas, cucumbers, onions, Swiss chard, Kale, bell peppers, corn, spinach, summer squash, broccoli, carrots, cilantro, and nasturtiums. You can see the strings I ran to mark off the square foot sections. Notice the difference in that soil!

.This one has lettuce, purple pole beans, corn, garlic, egg plants, summer squash, carrots, spinach, nasturtiums, cilantro, chives, and broccoli. I love the raised bed, square-foot system, as nobody walks on the garden soil and it stays loose. No tilling required! Most of the time you don't even need a trowel, just poke your hand or finger into the friable soil to make a hole for the seed. Soil compaction is a huge problem in any garden, or farm for that matter.

Both together look like this.  I planted large bamboo poles to hold up green plastic fencing to keep out four legged critters, mostly our own cats, chickens and the occasional bunny. This pic makes it look rather weird, but it's more substantial than that. We can just drop the fence to pick or work the garden and pull it back up again afterward. If it looks a bit temporary, well, it is!

We also make use of several tires to plant tomatoes and a few other things in. We took old tires from our pickup, cut off the side walls, and filled them with dirt and compost. For several years we've planted tomatoes and onions in them. These three have four types of tomatoes, sage, basil and bunching onions from last year in them. I've found that tomatoes work just as well or better planted elsewhere than in one of the "community" beds. They take up a lot of space on their own, and benefit from being accessible from all sides as in the tires.
Location-wise, the tires and beds are on the north side of our mobile home and a storage shed. They get full morning sun. I feel they will be protected from our hot afternoon sun this way, as well as the drying, scorching effect of the hot south winds we get all spring and summer. I'm convinced those hot south winds are a major factor in gardens getting dried out and too hot too soon around here. We'll see how that works out. I'll also be mulching everything tomorrow to keep that moisture from getting away.
We still have a few more tomatoes to obtain and plant, but that's it for now!
Garden organically! It's important for all of us, and not just because we need to stay away from GMO foods the corporations want to shove down our throats! Organic is better for us, and the planet. 

Building the Magnificent Cat Dancing Creations Vendor Booth! Part 5

Plugging along with the booth construction. I thought I would post a few pics of the straw/mud process, as well as where we're at, now that the blog is finally up to date. 

 Here's the back wall with bamboo up several more feet and the wall filled about halfway up the doorway.

 The South end wall, about half done.

 Inside, looking out through the front door and windows. Wall is filled up to the porch roof level. You can see that the upper part is still damp.

Outside view of the front wall. See the booth number?















 
Looking up at the South end back corner. The triangular space will be a window. Staining is not quite done. Still have some bamboo to finish it out as well.

 The North end wall. Some of the rock stem wall is visible here as well.

 A close-up of some of the joinery of yours truly. Leaves make some of it look a bit strange.

 A shot from inside the rear wall. You'll see Cat stuffing some of it in a bit. The 2X4s serve a dual purpose, or maybe triple. They will be supports to hang art from on the finished wall. They also give points to tie the bamboo too, as well as lateral stabilization for the walls.

 Another close look at the inside of the South end wall. The front of the booth is to the left of the picture.

 A closer look at the wall. Kind of hairy looking, isn't it?

An even closer look at the packed straw/clay mixture.We're even getting a few green sprouts.

Here's the good stuff!

And here's where it starts. As mentioned before, the clay is mixed with water. We use both a garden fork and a paddle till it reaches this consistency, a bit like a not too thick chocolate shake.

Silas row the boat ashore! However, shore never seems to get any closer!

 Loosened straw is mixed in and left to soak for forty-five minutes or so.

There it is. Al dente! Sort of.

 The fork transfers the mix to the wheelbarrow.

Wheel it where it is needed, grab a handful.

Stuff it in the forms. Muddy hands are GOOD for you!

 Keep going till the forms are full. If you look closely you can see the bamboo sitting on the nails that hold the bases in place. A vertical 16d nail serves to hold them in place, while smaller nails are used to attach them to the horizontals and top pieces.

Holes and depressions are inevitable. You can go back and fill them in as you go. The clay also shrinks a bit, it pulls away from the wood above it and to the side, so that needs filling later as well.

 Back to tools. Here are our professional looking mixing barrels.

 These are the buckets we soak extra clay in for mixing. Also professional. Can you tell what they held originally?

 The screen. Made from half inch hardware cloth and 2x4s. At times a finer one would help, quarter inch, perhaps.

Wheelbarrows and, hey, remember that Flintstone roller? The iron barrow at bottom is the really old one. The narrow steel wheel is a problem sometimes, but it is never flat! It also doesn't flex like the plastic barrow.

 Another fun part of the project is the flower spiral garden out front by the ramp.

 A lavender plant tops the spiral, the rest is planted with snapdragons, dianthus, and alyssum. Most of the plants came from the nice folks at Bastrop Organic Gardens, along with good advice on planting. The spiral was planted on the day before the full moon while the moon was in Scorpio. We got Microbial Extract and Castings from Microbial Earth to fertilize it and get it started right. 

There it is! The spiral garden, more specifically used as an herb spiral, was a concept I learned in my Permaculture Design class. 


Work continues!