Experiments in the Kansas garden

My Permaculture Experiment...

With the scarcity of rain becoming more and more of an issue across the US and me planning to grow my own food, now and into the future, I figure I better learn how to conserve water when growing said food. When I learned about a guy named Sepp Holzer growing his food without irrigation, I was baffled. Especially when I saw him pull up radishes the size or turnips! How could he do that?! What magic techniques did he use?

I'm brand new to this type of food growing but it uses principles that make sense. So here's my very first baby step down the road of Permaculture... wish me luck!

I've had these raised bed for a few years now and I've also been doing extended season growing by using hoop houses. This has been great fun. Now to become more efficient in my growing—that sounds like a giant leap forward. I decided to try this in manageable chunks. I started with one small section of a raised bed. I dug out the greens that were past along with a layer of dirt and weeds, placing all of that into my wheel barrel. I still have to separate the weeds from the dirt, but I'm saving that job for tomorrow night.

Excited to see some progress and work through the steps, I dug out another layer of soil and placed it on a large sheet of cardboard. I separated the weed roots as I was digging since there weren't nearly as many the second layer down as there were in the wheelbarrow layer. The principle with permaculture is to layer things with wood fibers that contain cellulose at the base of the bed. When it rains or gets irrigated, the cellulose fibers will swell with water and retain it for use later by the plants. The roots will grow toward the water source. Ingenious! For the first layer, put down newspaper...

The next layer place cardboard. I happened to have this very large chunk of cardboard from something that I decided to save rather than take to recycling. I'm recycling in my own yard! How's that?!

On top of the cardboard, you place logs. I happen to have a lot of logs from all that logging I did at my property last winter; so now I can use some of them in these permaculture beds that I'm setting up.

I don't really know if three logs are enough or if I should put in more. If you have experience with using permaculture, I'm open to suggestions. Send them my way...

I placed a layer of black plastic over the dirt I dug out tonight thinking that by heating up the dirt, I have a chance of baking, aka killing, the weed remnants. I'm not sure how long I need to leave the black plastic on, so again, I'm open to learning.

That's as far as I got with this project tonight... I plan to work on it a bit every night that I don't have some other pressing thing to do.

Just to let you know... after the logs you place the soil... then seed it. Sepp uses a mixture of seeds that he just casts onto the ground. No straight rows or little holes or trenches for him. On top of the seed, place a layer of compost or manure, depending on what you're growing. For mushrooms use manure. For vegetables, use compost. I have a bunch of compost that I've been collecting for a few years now in the back by the shed. I think it's getting time that I start using it.

You may be wondering why am I prepping a bed in August... I'm creating this permaculture bed in my hoophouse area so I can grow through an extended season by covering the area with plastic when the weather turns cool to cold. I'm hoping to have potatoes by winter : )

Other projects that I've been busy with...

Dehydrating herbs and packaging them for use in teas and cooking:

Preserving the abundance of tomatoes this year, Hallelujah! I'm dehydrating both the yellow pear and red tomatoes. 

Don't they look terrific?! When you bite into a dried tomato the intensity of the flavor is astounding. It hits your taste buds like nothing else. Some people call them candy because they are so tasty. Really... who'da thunk?!

Then I use my seal-a-meal machine to suck all the air out of the bag and make a seal. It's pretty cool. I'm trying some with olive oil and some just dry.

It almost looks like beef jerky or something... but it's really just tomatoes. Yum... : )

There was also the fun I had with growing Yellow Eggplants... aren't they the most adorable things you ever did see?!

Here they are after harvesting... : )

I turned them into a persian stew, called koresh. Eggplant koresh with lentils is one of my favorites. Really I like many of the koreshes, but it's fun to have enough time to make one now and then. 

One day we ran across an apple tree (MacIntosh) on sale, so we snatched that up and planted it. With a peach tree and a pear tree already established, I figured adding an apple tree to the mix was a good idea.

One day we decided to harvest the volunteer potato plant that showed up this season... Trying to teach my kids that food comes from the land, I try to involve my kids a bit at a time so they have these memories to draw from as they go out into the world and need to make their way. Who knows what they may need to do in life and if they know that they can grow their own food and what it looks like, they're way ahead of many folks these days.

We cooked those spuds into one tasty treat. It's really fun to eat food that is just that fresh! Every one walks away with smiles on their faces.

Bon appetit!

A sharp chainsaw is like heaven with cookies and milk!

Chainsaw Sharpening & Painting the Stumps

The new chainsaw needed to be sharpened... already! Because so many trees, large and small, had been felled that the saw wasn't cutting through the wood as easily as it needed to and there are more trees to trim and log. Thus, a lesson in chainsaw sharpening (say that fast five times) availed itself. I'm such an interested student because I don't know this stuff, never even realized that chainsaws might get to a point of needing to be sharpened, and don't know when I might need to do this task myself someday.

In the era when I was growing up, in my family, there was a clear distinction between 'men's' work and 'women's' work and the two shall never meet. I remember going outside to watch my dad change the oil in the family car. When I came back in the house my mom said, "Don't you EVER do that again!" Wow... what had I done that was so criminal and deserved such a reprimand? Apparently it was watching my dad do a man's job... Now that my mom, and dad, are in the Abha Kingdom, I know that my mom understands these issues more fully and acceptingly and won't mind if I bring this topic to light.

Next weekend we have booked as Backhoe Weekend where we'll be removing stumps, roots, and other such pieces of wood from the ground to help prepare the way for the garden beds that will need to be worked up, the pole barn cement foundation that will need to be laid, and the pathways and driveways that need a smooth surface for traversing. To get ready for that busy weekend, I needed to mark all the wood protrusions with an flourescent bright pink spray paint to make it easier to spot the stumps that need to be removed. We agreed that I would mark them with an "X"... or something close to an X.

I walked and walked and walked around the areas where trees have been felled and knocked down with the Bobcat to locate all the protrusions that needed to be marked. Then Dan and I went around and he pointed out the one's that I had missed. Then I went around again and marked all the additional ones that I could identify by knocking them with my boots.

I just took one snapshot of stumps slated for removal, but you can look in pretty much any direction and see a similar sight. We have lots of work cut out for us for next weekend. My son and his girlfriend are planning to help us so they can get some real life stump removal experience in additional to learning how to drive a backhoe. My other son and his girlfriend 'may' join us the next day. Stay tuned...

In the meantime, there were branches to be removed from the huge cedar tree that was felled recently, so we needed to get cracking at sharpening that chainsaw. A week or so ago we had purchased a chainsaw sharpener at the local farm supply store. I didn't know what it was or how it worked or anything...  Dan had set up two saw horses and placed some OSB wood (Oreiented Strand Board) across the saw horses to make a table. Then he unwrapped the chainsaw sharpener from the packaging and connected it to the chainsaw... it just gets placed on top of the blade and screwed on... of course the chainsaw is turned OFF! You need to line up the angle of the sharpener with the angle of the tooth on the chainsaw. 10 degrees up and down and 30 degrees right to left for Husqvarna. The angle depends on the type of saw that you have. Every other tooth goes the other direction, so once you get the angle set to align with one tooth, you can sharpen all those that are aligned in that direction. Then you have to readjust the angle to sharpen the teeth that go the other way. It's a much more manual process than I would have imagined... but that's fine.

To align the sharpener with a tooth, slide the chain to bring up a tooth with the angle that you are going to sharpen...

Here's a close up to really see what I mean...

Then hold the sharpener and go back and forth like you would with a saw to sharpen the tooth. You can hear the sound changing from being a course sound and the sharpener is more difficult to move to when it becomes easier to move back and forth and the sound becomes more even and smooth. Then you know it's sharp and you can proceed to the next tooth that is aligned on that angle. The 'chain' part of the saw can be tugged on to move it into position. I didn't realize how easily the chain could slide. I thought it was more attached to the bar, but apparently not.

Then, one at a time, you move the teeth of the saw to the sharpener. Sharpen it and move on to the next. Do this around the whole chain. Then readjust the angle to align with the opposite angled teeth and repeat for each tooth around the chain. Then unscrew the sharpener attachment and you're ready to go.

When you fire up the chainsaw, it'll be able to cut through the wood much more easily than before... just like a knife sharpened to cut through that Thanksgiving turkey you consumed not so many months ago...!

Bon appetit!

More than a traveling road...

A Road Less Travelled...

When I read Pathfinders by Gail Sheedy back in the mid-1970s and decided to forge my own path in life, I had no idea that it would entail building a road from scratch in years to come. That day came this week...

In order to get access to the farm property, we needed to create an entrance since the land wasn't accessible directly from the existing county road. We started by clearing volunteer trees and brush from what was supposed to be a road and driving over it many times to 'make' a road. However, when it rained, the road became muddy and threatened to get us stuck on more than one occasion. We knew we'd need to build a road to provide easy access to the property.

Hmmm... what type of gravel to order? How many dump truck loads will it take to build the type of road we want? Where to go to get the best service and the best price? All questions we had to figure out beforehand. When we ordered the first load of 'gravel' to create a driveway over the culverts, they delivered road gravel, which was really thick sand... not exactly what we wanted. Lesson: What we mean by gravel and what the company means can be two different things. So then we learned there is AB gravel, road gravel, 1 1/2" gravel, etc., etc.. That didn't necessarily make it easier, but at least we knew we didn't want road gravel, because the sand caused us to get stuck more than once.

The first two loads delivered were AB gravel. Clearly, better than the sand and we can spread it over the sand driveway to give it more substance and into the parking area on the property.

The next two loads were to be the inch and a half size gravel. The driver showed up with a nice heaping load of gravel. It took me back to the days when my father used to work for the Huron County Road Commission. He had all sorts of road work stories to share at the dinner table. 

The driver was to back into the entrance, lift the dump mechanism, and slowly drive out to pour a layer of gravel over as much of the drive as was available.

Watching him work... I became a five-year old spectator again...

The driver did a nice job of pouring the gravel evenly along the road...

With the next load of one and half inch gravel, the driver shaped a triangular entrance to provide a wider area in which to come on the road. Then he dumped the excess onto the AB gravel piles so we have some extra to mix into that batch for the driveway entrance.

Assessing the job from the entrance side of the road, it looked like a job well done... We just have to drive over it for the next several months to pat it down. Yesterday when I walked on the new gravel road, I noticed that it was already settling in nicely and becoming very firm to walk on.

Ahhh....becoming a pathfinder has its own rewards... part of it is letting my core being be seen by the world, rather than just playing a part as an actor in someone else's play. The mysteries of the soul are intertwined with the mysteries hidden in the heart. I'm bringing those out into the open now... and it feels right... and good.

: ) Be happy and be at peace.

Mayo and other foods made at home!

Mayonnaise... from scratch!

Mayonnaise, to me, has always been a weird condiment. What is this strange matter that people spread on sandwiches, use for making a dressing for coleslaw and potato salad, and often put too much on for my liking? I've heard of recipes claiming that you can make homemade mayonnaise, but I had never taken the time to really look at the ingredients of what goes into mayonnaise. I don't know why, but it always seemed like a strange food; sort of like a non-food. And then there's the Mayonnaise vs. Miracle Whip debate, which I won't go into here.

   Growing up in my family, my mother used Miracle Whip. I found it to be a bit too sweet for my tastes. Later in life, I decided to eat foods that hadn't been bastardized in some way, so I stuck to eating only mayonnaise and butter rather than any of there offshoots like Miracle Whip and margarine. I figured that the closer to its unprocessed, or natural, state it was, probably the better for humans. Only later did I find out that margarine is only one molecule away from being plastic and that margarine left unattended will not mold, mildew, attract bugs, or disintegrate. Glad I made that decision for myself early on in life.

   In this effort of learning to do more and more for myself and be less dependent on outside processing sources, I decided it was time to take a look at a mayonnaise recipe and do this for myself...

Mayonnaise Ingredients:

1 whole egg, at room temperature

1 egg yolk, at room temperature

1 teaspoon Dijon-type mustard

1 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice

1 Tablespoon whey, optional

3/4—1 cup extra virgin olive oil or expeller-expressed sunflower oil or a combination

generous pinch of sea salt

I left the eggs out while I was out for the afternoon to get to room temperature. (They really only need about half an hour.) When I returned home I plunked the eggs in the blender first—one whole egg and one egg yolk separated from the white. Do you know how to separate the yolk from the white? I crack the egg shell in half and pour the yolk into one side of the shell letting the white run out of the shell. I pour the yolk back into the other half of the shell and more of the white will slide off the yolk. I do this back and forth a couple of times until the white has slid off the yolk into my container set below it to catch the white. (You can use the white in an omelette or other dish where you may need more whites like meringue, so you don't waste any.)

Then I added the Dijon-type mustard. I happened to have a little Spicy Brown mustard in my fridge so I used that.

For the lemon juice, I used concentrated lemon juice since I didn't have a fresh lemon laying around.

And the extra virgin olive oil. I used what I had on hand, but I forgot to take a snapshot of it. I'm pretty sure you've all seen extra virgin olive oil before though.

Here's my bag of sea salt that I purchased from the bulk food section of the health food store.

I processed the first four ingredients in my blender for about 30 seconds. The whey, which I didn't use, makes the mayonnaise keep longer (like up to 5 months). Without the whey, the mayonnaise will keep for two weeks in the fridge.

   Through the cap top that I removed, I poured the 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil into the blender—a bit at a time—while running the processor. It emulsified nicely; which reminds me of a vinegrette that I make using olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and spicy mustard. I added a generous pinch of sea salt, which I just happened to have in my spice section.

and then tasted it... yum! I mean... really yum! It was soooo good. I could use it as a vegetable dip all by itself without having to add anything else to it! Why didn't I know how good homemade mayonnaise tasted before?! Why hadn't any of my friends ever made homemade mayonnaise? Oh yeah, because in this culture, people hardly cook anymore let alone make their condiments from scratch. For example, when I go to a potluck, my American friends typically show up with bottled dressing for their salads; however, my Persian friends still make their dressing from scratch, fresh each time and the taste difference is significant. Personally, I've long ago converted to eating fresh dressing on my salads. Now, I'll consider making fresh mayonnaise when I need it because 1) it's so easy to do, and 2) the taste is phenomenal. So... give it a try. You won't regret it; and who knows, you may never go back!

I put the date on my homemade label so I don't get confused by my busyness and forget that it expires in two weeks if I haven't devoured it in the first week. When I make something new like this, I take the opportunity to allow those around me take a taste and decide if they want to introduce a new food into their life too. It's a beautiful opportunity.

Bon appetit!

Plans for the little farm...

Following is a bit of stream of conscienceness (or however you spell that damn word!) on starting up a power grid for our little farm.

First is a power source. For us that will be solar panels.  We also want to get hooked into the power lines but the last quote was $15,000 and we can buy an awful lot of panels, and batteries with that money.  The first setup will be a couple 185 watt panels. Appx 2x4 ft they weigh probably 30 or so pounds.


These two panels will be hooked to several(now two) deep cycle batteries.  We purchase these new looking for the most bang for the buck.  They were appx 80 dollars apiece and now starts the search for used/reconditioned ones from golf carts or equipment. 

I need some type of electrical conditioner, probably in the future. 

I have a 400 watt and a 1000 watt inverter.  These will give 110ACv from the 12DCv batteries.  Not much yet but a start.

We will be using the old RV for the power point for now.  Later a shed will handle this duty and eventually it will move inside of the pole barn/construction warehouse. 

I don't have a final total or even a good estimate on the cost of the power center but following is a list of costs to come over the next year on the new little farm...