Plangarden and Gimp are handy tools for moving things around in the garden without too much back ache. This is a preliminary map for the Spring 2010 Garden – not the veggies yet, but at least the structures. The hoop house will be moved from its present position (light blue) over beds 8, 9 (still …
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Outside: Dust Mites and Animals Tracks
While the dust mites in the bedding were freezing (to death, hopefully)… We warmed up this cold but sunny morning by splitting and sorting firewood, playing with a neighbor’s dog, and scouting out some animal tracks. Here are some tiny bird tracks next to my fingerprint: And these are some huge bird prints next to …
Peppers
Two peppers reached maturity while we were in Belgium. What a succulent red, and so photogenic! They’ll be going onto the pizza soon. The plants will stay indoors and might give us our earliest peppers next season.
The Big Plans for 2010
After two weeks of virtually no blogging, it’s lists like these that can get me going again. Yesterday I listed this week’s goals, today I’m looking at the Big Homesteading Plans for 2010. There is some sort of order here, but don’t ask me which. Chicken coop (cob? attached to greenhouse? moat?) and 6 (?) …
Snow Shoveling
Having a 1500+ sq.f. driveway, having decided not to use a snow blower and not to hire someone with a truck to plow it for us, we purchased one of these: It’s a snow float (a Suncast) and it does miracles. A chore that used to take the two of us at least two hours, …
Back into the Fray
To do this week: plan Spring and Summer garden inventorize left-over and saved seeds read all the gorgeous seed catalogs that arrived while we were gone order new seeds figure out a better seedling “hotbox” – buy seed mats? enroll in bee school, chicken class, and pottery The plants under row cover in the hoop …
Riot for Austerity – Month 14
We’re back and Rioting again. I’ll again keep last year’s averages (calculated here) visible as a baseline. I use this calculator. Gasoline. Well, there’s no way around it: Amie and I flew to Belgium – our first visit in 3 years – and I’m counting it as driving there, and back. I’m using our own …