Yesterday we racked DH’s two wines (3 gallons each of Cabernet and Malbec) and my four meads (one of which turned into vinegar).
Monthly Archives: May 2016
Korean Natural Farming: IMO 1 (i)
Another oft-used (and used in quantity) cohort of living allies in Korean Natural Farming is IMO: Indigenous Micro Organisms. The IMO “input” is made in several steps, from IMO 1 through 4. IMO 1 is the “catch” of said microorganisms, and in each subsequent step you get to culture these, growing their quantity until you …
Korean Natural Farming: FAA (i)
A month ago I attended a workshop on Korean Natural Farming (KNF), led by Aaron Englander, at the Natick Organic Community Farm, where they implement a lot of KNF techniques. I deeply appreciate many of the ground tenets of KNF: make it cheap (and so available for even the poorest), use as many inputs as possible …
Fungi (i): Edible Mushrooms
Back in winter, my friend Alex and I were planning on starting a mushroom farm on the property. Unfortunately our calls for logs (oak, birch, beech, etc.) didn’t produce any, and so the inoculation season passed us by. But all was not lost. In 2010 I bought and planted mycelium of King Stropharia. Stropharia rugosoannulata, …
A New Approach to Water, Being More of the Same
From the beginning (2008), I have gardened organically – better than “organically,” actually. For instance, I always refused to use the hose, that is, tap water, in my gardens. Even as the garden grew larger and more labor intensive, I insisted on watering with buckets and watering cans. Some relief came when I installed drip …
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A New Approach to Beekeeping
Both my colonies perished over the winter. When I opened them up in early spring I found only a handful of dead bees (no queen, that I could see), and quite a bit of honey left. It was too late, the bee bodies were too decomposed, to send off a sample to the Beltsville Lab, …