No, really. I already harvested carrots. Well, Amie harvested them: No doubt you’ve noticed that these are baby carrots. Baby carrots. I had let that bed go to weeds, and when pulling said weeds today found that carrots have much less purchase on the soil than weeds do, and they too came up. So after …
Category Archives: homestead
$600 Movable Hoop House: Details, Pictures and Cost Analysis
Background Inspired by Eliot Coleman’s Winter Harvest, we built our first hoop house in December 2009. We got it in place right in time for the first winter storm. It was made of pvc pipes and 6 mil landscape plastic. The only “specialized” thing about it was the clamps we used to clip the plastic …
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Riot for Austerity – Months 17 and 18
Wew, it’s May 2 already, over two months since I reported on our Riot.I’ll average March and April (Mapril). Last year’s averages (calculated here) are mentioned as a baseline. I use this calculator. Gasoline. 12.66 gallons per person (pp) in cars + 10 miles pp on public transport = 31 % of the US National …
Kale Going to Seed and Amie in the Garden
The four vigorous kale plants that survived the winter in the hoop house are bolting. I am daily harvesting three of them, letting the biggest one going to seed for saving. Since all four plants are of the same kind, and there are no other brassicas going to seed within a mile, there is no …
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The Tomato Seedlings, They…
Survived! The thermometer has been reading a minimum of 49-50 F. Not bad for 35F nights. They’ll be hardened off, though, don’t you think? I scored two loads of cardboard for more sheet mulching, one load from a friend who was happy to free up some real estate in her basement, and one, the larger …
Garden Snake and Other Back Yard Tales
While hacking out a stump in one of our “wild” side gardens, we scared this (harmless) garden or garter snake. He, or she, was very defensive, striking out several times and unwilling to leave the spot. So we left. Amie understood: it’s the snake’s garden too. In any case it brought home the importance of …
Tree, Bush, Vine, Mushroom
last of the frozen blueberries (rinse out baggie, reuse) Today was fabulous. Almost 60F, sunny, a mild breeze. Amie and I went outside and worked – well, she sat and drew, I worked. I made a new 4’x16′ bed near the fence, for peas and lettuce (it will be shaded by the summer hoop house). …
Workshop/Studio, Root Cellar, and Future
Turns out we won’t be replacing our old, rotting, dirt-floor small shed with a new and larger, insulated workshop/pottery studio. The previous owner had an unwieldy septic system put in, and some digging today confirmed that part of that system lies within 10 feet of the corner of the old shed – and closer than …
What’s Growing in my Garden
In the hoop house: Outside: garlic And this is where the bee hive will stand:
Eat Real Food Challenge
I stopped reckoning our food consumption for the Riot a long time ago: the Riot way of calculating our food consumption and production was never clear to me. And so, though the growing and storing and preparing of food are almost constantly on my mind, I haven’t kept track, which made me feel at a …