On The Free Tip

free wooden wine boxes for our CSA

Scavenging has become a way of life for us.  There are so many amazing resources out there people just throw away.  Yes it's cliche, one person's trash is another's treasure...however when you are farming on a shoestring all that "trash" is good as gold.  Perhaps scavenge is not the right word; what we do is more like salvage or glean.  Besides livestock feed, almost all our resources are free.  

leftover Chinese broccoli and bok choy starts from a community garden

From fencing off craigslist, organic seeds from the seed library, wine boxes and pallets for seed flats, straw bales for animal bedding and mulch, vegi starts from the garden club, bamboo cuttings as supplementary feed, truck loads of horse manure from the stables up the street, truck loads of wood mulch from the neighborhood tree trimmer, to more truck loads of pumpkins after Halloween to feed the livestock.  I could go on and on, it's all about the FREE stuff.  

timber bamboo cut down by a neighbor, we used to build a trellis for squash

But what's best about all this is that most of these are things we actually need and some are just fun to have or useful materials for our creative endeavors.  We save tons of money recycling and reusing.  The downside?  Sometimes we wait to get that item we really need/want.  (Which makes us think twice about how badly we really need it!)  Or once in a while we bring home something that takes up space until it's perfect use is discovered.  

old straw bales we use for animal bedding and mulch

And the upside is that we have the ability to create our farm life with stuff we find while we make choices to spend our hard earned money on other things (or save it!)  Not to mention we can tread lightly as consumers while focusing on producing more of what we need.  It really is a win/win situation.  

van full of left over pumpkins, day after Halloween

What kinds of free stuff do you re-purpose out there?

Building A Hoophouse

A couple of weeks ago I was inspired to build a hoop house.  I was getting impatient waiting for my other half to come up with the master plans for our official greenhouse and steadily running out of places to put all the plants we are trying to propagate.  So after hunting around the property and snooping in hubby's workshop I came up with almost everything I needed for my guerrilla project.  The process is pretty self explanatory (if I can figure it out than anyone can).  I made this model 5' x 20' so it can stand alone or fit over a long garden bed if need be.

After screwing the wooden base together I attached some pvc pipe I had  left over from an old chicken tractor we took apart.  Then I added two pieces of pallet wood on the ends for stability and ran more pvc pipe across the top and sides, securing with cable ties.  I used these c-clamps to hold the pvc hoops upright.  

The only thing I purchased for this project was the plastic which I got at the dollar store, so my whole hoop house cost a grand total of $3 to make!

At the front entrance the plastic is tied around another shorter piece of pvc so I can lift it easily for watering and adding or removing plants.  

It may not be totally professional but my seedlings are super happy.  It gets really hot in there!  The corn and cucumbers are all quickly germinating and the squash just keep on coming.  We have also started dill, heirloom collards, Abyssinian kale, assorted beets, mammoth sunflowers, burdock, and peppers.  Whoo hoo!  

Intro To Natural Beekeeeping

a brave volunteer getting ready to install the swarm

a future beekeeper listens attentively

tapping the swarm out of the box into their new hive

Our first Intro to Natural Beekeeping class was a success!  The weather was gorgeous and the turnout of eleven students was perfect for an intimate setting.  The bees were amazingly docile.  We were fortunate enough to have a swarm land on our coyote brush the day before the class (WOW!) so the students had the opportunity to install the swarm into the new hive.  Everyone was enthusiastic and engaged with lots of questions.  We definitely learned that three hours is not enough time to cover all the material.  The next time we offer this class it will be five hours or longer with a nice break for lunch.  Thank you to all who came out.  We enjoyed spending the day together sharing, connecting, and learning about bees!

Therefore go, my People's Hive, go into all the gardens...

Go and give the children 

some nourishing sandwiches, 

and give the grown ups wellbeing in body and mind.

Go and remind everyone of the necessity of work,  

the gentleness of unity, 

the beauty of devotion, 

the prosperity 

of countless families.  

Go and fill every fireside with honey and happiness.

Mella fluunt tibi.  -Abbe Warre

Spring Is Here

Spring has arrived in all her glory with a multitude of signs, from the light showers to the abundance of eggs  to the bulging bellies and udders of the animals.  The pullets have graduated to hen status, we have been finding little nests here and there.  The latest nest was filled with bright blue eggs from the flighty americauna who refuses to stay with the flock.  

Ginger's udder has been forming.  When she runs up and down the hill her udder sways back and forth.  















We have been avidly reading Calving the Cow and Care of the Calf, by Eddie Straiton, which has been said to be the best book on the subject with hundreds of color photos. 
Preparing for a calf in early May has got us scurrying to gather and build last minute necessities.  

There has also been some exciting activity in the apiary.  We have split one of our Warre hives to create an artificial swarm with the hopes that the hive will hatch a new queen.   In anticipation of the Intro to Natural Beekeeping class coming up this weekend we have also built an observation hive.  The lull of winter is certainly over, there is lots going on and so much to do.  Here we go....Happy Spring everyone!

Bamboo: Alternative Source of Livestock Feed

For about a year now we have been getting nice big bundles of bamboo trimmings from a friend who grows lots of this wonderful plant in his permaculture garden.  He frequently harvests the poles for building, cutting off the leafy bits and baling them up for us to feed to our livestock.  Bamboo is after all a grass, which is quite high in protein, up to four times as high as other fodder grasses.  The species we have been using are mainly clumping timber (Bambusa oldhamii) and golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea).  In Asia, farmers have been feeding their livestock bamboo for hundreds of years.  For us, this is a free and nutritious supplement for our animals.  As the price of alfalfa (and feed in general) is steadily rising, feeding bamboo is one more way we can cut our feed costs.  We have planted several types of clumping bamboo in the hopes that we can produce a small quantity on our own property.  As our knowledge of permaculture design grows we are also planning on planting part of our hillside with quantities of forage trees.  The ultimate goal is to grow as much feed as we can on our small holding. 

The real question about the bamboo is...do they like it.  YES!  The goats and cow strip the poles clean, leaving us with thin branches to use in the garden as stakes or in our hugelkultur mounds. We have even used the leftover branches for mulch. 

Bamboo is versatile with many uses and quite easy to grow.  Just be sure you research how to grow it (or better yet, contain it) before you begin!

The latest Kraut: Cortido

This month for our homemade food co-op I am making medicinal krauts to trade with the other members.  I have been making a nourishing sea kraut for awhile now with green cabbage, ginger, burdock root, and kombu and dulse seaweeds.  I decided to try something refreshing and new this time...cortido!  This Latin American spicy kraut is delicious as a side with almost anything, especially fish tacos, tamales, empenadas, pupusas, you get the picture.  

This version has only a few simple ingredients; chopped green cabbage, shredded carrots, seeded and chopped jalapeno peppers, thinly sliced onions, oregano-fresh or dried, sea salt, and filtered water. The oregano in our garden is looking pretty lush right now and was calling to be added into the mix..

fresh oregano

Following any basic recipe for making fermented kraut will work. This is a great way to get into the fresh, green spirit of spring (and those jalapenos will get your blood moving)!  I'm excited to taste how this new version turns out.  

Backyard Roots

Hey folks, there's a new urban farm book out called Backyard Roots, by Lori Eanes.  We had the privilege to be featured in her book as one of the thirty-five small farms and homesteads all along the west coast up to Vancouver.  We can't wait for our copy to arrive in the mail.  Lori is an amazing photographer so you can expect this to a be a stunning photographic essay.  One more good book out there you don't want to miss!