Making hay and stuff

As you can see from the increasingly irregular timing of my posts, I'm finding it more and more difficult to fund even a few minutes to sit down and describe what's going on at the homestead.  Let me try and recap.

Once again, the weather is playing tricks on us.  After a historically wet spring, we're now in the midst of the driest fall since records were being kept well over 100 years ago.  It's absolutely mind boggling.  We have not had a decent rainfall in over 2 months.  My well has gone dry, so I've been using the remaining water in the kids' swimming pool, plus all of our gray water, for watering the garden and trees.

Despite the weather, we continue to plod forward with our work.  Because of the wet spring, much of the garden was planted very late.  As a result, instead of canning in July, as we usually do, we started canning in August.  We canned pickles, and froze many quarts of green beans and this past weekend we canned sweet corn.

We're about sick of eating watermelon and cantaloupe, which have thrived despite the weather.  The raspberries and blackberries have been bearing for the past few weeks, but it remains to be seen if we can get enough to freeze, as they get gobbled up pretty quickly around here.

We still need to make salsa and store away tomatoes, and then get the garden ready for a fall crop of peas, broccoli, and cauliflower, not to mention planting a large patch of garlic this fall.  There's no rest for the weary.

 

 



Blackberries on 2nd year thornless vines



Fall gardening

One thing that I always plan to do, and almost never do, or when I do get to it, is done poorly, is fall gardening.  Spring is considered the proper time to plant cool loving plants, like broccoli, cauliflower, peas, etc..  The problem is that if you don't get these crops in early enough, they don't mature until the middle of the summer when heat is hard on these crops.

Hence, the reason for fall gardening.  By planting cool crops in mid to late summer, these crops mature and bear during the ideal cool temps of early to late fall.

My hope had been to get these crops in at some point in July, but here it is a week in to August and I'm just getting to it.  This morning I planted more kohlrabi, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and peas.  I thickly sowed them to ensure adequate germination, and will come back later to thin.

With the peas, I ran in to some troubles because I'm running out of available garden space, and because deer will eat them, I need to keep them inside the area protected by electric fence.

Another problem with peas is they have to have a trellis or fence to hold them up and, once again, I always seem to be behind the game on that.  So, I decided to use what I have.  We have a large patch of sweet corn, some of which is nearly ripe.  I planted peas along the sweet corn in two ways.  In a few rows I inter planted within the corn row itself, using every other row in case I decide to chop down the alternating rows to let in more sunlight.  In other parts, I planted along side the rows of corn that border an opening.  On one end of the patch we have a gap in the corn where we planted onions.  I planted peas along the corn on each end of the onion patch. 

The hope is that, assuming I'm not planting too late, that the corn will provide two benefits to the peas.  First, it will provide some shade to the peas through the remaining hot weeks of August, and second, the trellis support for the peas.  Stay tuned.

Peas are planted along each row that borders the onion patch.  Peas are also interplanted in some of the corn rows.

 

Life without water update

Earlier this year I posted a description of how we've learned to live without running water inside the house.  http://emmausgarden.blogspot.com/2013/05/life-without-plumbing.html  At the time I was still tinkering with how to run a washing machine without running water.  I attempted to operate it with pure gravity fed water, but that failed.  The washing machine has to have pressurized water to operate. 

Plan B.  While at Menards one day I found a shallow well jet pump with pressure tank on clearance.  I bought it and took it home, but it sat in my shed for awhile before a friend of mine came to visit and he decided we should try to make it work.  He's a priest now, but grew up on a farm in South Dakota and has lots of experience with pumps and plumbing from his days with the irrigation system on his family's farm.

To put it simply, we devised a system whereby we have a water tank in the utility room (I believe it's about 75 gallons), which we fill manually.  My understanding from talking to the local authorities is that "no plumbing" basically means no water lines running in to the house and no drain lines running out of the house.  We haul the water in and haul the water back out, so I'm going to take my chances with this system.  If I'm wrong, I'll be required to install a septic system, which I'm trying to avoid for now.

Connected to the water tank is the pressure tank and jet pump.  It plugs in to a local 110 outlet and pressurizes the water, which then runs to the washing machine.  Waste water from the washer runs in to a bucket, which has to be monitored and dumped throughout the wash cycle. 

We've found it takes about 12-15 gallons of water to run a normal load of clothes through our front loading washer.  I believe a top loader would take more, as they use more water. 

Needless to say, my wife is thrilled to now be able to do laundry on site, without having to haul laundry to town, even if it is still somewhat primitive in that we have to dump water in to the barrel and then dump the waste water out. 

The next project is to hook up some water barrels to our old well to see if we can utilize the water for household use, at least for laundry and bathing.  The well uses a pump jack, rather than a submersible well, so you have to have a separate tank or cistern to hold the water before using it.  Our water currently has a lot of sentiment in it, so I'm planning to create a system of two barrels.  Water will pump in to the one barrel (about 50 gallons) and will then be allowed to settle for a day or so.  A pipe about a foot off the bottom of that barrel will then connect to another barrel, separated by a valve, at which point I'll divert the now-settled water to the new barrel.  The water from the second barrel will probably then go through a sentiment filter I have to further remove sentiment, but my hope is that the water will then be clean enough to use for laundry, which is by far the biggest consumer of water.  I'll post the results of my experience later.

Gravity experiment failed

Washing machine with storage tank on right

Coleman jet pump and pressure tank
 

I hate weeding

Many a child has had his/her perspective on gardening forever warped by hours of forced labor pulling weeds in mom's or grandma's gardens.  I was no different, and as a kid, I hated the garden.

It wasn't until I became an adult, and realized the virtue and savings of a garden, that I came to love gardening, but I was determined to find a way that is better than how my parents and grandparents did it.

You'll see plenty of posts in my blog talking about the importance of mulch, but I can't reiterate it enough.  Use mulch!

We use two main mulching methods: black plastic and hay/straw.  It's important to understand the strengths and wit weaknesses if each.

Hay/straw helps protect the soil from the harsh sun and pounding effects of the rain.  It also keeps the soil cooler, so it does not work well for crops that like lots of heat, like melons, tomatoes, and strawberries.  You can use it for those crops, but it tends to slow the production more than having the ground left bare.  It inhibits the weeds, but doesn't always stop them entirely, so you have to go back and pull the weeds that make it through.

Black Plastic is almost a complete barrier to weeds, but they will make it up through any holes in the plastic.  We poke our plastic full of holes with a hay fork to allow rain to soak through.  Plastic heats the soil, so can help certain crops warm up quicker in the spring, such as strawberries, and is great for plants that like lots of heat, like melons and tomatoes.  We generally use plastic in such a sway that we leave it on the same bed for multiple years at a time, and simply rotate the crops within the plastic.

One thing I started this year was covering new beds for next year with hay.  We had attempted to work some new sod up this year for potatoes, but the weather absolutely did not cooperate and it did not try out enough to work.  So, I used the extra hay we had from the first cutting and put a think layer of hay over the areas that I'll work up next year.  The hope is that it will help kill the sod, begin to break things down, and provide an environment for the worms to stay near the surface and do their magic.

Here are some updated pictures of the gardens.

Butternut Squash

Cucumbers and cantaloupe

Pumpkins

Watermelons

Potatoes filling out and flowering
 



Next year's beds mulched

Second year raspberries--slowly filling out

Bed with lettuce, zucchini, green beans, carrots, and fall broccoli

Sweet Corn patch broken up with onions.  Fall peas are planted along side the corn rows on each end of onions

New strawberry bed transplanted this spring.  Note the lack of weeds and runners are periodically removed

Sweet corn and yellow squash

3rd year growth of grapes

Third year growth of semi-dwarf apple trees

Steer gets picketed on various parts of yard during day.  I tie him to utility trailer that can easily be moved.

 

Rain, rain, and more rain

If you live in the Midwest, you know that we're in the midst of perhaps the wettest spring in a long long time.  I speak to farmer after farmer who exclaims: "I've never seen anything like this."  

I suspect that, in the great scheme of things, and if we dig back in to the annals  of history, that we'd find that this year hasn't been all that unusual.  Regardless, it has farmers squirming.  

That being said, it seems to reinforce something I've been reading a lot about over the last year, and it has to do with the notion of rotational grazing and permaculture.  

To put it simply, wet years like this don't mesh we'll with modern agriculture, which emphasizes tillage and annual crops.  Even with the advent if no-till practices, which require lots of chemicals, wet years like this make large scale farming difficult and stressful when the business model for such farming assumes that Mother Nature will afford optimal weather and a lengthy growing season.

I suspect that in years like this, those that  farm with rotational grazing are least affected.  I think the same can be said of last year, which was extraordinarily dry.  Whether these extreme weather patterns are simply natural anomalies or evidence of climate change, it seems like the solution in either situation is to return to agriculture focused on permaculture and grazing.  One of the leading experts on this subject is Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms.  http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

I'd also encourage you to watch this video that deals with grazing as the solution, not the cause, to desertification.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html?source=facebook#.UbdhQV24lah.facebook

Here at the homestead, we're still learning as we go.  Maybe the biggest bright spot in this wet stretch has been that the plums and cherries we planted, plus the strawberries and blackberries we transplanted, are doing great.  

You may also recall that last year we set up some of our garden beds with black plastic for our melons and pumpkins/squash.  One benefit this year is that we simply rotated everything, leaving the plastic undisturbed.  There's been no weeding or tilling and we simply planted back into the hills we formed last year with composted manure.

I'll try to be better about posting, but here are some pics from the last month.

Life without plumbing

While our homestead project and cabin is unconventional in many ways, undoubtedly the one that gets the most attention from people is the fact that we don't have running water.  (As a side note, my wife was willing to forego electricity too if necessary, but quite frankly that's too extreme for me.  I find it much easier to get along without running water than electricity.)

Whether we like it or not, water is simply a necessity of life, and we use it for everything: drinking, bathing, washing clothes, washing dishes, cooking, irrigation, pets/livestock, etc. In this country we've come to assume that we have unlimited quantities of potable water.  And even if we do, it's no reason to waste it.

Having running water and indoor sewer is a significant expense.  From the cost of a well, to the cost of plumbing, to the sewer system, to the property taxes and homeowner's insurance, there are tremendous expenses associated with the luxury...yes, I refer to it as a luxury...of being able to turn on a faucet for water, and the ability to flush all our waste down a drain.

Anyway, for a variety of reasons, we ended up without running water or sewer.  Hence, I had to come up with a way to make water and waste disposal as feasible and affordable as possible.

TOILET

We do not have an indoor toilet.  I have an outhouse permit, but the outhouse is not yet installed.  Instead, we rotate 5 gallon buckets with special toilet seats that sit on top.  It may not be the most appealing sight, but it beats going out to the outhouse every time you need to use the toilet.  When full, the bucket is dumped in a special compost pile.  In the spring, we used the bucket with the "yellow" water to drip around the strawberry and raspberry plants, which were being ravaged by the deer until other green things started growing in the fields for them to eat.  You can also install a composting toilet, and there are also designs for worm composting boxes for indoors in which you defecate and add your table scraps for compost.

Bucket toilet with plastic seat.

 

HOUSEHOLD WATER

Our water currently comes in the house in 7 gallon containers.  I built a special stand to set the jugs on over the sink we have in the bathroom.  Waste water drains through the slop slink and in to a bucket below, which I dump outside.  NOTE: it's a good idea to have a catch tub in which you set the bucket underneath the sink.  Today I failed to check to see if the bucket was full and dumped in the morning dish water, which promptly flowed all over the floor.

Eventually I hope to set up a larger water container inside the cabin.  I have a 100 gallon tank with spigot that I think will work better.  For now, because I don't have a good source of on-site water, it works best to carry the water from town in the 7 gallon containers.  I soon hope to have gutters catching our rainwater and supplement with the old well we have on our property, after I set up a proper filtration system.

Water stand with storage space for 2 extra bottles underneath

Deep sinks makes it easier to fill large pots with water.  Eventually I'll probably add a separate container with a spigot in which to hold some hot warm water for washing hands throughout the day and getting wash cloths wet for changing the baby's diapers.

 

Water drains through the sink and in to the bucket below.  NOTE: I'm going to add a plastic tray under the bucket to catch water if you accidentally overflow the bucket.

 

Before building, I studied the building regulations carefully and had numerous conversation with my building inspector and the local authorities regarding what I could and could not do with respect to plumbing and waste disposal.  Basically, if you haul your water in, and dump in in a sink that drains in to a bucket, you're fine.  You can then dump your water out the back door.  But the minute you put in any kind of indoor plumbing, you have to have a sanitation system.  In other words, no gray water lines. 

Because of this, there's no real practical way to heat water other than to pour it in a pot and heat it on the stove.  In the winter, we use our wood cookstove to heat water, which has a water jacket that connects to the back of the stove.  Because we heat our water the old fashion way, I strongly suggest that you use a gas range, preferably one with a large burner, as it will make water heating go much quicker.  You'd actually be surprised at how quickly you can heat up a pot of water on a good gas range.  Then you just pour or scoop it out for doing dishes and taking showers, which will be described below.

Our water heater.  The lower right burner is a dual fuel burner and the center of the stove has a large volume burner which will also work great for canning.

SHOWER:

Believe it or not we have a shower--kind of.  Showering is a much more efficient way to bathe than a bath tub.  We have a camp shower bag that we full with warm water and hang inside the shower stall from the ceiling.  When we shower, we quickly rinse off, then stop the water flow.  After we lather up with soap and shampoo, we turn the water back on and  rinse off.  

The shower is built on a base of 2x8's with plywood on top.  One side is open, and through the opening, I slide a narrow tray (something less than 7 inches tall and hopefully 4 gallons or bigger.)  Water drains through the shower drain and in to the catch basin.  After each shower, I simply slide the pan out and dump the water outside.  It's important to make sure the amount of water on the shower bag is not more than the capacity of your catch pan or it will obviously overflow.  I actually use an oil changing pan, which is nice because it has a handle and spout for easy transportation and dumping. 

This shower method is not going to replace the "hotel" shower, but you'd be surprised at how good of a job it does.  We've gotten a method in place where I get up in the morning and I heat up a large pot of water.  I use this to do the morning dishes and fill the water bag for my shower and my wife's shower.  (we can get two showers out of a full bag).  For the kids, we shower them a few times per week in the evening and can usually do the 4 oldest kids on one bag if we stay and monitor the showering.

Off the grid bathroom

Self-standing shower

 

Shower bag hangs from ceiling

Water catch pan slides under shower platform

LAUNDRY

Right now, we do laundry in town at a house my parents own.  Since my wife is already in town every day to take the kids to school, it's not really a big problem.  We have a nice front loading washing machine at the house that we use and then hang up the clothes on drying racks at the cabin.  I hope to have the new clothes line installed soon.

We do have a wringer washing machine that we had to use for a few months last year when we moved in to the house at town.  But, it uses a lot of water, so as long as we're hauling water, it's not a very economical option.  Once I get the rainwater catch system up and running, it might become more feasible.

Another option that I'm researching is whether our front loading washer will work if I simply install a basin of water on top of the washing machine and hook up the water hoses to the bottom of the basin.  This will only work if the washing machine doesn't require a certain amount of water pressure on the hoses, but rather will simply allow gravity feeding.  The front loader does not take much water, so if I can make this work, I believe I can just fill the basis when I want to do a load of laundry and then have the hose drain the waste water in to a bucket next to the washing machine.  If I can make this work, this will make life on the land much, much easier, and hopefully keep the local authorities happy, as I don't think this will constitute plumbing such that I have to install the septic.  I'll keep you posted.

Plastic mulch

In my past posts, you've seen me describe our use of black plastic on our gardens.  We continue to experiment with it.

Last year we used black plastic on our strawberry bed to try and deal with the main challenge with strawberries--keeping them weeded and keeping the runners from choking them out.  The plastic also helps increase the heat in the spring, so we've found the crop matures more quickly on plastic.

One trouble we has last year, though, was keeping the strawberries watered with the drought.  Because the plants tended to be higher than other parts of the plastic, and we try to cut only a hold big enough to get the plant stuck in the dirt, it was hard to focus our watering on the plants without the water running away from the plant to low spots on the plastic.

Accordingly, this year we've decided to try something a little different.  Before putting the plastic down, we tried to create shallow furrows the length of each row and then plant the plants right a long side the furrows.  We don't want the plants in the bottom of the furrow, lest they drown, but yet close enough so that they can soak up the moisture that settles to the furrow and drains through the holes we poke in the plastic with a fork.  We'll see if this becomes a problem if we have a very wet year.

To do this, I first go around the bed with my rotary plow to create a ditch and kick the dirt to the outside.  It works best if you mow the grass (if you have grass walkways, like us) nice and short, as it will make it easier raking the dirt back on to the plastic.  I then tilled the soil, then went back and forth with my rotary plow to create gradual furrows the length of the patch.  We then went with the rake to level things out a little.  You want a light furrow, but nothing too deep. 

We then laid the plastic out, setting it down first into one of the trenches on the outside of the bed, raked soil over the edge to fill in the trench, and then pulled the plastic sort of tight across the bed.  We then worked from the side that we had buried the first side of plastic and gradually put a small amount of sand in the trench, working across the patch.  This keeps the plastic tight as you work across.  Once done, you trim the edge of the plastic to fit and rake the soil back over all edges of the soil. 

Once done, you need to take a pitch fork or some other device and poke quite a few small holes around the plastic to allow moisture to soak in.  Finally, we cut small "x"s in the plastic parallel to each of the shallow furrows, transplanted the strawberries, and watered.

Using rotary plow to make a trench around the outside of the patch, throwing the soil to the outside.  If you don't have a rotary plow, you can use either a spade, or till deeply and use a hoe or shovel to pull out the soil.

The furrow completed around the outside of the patch.

I'm now tilling the inside of the bed

Using the rotary plow to create the furrows in the tilled soil.  Note: you can do this with a hoe as well--it will just take longer.  Also, I made the mistake of running in both directions, which created every other hill bigger than the others.  Next time, I'll run the rotary plow in one direction, and then turn around and start again from the other end.  To mark my rows, I used a spacer and stuck in stakes for me to follow.  My son walked ahead and pulled out the stakes for me.

Finished bed with the furrows.  I then leveled them slightly with a rake so the furrows were not so deep.

I'm sorry I didn't take pictures of installing the plastic.  We did it quickly one night and all hands were needed.  You san see the sand laid down each furrow and then I use a fork to poke holes in the plastic.  Water can soak in, but generally the weeds can't grow out through the holes.  The few that do you just have to pull out.

Finished bed after planting.  On the opposite end of the bed I'll probably put tomatoes or additional strawberries.  There are over 250 plants in this bed.

This is our nursery bed, where I let the plants send out runners.  I'll probably let them fill out again this year with runners and transplant or sell more next year.  But, you have to stay ahead of the weeds!