Dollar Wood

At our local Home Depot there is a little thing Meg and I call "The Dollar Wood Bin." For those of you who aren't familiar with this blessed concept, it's all of the Depot's scrap and warped wood on the real cheap*. If you have a truck or a trailer (which we may get tomorrow) it's always a good idea to see what they've got in the bin just to stock up for future use. We like to raid the bin anytime we have a major project in the works. Some of our projects born of dollar wood are the chicken coop, the grow tables, and the rain harvester.

We've got two dollar wood projects currently in the drafting process. One is a shiny new addition to the chicken coop. We're hoping to add two new ladies to the brood this spring and the current housing would be a bit snug for five. The second project is also chicken related. As I mentioned in a post two days ago, we're going to put the birds to work in the garden before we plant. After they are finished we will set them out in the yard in a mobile pen. The reason they need to be in the rolling cage, as opposed to full free-range, is quite simple: our neighbor hates chickens and our chickens love to mess with her. We think it's funny, but our neighbor, being the shit she is, does not.


*We always recommend trying to salvage whatever scraps of wood that may be left over from past projects, but sometimes you need four foot boards and all the scrap pile's got is three footers.

Here they come...

Pinetree Garden Seeds surprised us over the weekend and delivered our first batch of seeds. We primarily ordered cool season crops from them; since we get so many catalogues from good seed companies, we decided to spread our orders around a little this year. Many of the varieties we got are new to us:

Lettuce "Black Seeded Simpson," "Red Velvet," "Buttercrunch," and "Oakleaf"—You can't grow too much lettuce, right?

Onion "Yellow Sweet Spanish"—We've only ever grown onions from sets and never had good results, so we're hoping that a combination of seeds with an early start and a sunnier location will help us out this year.

Celery "Utah"—Last year we picked up four little celery plants on a whim. They did pretty well until the rabbits ate them, and then two of the four made an impressive recovery.

Pea "Mr. Big Pea"—These guys are supposed to be nice long pods that hold a ton of peas.

Cabbage "Ruby Perfection"—all we have to do is keep the cabbage worms away from this guy.

We also got two kinds of beans ("Rattlesnake" and "Jade") and two kinds of winter squash ("Delicata" and "Sweet Dumpling") along with a big ol' bag of mixed spinach seeds. The only thing in our order that's a repeat is Red Sails lettuce.

Very soon it will be time to sweep the junk off the grow tables and start some seeds, and soon after that we'll finally be eating salad again.

Chicken Composter Update

The leaves in our chicken powered composter are beyond ready to go into a more traditional compost bin. Using the chickens to compost our leaves has been a huge success. I suspect that as soon as the temperatures rises above 60° Fahrenheit , the final break down will be quick. The only snag to the experiment has been that the ground, and the leaves along with it, have kept us from being able to gather them up with any hopes of reasonable success. As I may have said in a previous post, at least one more round of leaves will go into rotation before spring. Afterwards we're thinking of planting rye in the pen. While the rye sets, the chickens will earn their keep in the garden scratching through the beds before we start planting.

And that's why we don't eat at McDonalds

Mark Bittman, a food writer for The New York Times, has written a wonderful, unappetizing article about the miserable implications of industrial meat production. If you've got an extra fifteen minutes, check it out: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

Essentially, Bittman writes about the ways we disproportionately allocate resources to meat production, and he speculates on how it's all gonna catch up with us, and soon. The problem is worldwide but as with almost everything else I can think of, Westerners can take most of the blame since we insist on doing everything--including meat eating, apparently--to excess. Americans eat about four pounds of meat a week, though fifty years ago that average was three pounds. Furthermore, Bittman learned that

"...if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius."

So really, we're eating so much of the stuff that even cutting out a small amount--twenty percent isn't that much--would have a huge impact. And after charging through Michael Pollan's latest two books recently, it's pretty clear to me that the effects of a twenty percent reduction would be positive for the environment as well as for people's health. If everyone in America did that, we'd be eating twelve billion pounds less meat each year. Holy crap.

We could probably eat all the meat we wanted with minimal environmental impact if we made sure all of it was sustainably raised--though the problem there, of course, is that sustainable farms can't give us all we want if what we want is billions and billions of hamburgers and chicken wings. However, supporting small farmers will help them produce as much as they're able. If you haven't already done so, before oil prices drive the cost of industrial meat through the roof you might want to make friends with one of these farmers so you have a source of local, responsibly raised, and probably organic meat.

He's Not So Bad

Sure, our landlord doesn't let us use the hose, and our roof leaks, and birds live in our ceiling during the summer, and there's no hot water to speak of, or water pressure for that matter, and the windows don't close properly, and the whole houses slopes abruptly downward the east, and we can't get cable, and the internet doesn't work when it rains—aside from all that, he's a thoughtful guy. He lets us have chickens, after all, and we can dig up and do whatever we want to the yard, and just this evening he gave us four elusive Stonyfield yogurt lids with an offer for a free Organic Gardening subscription, which I have been hunting for weeks.

Handwriting translation:
"Meg and Kelly, Are y'all interested in this?
Please note expiration date (31 Jan 2008).

And he even washed the lids or something.* Thanks, crazy dude!


*or something, which I am not willing to think about very hard, is that he let his cat lick them clean.

Lazy Post

It's way too late for a thoughtful post. Instead, enjoy this old photo of the chickens in a tree.

Stop Wasting Abandoned Property

On my train ride to and from work I pass through Philadelphia's unfortunate ring of garbage. I've begun to mentally catalogue the trash, deciphering what could be recycled and reused. Quite often the reuse qualities are garden related. Meg and I try to reuse before we buy new and this often involves creative scavenging*.

Along with the ring of trash there are also the overwhelming number of abandoned factory and apartment buildings. As the title of the post suggests, I think something should be done to utilize (recycle and reuse) all of this unused space. In my early teens I went with my church to Yonkers, New York on a two week mission trip to help reclaim abandoned homes and turn them into affordable housing. The program was called S.W.A.P. (Stop Wasting Abandoned Property) and it was created and run by a local Presbyterian pastor. What little funding they had came from donations. They were able to stretch that funding with recycled and reused materials. After experiencing what can be done with a little pride and inventiveness, I have to ask myself why we're building new (suburban sprawl) when we could be rebuilding.

Granted, a good deal of these abandoned properties are in low income, high crime areas that most suburbanites try to avoid (I'm sure we could all hypothisize why there is this divide). I believe that when cultural and ethnic diversity is embraced, it makes the community stronger. When I volunteered for SWAP, even as a teenager, I noticed how much a neighborhood could come to life when the people who live there have pride and purpose invested in where they live. So what if instead of building homes, an organization was developed to build gardens. I think it would be cool if each of these neighborhoods were to reclaim one of these buildings and turn it into a community garden. I'm sure this has already been done**, but what would it take to provide this opportunity to all communities?

Imagine if a community were to receive a grant to purchase a building, have is torn down, and turned into a community garden to replenish their local food cupboard (let's not forget that poor nutrition is also an issue in lower income neighborhoods). Many of these buildings are made of brick. The bricks could be used to make rows between the beds and stacked to make the actual raised beds. Then there is the ring of garbage to be utilized to make trellises, tomato cages, curing tables, work benches, bird baths, rain harvesters, and all kinds of other stuff.

There is no way Meg and I could run a project like this on our own, nor would we want to, but we are curious to know how we could get it started. If any of you have ever seen anything like this done and have some suggestions, please share. Thanks.

*Check out Patrick's post on the environmental benefits and hazards of the materials we choose to use or reuse in the garden. His post specifically targets PVC.

**I've actually been tossing this post draft around for a little while now and in the meantime read two posts that touch a bit on this subject. The first was from In the Toad's Garden and it talks about a mobile community garden. The second post is from Fast Grow the Weeds, which doesn't really talk about community reclamation (it's about saying enough to petty excuses and getting out there and doing something), but Ali from Henbogle (you've got to see her reclaimed sink) had a comment to the post that does point to some of the potential hazards of such a project.

Want to Meet New Bloggers?

Last week, Angie from Children in the Corn tipped us off to The Growing Challenge, which we promptly signed up for. The Growing Challenge is a contest of sorts being hosted by Melinda of Elements in Time, though this isn't the kind of a challenge where someone gets picked as a winner at the end, and there's not even a very specific goal that can qualify you as "finished."

Basically, the challenge is to grow a fruit or vegetable variety that's new to you and blog about it. Easy! I think most of us are already doing that anyway. Many people who've posted their seed orders mentioned some new stuff that they're trying out, and with the glamourization of heirloom varieties around the blogosphere this time of year, it's hard not to be tempted to try something new. So, since we're already blogging, and we're already planning to grow some new varieties, this is a good incentive to blog about the new stuff we're growing. Part of the reason Kelly and I started this blog was to have sort of a record of our garden, and while it's always amusing to look back and see what stupid thing our chickens did at this time three months ago, that's not going to be entirely helpful when we're planning next year's garden.

But really, I think the best part about Melinda's challenge is the ongoing series of incredibly detalied weekly roundup posts that she's doing, which give a full summary of what all the challenge participants have been up to in the past week. This is the closest thing I've seen to a garden bloggers' carnival, and I like it. It's a great way to find new bloggers; I hardly recognize anyone at Melinda's site, yet they all seem to know each other. And of course, their blogs are all lovely. Even if you don't want to officially join the challenge, this one might be good to follow along with just see what everyone else is growing.

Rain Harvester Part 4 of 4

Every part of our rain harvester works on nothing more than gravity. It is a system that utilizes ten steel barrels; nine hold water and one creates the pressure that fills those nine barrels. I’ll break down the whole shebang into two parts (each with its own subsequent parts): first I will go through the process of filling and second I will go over, yep you got it, how it drains.

The Big Fill


The amount of roof space we’re using is only about 360 square feet. We have access to more, but haven’t gotten around to running the necessary downspouts. Obviously the roof is what collects the water, so the more that is utilized, the less rain that will be needed to fill the barrels or the more barrels that can be reasonably filled. We have one downspout that empties into what we call the lead or filler barrel. Because a roof can collect a lot debris that eventually washes off when it rains, it is always a good idea to include some kind of filter. Our filter is quite simple, it’s a piece of chicken wire and window screen fastened over the top of the filler barrel with some wire.


As you can see, the filler barrel is propped above the other barrels on a tall wooden tower. The reason for the rise in elevation is to create added downward pressure in order fill (hence “filler” barrel) the storage barrels. The added pressure is required because the water fills the from the bottom up. The reason the barrels fill from the bottom is because that is also from where they drain (Ahh, gravity).

The draining part of the equation works fantastically. The filling part, hmm, well let’s just say it manages to do the job. If neither Meg nor I have mentioned this yet, the harvester was designed with a fair mixture of solid math and good faith. I am learning at an early age that good faith can leave you with your pants around your ankles. The filler works great anytime that there is a good slow and steady rain or less, but if there is a thick and heavy downpour, then the pressure isn’t strong enough to keep up and we end up losing water from the tom of the first storage barrel. To combat this we may run an overflow line to the end barrel to even things out.

By the way, the reason we didn’t top-feed the storage barrels is because we wanted to avoid running two whole sets of pipe (top and bottom) when we weren’t even sure how well it was going to work. The line running along the bottom of the barrels has to be there in order to drain properly. Also, if you build a closed-top system like ours, which means you can't get into the barrels, be sure to drill a small hole into the top to relieve any counterproductive air pressure and promote easy filling and draining.


Draining

When all of the storage barrels are full we have 500 gallons of water trying to rush down and out of a straight line of ½ inch PVC, which is about 8 inches off the ground. The simple pressure from the barrels alone produces a steady stream of water, but the additional downward grade of about five feet to the garden give us all the water pressure we need.

It’s important that the drainage line connecting all your barrels runs in a straight line. Just like the gutters and downspouts on your house, any directional changes will lower the water's pressure and velocity. Think of it this way, if you're riding your bike down a steep hill and there is a turn up ahead, what must you do? Oh yeah, slow down or die.

It's handy if the spigot has a splitter. A splitter allows you have one hose running to the garden and a second to fill watering cans, put out fires, rescue small sea creatures, and any other good deed outside of the garden.

If you have a pond that is relatively close and downhill from your house or barn, you can build this system with a thicker drainpipe and run an old fire hose to fill it up. We are going to do something like this for our pool. When it rains, we’ll just open the rain harvester drain and let it all run in.

Care

Taking care of this thing is pretty simple. Always make sure that the gutters on the roof are clear for maximum drainage into the leader barrel. If you find any openings in your system where major debris can get in, it is to your benefit to cover them. Any junk that gets into a closed system is not coming out and can really plug things up. Another way to avoid this is to get barrels without tops and cover them all with screens to keep bugs from breeding. Other than that, the only thing you would need to do is drain it out completely in the winter; if you live in an area where it freezes you know why.

Links to this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

If you have any suggestions or would like to link your own rain harvesting system, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this post.

Cheers,
Kelly and Meg

Rain Harvester Part 3 of 4 *Now with Fancy Schmancy Drawings*

So, how did we build this thing? Mainly, we spent a long, long time piecing stuff together in the PVC aisle of Home Depot.

Our rain harvester was relatively cheap because we put everything together ourselves. Pre-built systems are really expensive, so you're much better off making something yourself if you're able. As Kelly wrote yesterday, we paid for our barrels but could have found some for free with some more patience and diligence. Provided you can beg, barter, or steal barrels at no cost, a setup as big as ours would cost around $60.

Here's a list of everything we used during construction:

• 10 55-gallon drums
• 4 8ft 2x4s
• 4 8ft 4x4 posts
• scrap lumber
• miscellaneous screws and nails
• cinder blocks
• miscellaneous PVC pipes and fittings
• PVC primer and glue
• rubber gaskets
• 1 roll of that white plumber's tape
• window screen
• chicken wire
• standard spigot
• two-way splitter for spigot
• hose
  

And the tools we needed:

• drill
• hammer
• hand saw
• large adjustable wrench
• drill bit suitable for going through metal
• Sawzall, also for cutting metal

Our plan was simple: the barrels we got had convenient 1/2-inch threaded plugs that could be completely removed. We would fit 1/2-inch PVC to each hole and connect all the barrels in a line using 90° bends, T joints, and pieces of PVC cut to fit between the barrels. All the plumbing would come out the bottom of the barrels, which would held up by wooden supports with enough clearance for the PVC to hang underneath. We also decided, through a mildly scientific debate about physics and water pressure, that one of our barrels would need to be perched high up, so it could serve as a lead barrel for the rest of the system.

Our first order of business was to build a platform for the lead barrel and lay out two parallel rails for the rest of the barrels to rest on. We built the platform (or the water tower, as we called it), out of the 4x4 posts and some scrap wood. The rails were made with 2x4s laid out on two rows of cinder blocks.

The second step (and probably the most difficult part of the process) was to connect the lead barrel to the spigot and the first water barre. This required us to goof around with the spacing of the barrels a bit and to make sure we were very precise in our measurements so we could cut the PVC pipes accurately.

The rest of the process was easy. Kelly would fit a T joints to each barrel and pass it off to Steveo and I. We glued a piece of PVC pipe into one end of the T, then Steveo flipped the barrel over and aligned it on the rails, and I glued the piece of pipe to the T of the previous barrel as Steveo pushed the barrels together. I also ran off to take pictures during this process.

The final barrel in the chain was fitted with a 90° elbow joint, though in retrospect we would have been wiser to use a T so it would be easier to expand the system in the future. Below are close-ups of the various PVC pieces we used (Home Depot is a rotten place for a photo shoot) and a drawing of the system with instructions of how we put all the parts together. Can you tell I totally aced Mechanical Drawing in the seventh grade? Click on any of the pictures to make them larger.

The final step was to cover the open top of the lead barrel with chicken wire, then window screen. This was necessary to keep leaves and stuff from clogging up the pipes and it also prevented the entire thing from turning into a mosquito factory.

Links back to Part I and Part 2

Rain Harvester Part 2 of 4

The most challenging part of putting our rain harvester together was deciding what to use as the storage receptacle. Below are some links to sites I went to while in the shopping/research phase of the project. The last one, Waterhog, is actually a new link that I picked up recently and decided to add to the list for Future House consideration. What all of the links have in common is that they provide products specifically designed for the storage of liquids. I noticed immediately that anything designed to perform a singular duty will most likely cost far more than what you can do with a little inventiveness. If you click on the links, you will see that some of these receptacles can cost thousands of dollars. However, these large-scale tanks should not hastily be written off of anyone's list when designing a rain collector just because they're pricey. I'll get into these reasons why in a bit, but first I want to cover how we came to our decisions and then I'll venture into some alternatives and their benefits later.

When we began calculating the volume of water we wanted to collect, we tried to negotiate all factors that would help promote sustainability and eco-mindedness. Our sustainable interests were pretty much focused on the garden. I assume that this is the desire for a fair percent of folks who harvest rain. In southeast Pennsylvania we get a good amount of rain, but it comes in large amounts at distant intervals.

Sometimes we can go over a month without any kind of significant precipitation. Another kicker to our infrequent downpours is that we are on the peak of a very rocky foothill. This terrain lends itself to counterproductive drainage; so the rain we do get doesn't soak and stay in the soil as much as we'd care for. After Meg did some calculations, we realized that we would need at least 500 gallons. We would have actually needed more, because 500 gallons would give our 1,200 square foot garden a good watering only once a day for about a week. But, you know those light rains that last maybe half an hour and only get the surface a little wet while an inch down is still bone dry? Well, if the system utilizes enough roof space, those little spit rains can replenish a significant amount of water to your harvester.

Our eco-minded approach to harvesting rain is that the water collected doesn't just have to be for gardening. It is not necessary to use potable water for all household needs. In the United States we are feeling the effects of population increases with poor water management. (I know the same is happening elsewhere on the planet and I hope that those of you living in those countries could perhaps give your input on the significance of rainwater in your area.) Meg and I have three more rain harvesting projects that are in the design phase and will hopefully be up and running by late spring. Two of them will utilize more of the house's roof: one to help fill the pool in order to combat evaporation, and one to offer water for general washing like for cars and the porch. The third will hopefully feed off of the shed by the garden and we will use it for additional plant watering and to clean vegetables and garden tools.

After we decided on the water volume we wanted to collect, we then went to price. As I said earlier, containers designed specifically for rain collection can be very pricey (even a 55 gallon "rain barrel" can cost $100), so we opted for alternative materials. I found that the best way to do this is to brain storm the different kind of containers you'd like. Remember to account for space and aesthetics. The different containers we considered were:

• Plastic drums
• Steel drums
• Tank from old fire truck
• Discarded water heaters
  
• Dig a pond

After you have a list of possibilities, hit the internet. The best options came from Ebay and Craigslist. I don't know if Craigslist is worldwide, but it is all over the U.S. and I highly recommend it to everyone searching for anything from a screwdriver to a job.

Digging a pond quickly became out of the question, because we didn't have the equipment or people power, it's too permanent for a rental property, and we had no desire to deal with the possibility of mosquitoes. Also, chickens can't swim. The tank from an old fire truck was impossible to find and transporting it would have been equally so. Discarded water heaters would have become more hazardous than what they are worth. Steel or plastic drums turned out to be the cheapest and most obtainable resource. We also had to find someone who could give us ten barrels at once, because at that time we had two little cars that couldn't fit any drums and needed to rent a truck from the Home Depot to pick up the barrels.


**If you have your own truck, I suggest going for plastic barrels, because they are easy to find for free. The places to ask for them are drug companies, breweries (that's what hops comes in), or any major food importer. Once these places receive their goods in these barrels, by law they can't reuse them. Since it costs them money to get rid of them, they are usually happy to have someone else haul them away. If this is available to you and all you need is 55 gallons of water, then you can seriously build your harvester for under $7.50 (hose not included).**

We found our barrels on Ebay for $9.00 a pop. For the price of ten plus the truck rental, we were able to get 500 gallons for the proce some companies charge for 55.


If you desire as much water as we did and if price and people power is not a concern and/or you are building a home from the ground up, I would highly suggest burying a large cistern. If it is a new home, you can easily incorporate the rain water into your gray water system for toilet flushing, laundry, and all the other things discussed above. If tying the cistern into your home is not idealistic, burying it is still beneficial for reducing algae growth, and eliminating the need for winterizing.

Link to Part 1 of the rain harvester series.

Online Resources:

http://www.somedaygardens.com/rainbarrels.html

http://www.aquabarrel.com/

http://www.nationaltankoutlet.com/

http://www.rainharvesting.com.au/rain_heads_2.asp

http://www.snydernet.com/

http://www.aridsolutionsinc.com/page/page/522317.htm

http://www.arcsa.org/

http://www.plastic-mart.com/

http://www.waterhog.com.au/

Rain Harvester Part 1 of 4

We built our rain harvester because we needed more water if we wanted to grow our vegetables to their fullest potential and feed ourselves year round. We live in a big old house that's broken up into a few apartments; altogether, there are six people who live here. Since it's an old house, we've got a well rather than city water. And since we're just up the street from a quarry, the well is shallow. Our landlord lets us do whatever we want on the house's three and a half acres of land with only one restriction: we can't use the hose. So for us, some sort or rainwater collection system was a necessity. We also plan to collect water when we build our own house (that'd be future house) and wanted to take the opportunity to build a practice rain barrel system.

Before we built the rain harvester, we were collecting a minor amount of rainwater via a garbage can wedged under a downspout. This gave us enough water to triage the thirstiest plants and keep seedlings from drying out, but it wasn't fun to make repeated trips though the yard hauling the watering can, and it was a mosquito nightmare. It also severely limited the size of our garden. We wanted to grow a lot of stuff, but with only 55 gallons of water in reserve a large garden was too much of a gamble. Our corner of Pennsylvania usually gets a decent amount of rainfall in the summer at fairly regular intervals, but that's never something to bank on.

When we started seriously thinking about how we could collect water, we came up with a list of requirements to design our system around. We wanted to be able to store a few hundred gallons of water so that we could water our vegetables at least a little bit in the event of an extended drought. We also wanted something relatively cheap: huge cisterns and pre-built barrel systems were out of the question. And because we don't own the house or the land, we didn't want the rain harvester to be a permanent fixture.

So. We decided on a PVC and barrel setup that could be extended in the future. I think similar systems would work for most people because they're cheap, simple, and can be kept fairly small. If you're looking to collect rainwater, here are some things to think about:

• How much water do you need? Take into account the size of your garden, the water needs of your plants, the typical rainfall for your area, and any plans you might have for expansion. If you grow only a few vegetables or just want enough water to keep your flowers happy through the summer, one or two barrels will probably suffice. If you live in an extremely dry area and want to capture as much water as you can, more barrels will obviously be better. In our case, we get a decent amount of rainfall but our 1200 square foot vegetable garden needs a bit of extra insurance, so we went with a system that keeps nine 55-gallon barrels full most of the time.
  
• How much water can you collect? In addition to your area's rainfall, this depends on the amount of area your roof covers. The formula for figuring out how much water your roof can catch is: G = 0.416AR, where G stands for gallons, A is the area under your roof, and R is rainfall. For example, if you want to figure out how much water the roof of your 20x25 foot garage will catch if you get an inch of rain, you'd do G = 0.416(500)(1), and find that you'll get 208 gallons of water. Nifty! This can help you determine how much storage capacity you need.
• Where is your garden relative to your house? Thinking about this can help you to figure out how to situate your rain harvester. Our garden is downhill from our house, so we can rely on gravity to carry the water through our hose. If you're working on flat ground, you may need to elevate your barrels a good deal to produce water pressure. On a related note:
• Are you willing to supply power to a water pump? If you need very strong water pressure or if your water needs to travel uphill, it might be necessary to hook up a water pump to your system. We wanted to avoid using power for ours, and we were lucky that our slight downhill pitch gave us enough pressure to use a hose in the garden.
• What's your budget? You can build a small 100 to 200 gallon system for under $50 and expand it later on. Ours holds about 500 gallons and cost us around $175. It also can be expanded. It's possible to do the same thing for quite a bit cheaper, too—we bought our barrels, but it wouldn't be very difficult to get some for free. We'll get into a specific breakdown of costs in a later post.
  

And that's the gist of it. We did a lot of planning before we bought any materials, and because of this I think we were able to build a pretty good system. Anyone thinking about collecting rainwater should really think about their needs before making any investment; different circumstances will lead to big differences in water collection systems.

That's quite enough of us for one day. We've got three more posts about our rain harvester in the works. Tomorrow we'll write about different kinds of collection vessels and how to get your hands on them. On Tuesday we'll run through all the materials we used and how we put everything together, and on Wednesday we'll discuss how the whole thing works and how to take care of it. In the meantime, you might want to check out the comments on this recent Garden Rant post, where a number of people shared their water collection requirements and ideas.

Seed Stuff

A couple weeks ago Mike of Tiny Farm Blog posted about a big 'ol shelf in his barn where he stores all kinds of miscellaneous farming odds and ends. We've got a similar collection in a room we refer to as the solarium—it's an odd cross between a mudroom and a hallway, and it's got two nice, big skylights. It houses a big table full of potted plants, our coats, shoes, and chicken food, the big freezer, and our seed stuff. In a month or so our newly-sown seedlings will live under the grow lights and all the potting soil, seed trays, spray bottles, and plant markers will once again be put to use. Meanwhile, everything remains in a big pile on and around the tables—is there really any nice looking way to organize this stuff?

From left to right: potting soil, perlite, etc; shoebox o' seeds; harvest basket; October, Cranberry, and Cherokee dried beans; old clementine crate; produce scale; pirate flag awaiting a new pole; eggshells in a bag; random pots; spray bottle; seed trays; more harvest baskets; and hot peppers hanging to dry. Yikes.

Strange Winter

For a few hours on Thursday we were reminded that it is in fact winter in southeast Pennsylvania. It started snowing sometime around three in the afternoon with a few little flakes and by four o'clock the flakes were fat and fluffy, laying a bright blanket on the Philadelphia area.

This top photo was taken by Meg WHILE SHE WAS DRIVING to the train station to pick me up. I love the blueness snow brings to dusk.

This next one I took when I went to check on the chickens. This is the apple tree we adopted. You can see with the assistance of the snow how out of control those center spikes are.

The snow that gathers on the netting of their pen is why I went to check on them. I think its gorgeous when the snow sticks like this, but I also know that too much could be bad. The peak is pretty secure, but there have been a lot of hawks around and I wouldn't want to risk losing the chickens' cover. All it took was a couple shakes and all the snow fell through.

This was only the second snow we've received this year and like the others it was short lived. I went outside around seven o'clock to get something from the Jeep and the snow had changed to rain. By morning all that was left were patches of slush.

In the Kitchen

"[I]t was evident once again that, as a nation, our amnesia regarding how to cook is wasting food and costing us - and the environment - dear."

This is a line I swiped from a post I read a week ago on Hedgewizard's Diary. The post has to do with free-range chickens (which we obviously support), but I was really intrigued with this statement. Everything that we do in our gardens comes to fruition in the kitchen. I don't think Meg and I have really given the power of cooking enough attention when considering what we plan to harvest from our garden. Maybe because it's something we take for granted. I don't know. Shortly after I read Hedgewizard's post and went to the Pollan reading, we started talking about our cooking interests and habits.

Quite honestly, we don't use cooking books all that much. A lot of what I learned came from hanging out with family while meals were being prepared and working in restaurants while I waited for academia to produce something. We do love food. Food in our house is just as much for the experience as it is for the fuel, but we just have no desire to spend all evening cooking (unless it's slow cooking in the oven). The keys for us are simple recipes with fresh ingredients. Two books that I reference on occasion are The Professional Chef, 7th Ed. and the Food Lover's Companion. I mainly use the FLC when I run across ingredients that I'm not familiar with in TPC. The most helpful attribute of TPC is that the recipes for sauces and stocks are designed to be made in bulk. When we get into livestock and start to prepare our own meat, there are also some great tips for butchering and preparing these meats in large amounts. Putting Food By is a book we picked up last year in anticipation of doing a whole lot of canning and freezing this year.

I'm beginning to have a great deal of interest in food blogs lately and Meg and I plan to start adding them to our blog roll. I received a great recipe for rabbit from Steven at Dirt Sun Rain; I have been blown away with his knowledge in the kitchen, thanks Steven. The more we read, the more we learn about what we can do with food. So often I'm concerned with watching that I'm using less and not being wasteful, and I realize that a good deal can also be done if we pay attention not just to what we eat, but how we eat it. Meg and I are hoping to grow some amazing things this year and I can't wait to see how they turn out in the kitchen.

Vegetable Varieties

You know how seed catalogues never use quite the same language to describe plants and you have to re-read and go back and forth and back and forth to make sure you know what you're getting? Just me, then? Well, bear with me anyway and check out this pretty cool site that Craig from Ellis Hollow linked to a while back—I believe he played a part in putting the site together. It's got an index of thousands of seeds, and it's part of the Cornell Cooperative Extension:

Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners

It's like the Wikipedia of seeds, sort of. You can register with the site, and that will let you add reviews and varieties that aren't in the system. You can search for something as broad as "Tomato," and the site will return a list of every variety of tomato they have, which you can then sort by different criteria; or you can search a particular variety of vegetable, like "Brandywine Tomato," which will give you a specific plant description, a list of seed sources (with links!), and reviews of the plant. They also have growing guides that give you temperature and soil preferences, potential problems, germination time, and more for tons of different kinds of plants.

As we continue to peruse our seed catalogues and try to narrow down our choices, we're doing a lot of browsing around this site. I can see us checking in at the site for the rest of the season, too, as some of our plants will inevitably deviate from schedule or start to die in weird ways and we of course will need to run to the internet to see what we did wrong.

It Begins

It might not look like we need more seeds, but we do. And today we placed our very first seed order of the year, for capucijner peas (check them out here and here) and a type of cherry tomato from this local place we blogged about earlier this month. I realize we should probably be turning our attention to lettuce and potatoes and all the stuff that needs to be put in the ground relatively soon, but it's a start.

Achoo

Don't you just hate it when you're eating breakfast and you get some chicken food up your nose


and then you sneeze in a really undignified way with your tongue hanging out and everything


and your friends just keep porking out like nothing even happened?



I hate that.

Al Fresco

Just as I was headed out to feed the chickens on Friday morning, our light rain turned into a torrential downpour. I grabbed the camera so I could get a couple photos of the chickens looking like drowned rats. Unsurprisingly, when I got down to the coop Bertha and Peggy-O were standing knee-deep (do chickens have knees?) in muddy leaves, and Stella was standing on the roof. I put one bowl of food in their house and another on their porch, though since the rain was coming in sideways it didn't offer its usual protection from the elements. Still, Bertha and Stella took it as an improvement and started eating.


But this was the surprise of the day: in an unprecedented display of intelligence, Peggy-O actually got out of the rain and ate inside.

Michael Pollan: Part Two

On Thursday we hopped a train to Philadelphia to see Michael Pollan speak and give a reading from In Defense of Food at the Free Library of Philadelphia. We got to the library an hour and a half early, but couldn't get inside because the library had closed for the day and was waiting to reopen at seven for the event. We were effectively the third and fourth people in line after two young women who had arrived ahead of us and were hanging out on the steps. By six o'clock there were easily two hundred people waiting. It was interesting to see what an obvious demographic turned out for the reading; at least 75% of the attendees were under 35 years old, and about the same percentage were urban hippies: Keens, Nalgene bottles, and thrift store cardigans were in abundance. We're rural hippies, so we had Keens, Nalgene bottles, and flannel shirts. We were all let in at quarter after six, and by six-thirty all seven hundred available seats were taken and the library staff had to start turning people away. The crowd was pretty amazing.

Before the event started I was a little bit concerned I'd be disappointed, because I thought (and still think) that the catchphrase for the book, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," was a little cute. That line is being repeated ad nauseum on NPR, in reviews, and online, and even though it makes sense and all, it is a little too pat for my liking. His other writing is very much not like that, though. I've read The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, in addition to some of his articles, and his other stuff seems well thought out and researched. My chief complaints with the two books I've read are that Pollan identifies and discusses a lot of problems inherent in the agricultural and food industries, not to mention the government, but he doesn't do very much in the way of offering alternatives. I know that he's technically a journalist, so it's not his obligation to give answers. But he's probably more intimate with the issues he writes about than most people are, so it almost seems like his duty to give us some sort of guidance. What's the best way to fix the farm bill? How do we get the government to subsidize the farmers who are doing good work? How do we get consumers to wrap their minds around the fact that in the end they pay a lot more than a dollar for that fast food value meal?

I don't know. Anyway, from Pollan's talk, it sounds like In Defense of Food will give a bit more direction, at least to individual consumers. Here are a couple highlights from his talk:

• Foods are not "the sum of their nutrients," despite what Multi-Grain Omega-3 Heart-Healthy American Cancer Society Approved Cheerios might have you believe. For reasons we don't understand yet, eating a fish from the ocean (presumably one who was able to avoid the toxic, mercury-filled parts of the ocean) is a much better and more effective way to get omega-3s than by taking a supplement or eating fortified food. The beta carotene in a carrot will do a lot more for you than fortified Wheaties.
  

• When sociologists look at food, they find that the health of a population has nothing to do with individual foods; rather it's contingent on the amount of whole foods that are eaten. Pollan talked about an African tribe that basically eats beef, cow's blood, milk, and a couple grains. They have virtually no chronic diseases, they live a long time, and they can withstand minor illnesses way better than the average Westerner. The same holds true for any group of people who are eating a very culturally based diet, whether it's Inuits eating seal blubber, South Americans eating beans and potatoes, or French people eating brie.
  

• Speaking of Westerners, we have pretty much the crappiest diet in history, and immigrant populations who move to a Westernized area and start eating our junk food develop lots of health problems—high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity–very, very quickly. However, switching someone back to their native diet, or any diet of organic whole foods, completely reverses the problems they developed in, like, six weeks.
  

• Crappy food is cheap food, thanks mainly to the completely disproportionate and nonsensical allocation of government subsidies. Next time you hear someone whine about people who accept welfare and government handouts, tell them to boycott Kraft, General Mills, Nestle, and the like. Processed food is cheap because of government incentives to produce monster quantities of nasty, genetically modified corn, ship it around the country, and cram it into every box of cereal, soda bottle, and frozen dinner. One dollar can buy you about 1500 calories of processed food; the same dollar can buy about 250 calories of fresh produce. It is not really more expensive to grow a carrot than to make a box of Hamburger Helper; the problem is that the carrot farmer doesn't get any help from the government. In fact he's got to pay the government if he wants to call his carrot organic.
  

• I'm getting worked up.

• A big factor in the rise of health problems in Westernized nations, especially the US, is that we don't cook anymore. If you go to the grocery store and buy bread, milk, vegetables, and meat, you're going to be a whole lot better off than if you go for a box or a bag in the freezer section. Sure, you can add too much salt or too much butter, but most people don't keep corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil and monosodium glutamate in their spice rack. On the whole, you'll fare much better if you cook your own food, especially if you buy organic ingredients.
  

• And finally, a positive thought: the food industry is extremely sensitive to health scares and contamination, because of the awful publicity that such things bring. Basically, they're terrified of consumers. As an example, Pollan cited McDonalds' unadvertised use of genetically modified potatoes in the late 1990s. A few people learned about this and were rightly concerned, and they called and sent letters to the company. Less than 100 complaints was enough for McDonalds to reconsider, and lead to the eventual reverse of their use of GMO potatoes.
  

On the whole, Pollan was a very good speaker. He was engaging and funny, and he gave a lot of information. It made me eager to dig into the new book this weekend. It seems like it might serve as the missing last chapter of The Omnivore's Dilemma and take those ideas a little deeper, and I'm hoping to get a more complete picture of the whole food issue after reading it. After the talk, we ran upstairs to the book signing line with the three books we'd brought along. He happily signed them all and put a nice little book-specific note on each one: "To Meg and Kelly, fellow bumblebees," in Botany of Desire, "Vote with your fork!" in The Omnivore's Dilemma, and "Eat food," in In Defense of Food.


A podcast of the event is here. It is about an hour long, and I highly recommend listening to it whether you're familiar with Pollan's message or not.

Edited to add: Kickass Philly Blogger Albert "Dragonball" Yee has a very thorough write up of the reading here.