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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] The Small Scale Integrated Farmstead

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Laura McKenzie" <laurabrownmckenzie@worldnet.att.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The Small Scale Integrated Farmstead
  • Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 23:47:08 -0500

Pat, perhaps a little at a time you could incorporate ideas about gardening for people with disabilities.
You already know Margaret : ) http://www.margaretlauterbach.com/handicapped_gardening.htm

Its been a little at a time with us. I've been working on my place since 1993. When we adopted our youngest child at age 2, I had no time for the garden and basically lost a couple of years and I had no time last year when my nephew came to stay with us. But little by little its grown.

BTW, I know you've already said you don't have access to downed wood but perhaps you could ask around to see if a friend would give you some. My raised beds out of culled trees and hurricane debris work fairly well. I wonder if someone has a rotten firewood pile that they don't know what to do with. I've used partially rotten logs for the sides when I had nothing else. You could ask on your local Freecycle list and see if anyone would look out for wood or bed materials for you.

I understand what you mean about dogs. We have three rescues. None are known for barking but two would escape if they could. We try hard to stay on good terms with our neighbors in case at some point one of the Sibes were to get out and be a nuisance. (Its happened already once about 10 years ago actually when a rescue that we had got out and killed one neighbor's goose and injured another goose.) Sibes don't bark but they do howl so at one time we set a sprinkler pointed directly at their night time kennel and we'd sneak out and turn it on when they set off howling. They got to the point where they'd stop when they heard us open the door but still would START to howl so we had to really sneak quietly and persevere. They don't howl anymore.

I'm lucky in that my newest and right next door neighbor is a gardener. I don't believe he cares about sustainability or organic but since his back yard reeked for two weeks of fairly putrid cow manure I can bet he won't complain about my rare fish emulsion smells wafting his way : )


Laura
<>`` ><>`` ><>`` ><>`` ><>`` ><>`` ><>``
Laura's Homeschooling, Garden, and Genealogy Site
is found here: http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Meadows" <pat@meadows.pair.com>

On Thu, 11 May 2006 13:18:39 -0600, you wrote:

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but........


Before allot of this can happen, home building techniques and laws will have to change, and as long as some people have the money, that is not going to happen.

In many places, the available yard is less than 50 sq ft, and if it is, available, the amount of available sun is low.

We have a little over 1/3 of an acre - which is really more
than we can handle in the way of a garden (health problems).
Much more. (Although we grow a lot of food!)

We're on the edge of a small town in a very rural area. We
are within the town limits. We are not allowed to garden in
old tires; and when a neighbor complained, were forced to
dismantle last year's garden in early July. Bad timing.

The neighbor complained because she didn't like the
hoophouse we built. The hoophouse is fine, it's in
accordance with the zoning regulations. We had checked on
that before building it, of course.

But once the neighbor complained and the zoning board people
came to our house, of course they saw that we were gardening
in tires. And we had to remove them. We could have fought
it as the regulation says that we cannot 'accumulate' tires,
and we were not 'accumulating' them but gardening in them.
But we both have health problems and just couldn't face a
knock-down, drag-out fight about it. So we removed them. We
had just about decided that most of our gardening needs to
be in containers anyway: I wasn't managing to keep up with
the weeding around the tires. I can manage containers (with
help). We'll put a couple of tomatoes in the ground, my
herb garden is planted in the ground; for the rest, this
year it will be a container garden.

What I would *like* to do would be to have lots of old
toilets in the front yard, and claim that they are my form
of artistic expression. :) But I can't bring myself to do
it; after all, we live here.

Also, it would guarantee complaints that one of our dogs
barks too much (he barks; he's a rough collie; collies are
barkers and there's no real way to train them out of it). We
NEVER let him bark more than the amount of time it takes us
to get to the back door and call him in. And when we're not
home, we leave the dogs in the house. But he does bark;
this is indisputable. So we don't want to invite complaints
about him.

Pat
--
Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.

Eat local food, change the world for the better!
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