To: Homestead mailing list digest <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Notes From the Farm (July-August 2005)
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 23:08:57 -0700
Thanks to our recent computer crash, the "Notes" are at least a week
late. When we downloaded the latest updates from Microsoft, the system
died. It seems that the new updates were incompabile with our old HP
drivers. Lee spent several days fixing it, and I was really impressed.
Our recent heatwave started in mid-July and lasted a month. Now it's
back to the same old cool summer weather.
All the livestock are old enough to be locked down in the pasture during
the day. The lambs are going to be processed soon. At this point the
two calves are enough to eat all the grass.
Everything went as planned and we now have two geese. We've been
feeding them chopped slugs, but it's not clear that they actively seek
them, like ducks. Slug gathering has become a necessity, now that I
have a bed of lettuce.
I set up the new greenhouse to enclose guinea pigs, with flashing and
chicken wire. It's perhaps the largest structure of its kind in
existence, but I prefer to think of it not as a guinea pig ecolarium,
but as a self-weeding herb garden with automatic fertilizing. We put
12 males in to start. It worked so well, we decided to put in a
partition and set aside half for females. One male ended up on the
wrong side of the partition, so we had to surround him with flashing and
cut down some grass to catch him. They're all as happy as
can be, and even eat the old dried grass. The females are taking a
while to adjust, but it's only been a day or so for them.
Later...I removed the females and the partition, because every male was
needed to eat up the grass in the "wet" end. We'll try again when I
have enough older females to handle that much grass, and I've planted an
irrigated lawn in the "dry" end.
I've found a great way to prolong the usability of bitter lettuce. If
you soak the stem ends of freshly cut lettuce leaves in water for an
hour, any trace of bitterness disappears.
I poured cement yesterday for the 22nd round raised bed. A realistic
goal for now is about 60, since that's about what I need to maintain the
lifestyle to which I had become accustomed, but also what there's space
available for, and also about as many as I have the time to complete
before returning to my software pursuits in earnest. That's enough beds
to provide all the gourmet vegetables that two people can eat, or
complete emergency rations for one. To keep the system functioning
requires clearing and planting only 2 beds each week during the 9 month
planting season, besides watering them all in summer.
The best news is that the contractor called and there definitely will be
a new storage shed/barn/solarium this summer!
The second best news is that Lee got my webpages up. There are farm
pictures galore, and the old "Notes From the Farm" are archived. Links
1 and 3 are not active yet. Come and enjoy the eye-popping strawberries
and towering trellises at