Vacations from the homestead

On vacation at Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska in May

Last week I gave several talks in the Seattle area, and as always, I encouraged people to start small with their homesteading dreams. I explained that you don't want to get overwhelmed by starting with too much, but I've recently realized another good reason to start small: you need to be sure that you have someone to take care of your homestead if you ever want to take a vacation or even if you have to travel to the bedside of an ailing relative.

Homesteading is a 365-day-a-year commitment when you bring live animals into the picture. Unlike an office job where you can turn off the computer and tell your boss that you'll be back in a week or two, you can't turn off your chickens or goats or tell the weeds to stop growing in your garden. Real life waits for no one.

In my livestock talks, I always suggest starting with chickens because they are about as easy to care for as a cat. You can fill up their waterer and feeder and leave for the weekend, and unless temperatures are above 90 (and eggs might start to incubate) you don't even have to ask a neighbor to pick up eggs for you. However, as many urban chicken keepers have told me, asking neighbors to check on the chickens once a day and gather eggs can actually make your neighbors more enamored with your chickens -- especially when they get to keep the eggs they collect.

Other livestock, such as pigs, sheep, cattle, and goats, need daily or twice-daily attention, and if you have a dairy animal that doesn't have a calf or kids nursing, you'll have to find a farm sitter who can milk. Do not expect to find someone with these skills very quickly. It is much easier to find a dog sitter. However, you can also plan kidding and calving with vacations in mind so that you can leave home when you don't need to have someone milk for you.

Although taking a vacation from the homestead is more challenging, it is not impossible. With a little planning, you can have your fresh eggs, homegrown produce, and vacations too.

Garden Vertically With a Sandwich Board A-Frame

by Chris McLaughlin 

Sandwich board A-frames are simple to build, store, and modify. If you're not worried about storing it, you can forgo the hinges, and screw or wire the top of the structure together (where the boards meet).

This sandwich board A-frame in this photo was made with plastic poultry/garden netting because it's what I had on hand, but you can switch out the plastic netting for any other climbing materials that you'd like. Also notice the short, rectangle "planters" at the bottom. We had extra fence boards and added them on later to create a small bed for the shallow-rooted green beans. If I wanted to plant a vegetable with deeper roots, I would simply add however many extra boards to the planters at the bottom.

Gather your materials: 

• 6 fence boards, 4"-6" wide, 6-foot long
• Jigsaw 
• 6 wood screws, 5/8"
• 2 sets of metal hinges 
• 16 wood screws, 1 1/2"
• 1 roll of 3-foot-wide poultry or garden netting 
• Manual heavy-duty stapler (T-50) 
• Drill gun with screw bit 

Assemble your sandwich board A-frame: 

1. Take two of the 6-foot fence boards and using your jigsaw, saw them in half so that you now have four 3-foot boards.
2. Place two of the 6' boards vertically on the ground in front of you.
3. Take one of the 3' boards (that you cut) and lay it horizontally at the top of the 6' boards so that the ends of the 3' board lay over the top ends of the 6' board.
4. Secure one end of the horizontal top board to the top end of one of the 6' boards with two, 5/8" screws. Do the same to the other board ends. This will give you one frame.
5. Using the remaining two 6' boards and the remaining two 3' boards, create another frame.
6. Make sure the 3' cross board is "on top" (meaning that the 6' long boards are pressed against the ground) and lay one frame down in front of you.
7. Take the second frame that you created and place it flat on the ground above the first one. Remember, their 3' cross boards should not be touching the ground.
8. Space the two hinges evenly apart on the 3' cross boards. Using two, 1 1/ 2" screws, attach one of the hinge flaps into one of the cross boards on the frame, and the other hinge flap to the cross board of the second frame. Repeat for second hinge.
9. Stand your sandwich board A-frame up. Unroll the garden netting partway.
10. Starting at the outside bottom of your A-frame, staple the end of the netting to the bottom of one panel.
11. Roll the netting up and over the other side of the entire frame all the way down to the bottom of the other side. If you're using netting that's much wider than your frame, simply use sturdy scissors or wire cutters to trim the material even with the sides of the frame.
12. Staple the netting to the bottom cross board. Add staples up all four sides of the A-frame at about 8"-12" intervals.

Remember to stand the frame up before you secure the netting (or whatever material you're using) to it. If you add the climbing material while it's flat on the ground, there won't be enough give in the material to allow it to bend into an A-frame. Your sandwich board A-frame is now ready for the garden!

Chris McLaughlin is the author of Vertical Vegetable Gardening (Alpha Books; December, 2012), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting (Alpha Books, 2010), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Heirloom Vegetables (Alpha Books, 2010), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Small-Space Gardening (Alpha Books, 2012. You can visit her online at A Suburban Farmer.

What's next?

The editing process has almost been completed on Raising Goats Naturally, which will be in bookstores in October. Once we get the last few words "just right" and decide on which pictures will make the cut, the manuscript will go to the designer, and he or she will turn the Word document into a beautiful book, which will be sent to me as a PDF in about three weeks, and I'll have one last chance to read over it and make sure everything is okay before it gets turned into a real book. A proofreader will also be going over it at that point too. And then it will go off to the printer.

In the midst of all this, I have a few upcoming speaking engagements. If you're in Washington State, I hope I'll get to see you at the Mother Earth News Fair on June 1-2. I'm speaking all afternoon on Saturday. I'll be talking about Ecothrifty Bread, Ecothrifty Living, and Choosing Livestock for Your Homestead. If you're in the area but can't make it to the fair on Saturday, I'll also be doing a talk at the Kirkland Library on Sunday at 2:00 and at White Center Library at 7:00 Monday night.

On August 31, I'll be amongst another great group of speakers at the Mid-America Homesteading Conference in Joliet, IL.

I'll also be speaking at the Mother Earth News Fairs in Pennsylvania in September and in Kansas in October.

To keep up-to-date on where I'll be speaking, you can always check out my Events page.

Thinking of soil

by Judith D. Schwartz

Earth Day has come and gone, but let’s consider earth: meaning, the sense of the word as a synonym for soil. This is much on my mind right now, not just because I’ve written a book on soil but as I’m in the process of preparing my vegetable garden. Starting a garden is the ultimate exercise in optimism. Along with the investment of time, space, money and energy, you’re casting your lot with the life force, trusting the invisible developments taking place below ground that eventually yield up food. And not simply “food” in the from-the-box, calorie-labeled, flavor-added way we’ve come to accept, but a radish or carrot or beet that is utterly itself, redolent of the earth from which it came. As a gardener, I’ve come to regard the plants I grow not as things, but as processes. And that when I gather the beans, onions and tomatoes in a basket, carry them up to the house and eat them, I’m not just a consumer of food—I’m taking part in the overall process, a process I’ve helped along by not getting in nature’s way.

Before I began to explore soil’s potential role in bringing ecological systems into balance, I considered it incidental, nothing more than a place to put plants. But now I see that it’s a living system. And once you start seeing it that way, food starts to look different too. The more life there is in the soil—worms and beetles that create channels for air and water; networks of fungi that transmit minerals to the plant—the more life there is in our food. As a society, we seem to have forgotten this. Most of our food supply is grown on inert, chemical-laden soil. But I believe that when we make the connection, and place a value on soil as a living system, many things will turn around: our food will be more nutritious, our health will be better, and our landscapes will be more vibrant.

What’s stopping us? The means of transformation is all around us, at our feet.

You can honor Earth Day any day or time: simply go and pick up a handful of earth.

Judith D. Schwartz is the author of the recently released book, Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, published by Chelsea Green Publishing

Getting back in the saddle

As the old cowboys used to say, if you fall off the horse, you have to pick yourself up and get back in the saddle. Sometimes I meet people who think that I'm focused, organized, and driven beyond what is humanly possible. I'm not. And the past month or so has reminded me of that! I'm not happy about the fact that I haven't posted on here in a month -- or that I only had one post in March. But life happens.

If you follow my Antiquity Oaks blog, you know that it's been quite a roller coaster on the farm this winter, and our family life has had its challenges also, as both my mother-in-law and father-in-law passed away only two months apart. And now I'm deep in the midst of cleaning up edits in the manuscript for my next book, Raising Goats Naturally, which will come out in September.

But I will get back to posting on here next week! And as a little thank you for those of you who have stuck around for the past month, I'm giving away two weekend passes to the Mother Earth News Fair, which will be held June 1 and 2, in Puyallup, WA, which is just south of Seattle. The value is $70. If you'd like to have a chance to win the tickets, just leave a comment below. Tell me why you'd like to attend the Fair -- and if you've recently had life throw you a few curve balls that caused a couple things to slip through the cracks!

The deadline for entering is midnight Saturday, April 20. Be sure to post your comment on this blog, not on Facebook, and you can't post as Anonymous because then anyone could claim to be you!

I hope to see you in Puyallup in June!

Urban Livestock Expo

 Goat break-out group

Last month I spoke at the Urban Livestock Expo in Chicago, which was attended by about 300 people! Those of us who are passionate about this topic knew that a lot of people shared our enthusiasm, but we were still rather surprised by the huge turn-out, which filled up the community room at Garfield Park Conservatory, leaving standing room only, with people pouring out into the entrance.

As someone who was there to talk about goats, I was happily surprised that more than 60 people attended the break-out group that was devoted to talking about keeping goats in the city!

 
The event was organized by Martha Boyd of Angelic Organics Learning Center, and based upon the success, it looks like this will be forever known as the First Annual Urban Livestock Expo. The Advocates for Urban Agriculture also helped organize the event.

Martha said:

The Expo's framing questions were:

• What if everyone decides to raise livestock in the city?  What do they need to know -- to do, and not do?
• Where will they get the mentoring and the supplies they need to do it well?
• How can we work together to include food animals successfully in ecologically-integrated urban lifestyles?

Our well-versed presenters offered critter-specific information and advice, answered questions, and guided people to more resources, including on the nearby info tables. Following the Expo, a group toured two nearby yards with goats and chickens in residence.

General information session

If you live in an area that is not as livestock friendly as Chicago -- and many of the suburbs are not -- there is a lot to learn from the people in Chicago about keeping chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, and bees in the city without creating a nuisance. In fact, as many of the Chicago residents have discovered, keeping livestock in the city is not simply tolerable, it is more desirable than the factory farm alternative. Backyard livestock can be raised more humanely, and the ultimate food products can be more delicious and nutritious. Sharing information via events like the Urban Livestock Expo is a great way to educate new and experienced livestock keepers!

Using last year's seeds in the garden

If you are wondering whether or not to use last year's seeds -- or some even older -- there is no reason to waste time planting them in the garden only to realize a couple weeks later that they are not going to germinate. You can check out their viability now!

I happen to have a very large bag of pea seeds that I've had for a few years. They don't have a date on them, and I don't remember exactly when I bought them, so I poured a handful into a canning jar and soaked them for a few hours, then drained off the water. I rinsed them several times a day to keep them moist, and within two or three days, I started to see sprouts!

After about five days, I poured the peas out onto a plate and started sorting through the ones that had sprouted and the one that hadn't. Since the germination rate looks like it is still very close to 100%, I'll be planting the seeds in my garden again this year!

And what will I do with the seeds that I sprouted? I'm going to continue rinsing them for a few more days and then feed the pea sprouts to my pigs as a treat!