Since we live in the woods, we knew that we would be clearing some areas for buildings, gardens, etc. We bought a Stanley CH7 chipper/shredder last year and have been giving it a workout. To make use of the chips, we needed a good way to catch them since they tend to blow all over […]
We can buy 55 gallon plastic barrels for $5 from our local recycling center. We are going to fill them with dirt and plant some of the harder to contain herbs in them. We decided to cut some of the barrels in half horizontally and others vertically. For the vertically cut barrels we lay them
55 Gallon Barrels For Small Raised Beds or Planters Read More »
We used some of our excess logs that we didn’t want to burn in the wood stove for hugelkultur garden beds. Below are some pictures with descriptions of how we built them.You can read more about hugelkultur from richsoil.com, here. The main advantage to hugelkultur is that as the wood rots it will hold water
Sarah and both her sons ( Ben and Sam) are planning to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail together this summer. We are starting meal preparation with the food dehydrator.We store single servings of each meal using a Food Saver Vacuum Sealer. I will ship them meals to post offices or hostel/hotel locations along
Our turnips were damaged a little bit by temperatures in the teens, but they had bounced back before Sarah recently pulled them all. We like to bake them for an hour at 350 degrees in a greased Pyrex dish with carrots, onion, parsnips, potatoes and any other root crop for an amazing supper. Sarah sometimes
We let all of our chickens free range, which has caused some trouble in the garden. We quickly added netting around each raised bed, but it was clear that we needed to fence in the entire garden area. We’ve also had racoons, armadillos and other critters in the garden. It took a while, and I
The winter garden is going well. This year we’ve planted lettuce, spinach, kale, carrots, beets, broccoli, cabbage and lots of turnips. I wish the beets and broccoli were doing better, but everything else is doing great. It’s nice how minimal the pest pressure is in fall/winter gardening. We’ve had temperatures down in the mid 20’s
We’ve had compost bins since April, 2014, but we’ve done several improvements since then. Here is what the original 3 bins looked like. The original compost bins worked great, but the sawdust and wheat straw cover material wasn’t protected from rain. The finished compost bins. A few of the improvements made are: * A roof
We planted some store bought ginger root just to see if we could grow it ourselves. I think we planted about a half dozen small pieces of ginger this past spring. Although this is a shade loving plant we left it out in the garden which gets full sun for most of the day. The
In an attempt to follow the advice in country living magazines, Sarah is braiding our garlic harvest. She said that she would have a clue how to do it had she raised two girls instead of boys.