Manhattan

I wrote most of this on Monday December 5 and finished it on Wednesday December 7.  It might sound a little negative toward NYC, but I mean it more as neutral observation and questioning.  I've been writing a lot lately.  It feels good.  It helps me organize and understand my thoughts and feelings. 

Riding the Metro North train through Manhattan.  The eleveted rail line gives you an elevated view.   You see the intense alteration of the earth.  Buildings with carefully dug foundations, perfectly level - how much do they weigh?  We trust the earth to hold them in place.   How much does Manhattan weigh?  Are our buildings depressing the earth's crust here?  Is there an area of congestion in the mantle under this place?  

Here earth is carpeted with concrete sidewalks, asphalt streets, and buildings.  Below the surface is a mess - miles of pipes and tunnels.   Is there any life in the dirt that is compacted below all of our creations here?   Trees send tap roots deep into the subsoil to find nutrients.   Do the tap roots of the trees in Manhattan find anything at all beneath the concrete?  If they do, how long does it last?  Could anything possibly be returning nutrients to that subsoil?

This is a massive suppression of a once-thriving natural ecosystem - a self-regulating, self-sustaining system with its own energy harvesting capabilities, with huge biodiversity, with its own system of checks and balances. 

I see people helping nature partially reclaim bits of the landscape; a community garden where a building once stood, compost bins in their 15 by 20 foot backyards, flowers planted in a tree pit.  The people want to find a connection to nature via a few home grown veggies or flowers.  I wonder how long will it take for nature to reclaim this island when we leave?  

I see all the people.  Millions of them on this island of just 23 square miles.  We've created conditions that have allowed millions of people to live here, trading, teaching, celebrating, playing.  If we put 3 million people in the natural system that once was here, we would destroy it in no time.  The conditions for survival here are dependent on people who don't live in the city to grow food and supplies.  It's dependent on a lot of cheap fossil fuels for electricity, heating, and transportation of goods.  I used to marvel at and take pride in the suppression of nature of NYC.  I wanted the buildings taller.  I wanted it denser.  I wanted more people here.   We mastered the earth here; but not really when you consider the far reaching needs required for survival here.  After living here awhile I started to crave nature, but it wasn't so easy to find.  I eventually found it in the ocean.   

I think understand one reason why the people of our country are divided.  In the city people are dependent on the government to regulate the gathering of staple goods from the places where they are made - mostly far from the city.   If the government collapses, the city people only have a few days of provisions.   While in the country a family living on a few acres of proper land, with a few neighbors to trade with. could provide for themselves indefinitely if they're using sustainable practices.  The country people don't need as much regulation, so they believe.  So the city people are pro big government and they need help and the country people are pro small government and want to be left alone.   I'm sure this is an over-simplification, but interesting for me to ponder.  

The above is observation instigating some thoughts.  

Mapping Update

Hello again.  I want to share some maps I've made of the property.  Mapping is a nice way to see everything and focus on specific things.  But for me, the biggest benefit is seeing beyond the current season.  It's kind of difficult to remember what things were like last Spring, or even how things looked just 3 or 4 months ago.  I find that when I look at the maps I have a better all-season understanding of the property.   These maps are drawn on the property survey map that was done when we bought the house.  I made several copies.  It was a drag to pay for that survey at the time, but the map has been quite useful now.

Click on the images and you should be able to see a large and legible version.

First I did an update of the base map.  This map is just a general map with buildings, vegetation, etc.  We moved the rain barrels and the strawberry patch.  On this map there is a 30 gallon rain barrel in the strawberry patch collecting water off of the carport.  I have the barrel, but will wait until Spring to install it.  The pollinator gardens are where I've planted native perennial flowers.

Here's the sun map.  What I've done here is mapped the sun angles as well as any particular shady or hot spots, which can be useful when decided where to put specific plants.  Notice the hot spot on the southeast side of the garage.  I planted peas there this Spring, thinking that the warmth radiating from the cinder blocks could give them a head start.  But it ended up being too warm there, and they dried out fast.  Note taken.  My poor soil was probably a factor too.

This is a water map.  Here I mapped the flow of water around the property and anything else I could think of regarding water.  Our entire property is kind of in a low spot.  To the South East we have Mount Beacon, with the highest peaks in the Hudson Highlands Range - 1611 feet at the summit.  To the Northwest is another hill - but it puts us in a little valley.  In our well in the basement the water level has been between 3 and 6 feet below the basement floor.  That might indicate the level of the water table.  Add the 4-5 feet depth of the basement, we're looking at a water table that is 7 to 11 feet below grade.  That might be pretty shallow and might be of concern if I want to build some swales.  I'm not sure we have enough slope for swales to be effective anyway.  But I do have ideas of creating some kind of irrigation channels for roof runoff to water future fruit trees.  

Next would be a wind map.  I've made a wind map, but it is blank.  I really don't have a handle on the predominant winds through the property.  I think that the wind here is affected be our proximity to Mount Beacon.  It seems to blow near equally from every direction at various times.  One thing that I have noticed is evening winds.  Quite often we'll get some very gusty winds that blow for an hour or two just after dark.  My guess is that this could have to do with cooling temperatures on the mountain.  Also, the Hudson River, about 2 miles to our west, affects the temperature too.  In the Fall warm breeze comes off the river at night, while in the Spring it acts like an air conditioner.  You can observe how large bodies of water work to narrow temperature ranges.  I've noticed that the leaves on our side of Mount Beacon change color later in the Fall, than those on the other side of the range.  My guess is that this has to do with the warm Fall waters of the Hudson.  

Below is just a simple map that I made when planning New Annual bed (see my previous post about sheet mulching this garden).  Note that this map is drawn upside down.  It made sense to draw it that way based on how we access it and see it from the house.   A common permaculture technique is called keyhole beds - the walking paths are shaped like keyholes with a wider circle at the end.  This allows you to reach further into beds without stepping on them.  I didn't put the circular part in because I thought I could reach just fine.  My beds are 3 feet wide and they go around most of the perimeter of the garden.  3 feet is a good size to be able to work without stepping on.  My paths are only 18" wide, which will seem like nothing when we've got larger plants growing.  But I'm interested in getting as much growing space as possible, and keeping bare soil to a minimum.  My paths are mulched with wood chips to help keep the soil covered too.  We'll see how the 18 inches go.  If I need to adjust in the future I can.  But you can see how much growing space we gain by this kind of layout, as opposed to rows and paths that would go all the way from one end to the other.  Along the right side of this map you'll see the trellises.   This is the north west side of the garden.  I decided that they would get good sun there and will provide the hens with some shade in the summertime - they're pasturing just to the right of the trellises.  

So these are my maps.  They're quite enjoyable to make and fun for me to look at.  Thanks for reading!  

Sheet Mulch 2.0 and Dueling Gardens

OK.  As promised, I wanted to update you on some gardening work.  I'm really excited about what we have going on in the back yard.  First a little reflection on this years experimenting.

In previous posts, I've given some detailed accounts of our gardening experiments.  Now that the last of the veggies have been harvested, I'd like to offer a little in the way of final reflections.   It's easy to focus on the mistakes we made, but first I want to say what worked well.  First, weeding was very easy.  There were literally no weeds until just a few showed up in August.  Even then it wasn't much at all.  Second, I was very happy with the salad greens polyculture - a scattering of mixed seeds.  The greens were densely planted and therefor shaded by other plants, keeping them from bolting and getting bitter.  At one point in the summer I decided to clean out old radish stalks and others that had bolted and gotten stringy.   This might have been a mistake because afterward the lettuces bolted in the more-direct exposure.  I had success with a few squash plants.  After a slow start, the tomatoes worked well.  A few peppers.  Cucumbers were pretty good, but not as plentiful as they should have been.  Turnips did well.  Red radishes were fun to hunt for and plenty of them were good.

What didn't work were root vegetables and brassicas.  I only had a couple carrots germinate; I think they got lost in the polyculture planting.   Cauliflower and broccoli were stringy messes, not nice heads, aside from a few broccoli servings.  Melons, cantaloupe and watermelon got some fruits, but were too small.  Fall Daikon were pretty sad, and practically no fall greens germinated.

If I were judging by our produce yield alone, I'd have to say it was a pretty lousy year.  I put a lot of energy and resources into the garden, and got relatively little out of it.  I think I could have gotten more if I had known more about how to read the conditions of the plants and react to them.   I often felt, "Well these look terrible.  They shouldn't, but they do, but I don't know why," and I didn't take any action to correct the problems.   I don't have the experience.  I pick things up from books and from friends, but there's so much to learn.  In the end I think my plants were a little starved this year.  My biggest mistakes were not shredding the leaves - my main mulching material, being a little careless in my polyculture planting, and not reacting well to plants that were showing signs of stress.

However, I'm really thinking long term here, so I don't think of this year as a failure.  I added A LOT of organic matter to the soil.  And I think that organic matter will convert into a better growing medium over time.  The whole leaves seemed to linger until about August, when they suddenly seemed to be converted to worm castings overnight.  The chickens have been on the property for not even 6 months yet.  They're such hard workers, but the manure they're adding hasn't been utilized yet.  When I think about yield in a broader sense, there is a lot to account for.  We have a lot more water absorption - storage in the ground- happening.  We're attracting beneficial wildlife - earth worms, pollinators, and I assume good soil microbes.  Eggs, manure, entertainment from the chickens.  The soil is getting better.  The inputs we've put in will be paying off for years, a solid investment if you ask me.

So from last weekend up to today we did a lot of work on the property.  First we harvested the last of the daikon, some mustard greens, and a few collards.  Then we dumped a whole bunch of whole leaves from our yard on the garden in preparation for the chickens.   This is the dueling gardens concept.   This year's chicken run will be next summer's veggie garden, and this year's veggie garden is next summer's chicken run.  And they alternate every year.  The chickens scratch, eat old veggies and weed seeds, and add manure, and there aren't any nutrients being harvested by us via veggies for a year.  The idea with the whole leaves is to create deep litter to protect the soil and keep it thawed and full of insect and worm life for the chickens to enjoy.  It also provides a "carbon diaper" for absorption of the chicken manure, and endless entertainment for the chickens themselves.  Since we moved them there Saturday they are really loving it.  And we love watching them from the kitchen window - little triangle tales pointing to the sky as they scratch and peck.  My hope is that over the next year they shred the leaves and turn them into the soil and that everything shapes up so that next fall we can basically shape up the beds, throw some straw over them and they'll be really rich, fertile, and lovely to plant in the Spring of 2018.  They work all day.  Perhaps the leaves will be shredded sooner, and I can collect them and then add new leaves.  Yet another function of the hens: solar powered leaf shredders that happen to weed, till, control insects, fertilize, and produce eggs and entertainment at the same time!

In the old chicken run / new veggie garden, I lightly raked up the straw, leaves, and scraps that the chickens were working with.  I wasn't sure if I should've left this stuff down at the soil level, but I decided it might be better in the mulch, so I pulled it off and set it aside.  Then I marked were the beds were going to be (designed for a low amount of walking path space) and forked the soil a bit.  It wasn't full tilling, but just stabbing and pulling on the fork a bit.  This area was grass before the chickens arrived.  Adding a lot of kitchen scraps, compost piles, straw, along with the scratching by the chickens eventually killed the grass.  In retrospect I wish I had had more organic matter down on the ground to better protect the soil.  In old photos of the property, I see tractors and machinery were parked in the yard, so the soil was pretty compacted and I thought the loosening would help.   Curiously I find a lot of broken dishes whenever I dig in the yard.  I wonder if there was an idea behind burying them.

After that I put about an inch or two of compost from the City of Beacon Transfer Station (the dump) over the beds.  Boy this stuff was beautiful.  It was really hard to cover it with cardboard - so tempting to leave it and plant right into it. I must say that I'm pretty excited about the free compost that they have at the transfer station.  Some people in town think that it might contain weed seeds - people put all sorts of junk in the materials they bring to the dump.  But the piles are the size of houses and they are smoking/steaming hot.  Then they screen the stuff.  It's super rich, dark black fluffy stuff.  It looks better than what you buy in bags at the store.   I'm going to give it a try this year and see what happens.

To correct last year's mistake of using whole leaves for sheet mulching, well, I went ahead and shredded them this time.  Some leaves I picked up around the neighborhood had been gathered using a lawnmower and were already shredded.  For the rest, I borrowed my friend Justin's lawnmower.  The mower probably didn't do the finest job.  A leaf shredder/chipper is on the shopping list for the future.  We just can't afford one after doing the garage roof.  But I look forward to making a lot of mulch with it in the future.  Although, we'll have to see how the chickens do with the leaves this year, as I mentioned above.  Perhaps they're our little shredders and a gas guzzling machine won't be necessary after all.

So we piled 5 to 6 inches of shredded leaves over the beds, on top of the cardboard layer.  The cardboard layer was installed over the entire garden this year including the walking paths.  On top of the leaves we threw the material that we raked up from the chicken run, a couple bags of grass clippings, and then all of the compost we made on site this year.  After some rain delay, I gathered more compost from the transfer station, and added that on top of our home made compost.  I think I hauled about 3 tons of the stuff in our little Honda Fit over the past week!  Finally I topped it with straw to protect everything from the elements.   Now it will sit for the winter.   Hopefully the deep mulch will keep soil organisms warm and at work over the winter, helping to break down the material.  Some freezing and thawing will help too.

I'm pretty excited about this sheet mulch/dueling gardens work.   I think I've made some improvements to the sheet mulching.  And I plan on being more careful with my planting this year.  Probably a little more traditional planting in rows, some smaller polyculture arrangements, and hopefully a better ability to read the soil and plant health.

One thing permaculturists think about is an energy input versus output.  Eventually we want to be creating more energy (in a broad sense) than we're bringing in.  Resource use is part of that.  Eventually we want to be producing more on site than what we need ourselves, at which point we'll have a surplus to work with.  Since arriving here, there has been a lot of energy going into the property.  But I think we did an even better job this Fall with the sheet mulching effort.  Last year I bought a lot of organic matter.  This year the only thing I purchased was the straw.  Some gasoline was used to transport materials from the dump and from the neighbors.  But it's far more cost and energy efficient to do it that way, rather than buy materials from a store.   It's local and it's getting more for our tax dollars.

A lot of human muscle power and calorie energy and time were used.  Had I a truck, the guys at the dump could have dumped a load into it with the front loader.  Instead I had to shovel it all into bags and pails.  Again though, human power is a resource that is regenerative - the more you use it (carefully and reasonably) the stronger it gets, and I feel good about doing it that way.

We have to count the cost and energy of the organic chicken feed.  I believe we're saving a lot of feed by having them pasture on the old veggie garden - I rarely see them eating pellets.  We also buy a lot of food on site for us to eat right now.  We will never be able to produce 100% of our own food, and we wouldn't want to do that anyway - it would be pretty boring.  But I hope someday to be eating all of our summer and fall veggies and fruits off the property and preserving a lot of it for winter and spring.    Leftovers and kitchen scraps of the food we buy are used to feed the chickens, which they turn into fertilizer, so more is being added to the soil in that way also.  

There's much more to consider with the energy audit, this stuff is just the beginning.  But it's fun to think about and fun to aspire to a real sustainable life on the property.  All of the time, energy, and money we're putting into the property here will easily pay for itself over time .  And I really enjoy doing the work too.

I will soon be thinking a lot more about some of the perennial food plants that we want to add - fruit trees, more berries, and some perennial veggies, that will go outside of these annual gardens.  Also I have what I think if might be a great greenhouse idea that is incorporated into the dueling gardens rotation.  More on that later.  Here are some photos:

The girls on the old veggie garden: 

This is the free compost from the dump that went under the cardboard layer.  

So hard to cover up this pretty black stuff!  

 The cardboard layer:

Shredded leaves, grass clippings, and some unfinished compost went on next.

On top of that went the compost we made on site.  Not bad stuff.

More screened compost from the dump.  So black and pretty.  

The beds are are all 3 feet wide with paths about 18" wide.  

I added wood chips from the dump in the paths.  It looks pretty.  

Today I topped it all with straw.  

The girls this morning.  They blend in very well with the leaf litter.  

Thanks for reading.  I will share some more maps I've made soon.  Have a good day.

Design Course and Roof Work

Hello.  Apologies for the long lapse in posts.  My only excuses are that I've been busy and I am trying to minimize my screen time.   But there is a lot of news and much to share.   

First, I've begun a Permaculture Design Certificate Course at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappingers Falls, NY.  This course is unique in that it meets for two days every other month over a 14 month period, whereas most courses meet everyday for two weeks at that’s it.   It’s taught by Delvin Solkinson.  Delvin has studied with most of the permaculture elders and has combined their teachings into his own unique version of permaculture.  We had our first meeting in October and it was fantastic.   There was a lot of introductory course logistical stuff, but we did start getting into some content, and we took a field trip to Dina Falconi's site in Accord, NY.  Her place was super inspiring.  Check out her book Foraging and Feasting.   It's deep.   It was nice to get to know the other classmates.   It's a great group and I think we're really going to learn a lot together.   This course will certify me as a permaculture designer and allow me to use the permaculture name in what I do.   I see is as the opening of a door.  Once completed there are many opportunities to continue if I want to.  My first objective however is to get some knowledge and experience and "get my house in order", meaning to get the design of our property going.   

Second, October was a bit nuts with the rebuilding the roof of our garage.  It's a great big garage that was the previous owners workshop.   We want to build it into a piano teaching and practicing studio.   But you could literally see through the roof in spots and it leaked terribly.   It was obvious when we bought the place in July 2015 that this roof wasn't going to last much longer.  But we only now felt like we could afford to fix it.  We had some framers tear off the old roof, replace the rafters and ridge pole, put plywood decking on, put a couple skylights in, and put felt paper on.  Then my brother Jake and I with the help of our wife's and my friend Justin put sheet metal roofing on ourselves.   It was a huge job.  Jake and Liz were visiting from MN during Columbus weekend, and that's when we got most of the work done.   The skylights were not in yet though - we had to wait a couple weeks for them, so we finished the roofing with just Akiko and I with a little help from Akiko's sister's boyfriend Erik and his brother Zachary.  There were many helping hands which we were grateful for.   

After getting the roof finished, I immediately went to work repairing the broken windows, a condition that our home insurance company required before including the garage on our policy.   I definitely wanted to get that new roof covered as soon as possible.   The garage has these really awesome factory-like windows with iron or steel grids.  There were a dozen broken panes that I replaced.  I cut glass to the appropriate sizes and installed the using a special putty.   It's called window glazing.  The job would be quite fun if the putty was easier to work with.   It's not as sticky as you'd like it to be.  After that I reconfigured the gutters and rain water collection to complete the first phase of the garage to studio project.  It took a lot of resources to do, but now we can take our time, design the building and slowly build it into our piano studio.   

Permaculture is not just gardening, although I will primarily be blogging about gardening.  “People Care” is one of the ethics of permaculture and the studio in the garage is an important part of us doing what we do here.  We hope to enrich the lives of many students in that space, while providing ourselves with a modest income.  Also, the choice of metal roofing fits into the “Earth Care” ethic.  It is good for reducing cooling needs in the summer as the metal reflects away a lot of the heat.  And it lasts longer than shingles so less resources will be needed in the future.   

Over the past weekend, we did some serious gardening work that I think merits a separate post, so I'll be sharing it with you soon.  

I’d like to take a moment to thank some friends for some needed encouragement.  One of my student’s parents, Ellen, found this blog and sent me a nice email of encouragement.  She said that I seem to be a perpetual learner.  I would agree with that.  Thanks, Ellen.  Also I spent Thanksgiving with some friends and one of them, Lionella, a friend from Brooklyn, mentioned that she and her husband Carlo have discussed how I become dedicated to various disciplines and become good at them.  She was referencing my bread baking, among other things.  Thanks for mentioning that, Lio.  

The encouragement is appreciated.  I have a very good life with a lot of privileges that I try not to take for granted.  It’s true that I like to study and I like to go very in depth with things.  My wife says I get obsessed, and I can’t really argue with her on that.  It’s true and I know my obsessions get annoying to friends sometime.  I like being a learner and I like doing things hands on.  I started with playing the piano.  That was the most serious I’ve ever studied anything, and it’s really the backbone of my life.  All the other disciplines I’ve studied really aim to serve that, and it will probably remain that way until we have kids.  I studied yoga seriously for many years, the idea being that a healthy body and mind would make my piano playing and composing better.  The same goes for food and macrobiotic study, which I also went quite in depth with.  Better health makes for more productivity and more enjoyment out of life.  Bread baking grew out of that.  And permaculture studies fit right into everything too.  Now having acquired some land - even if it’s just a suburban lot - I’ve been given the opportunity to grow some of my own food, and that food will be the highest quality of anything I can get.  I can do this while making the lot a better habitat for all of life from the soil microbes to our neighbors.  And that all feeds into having a rich, happy, healthy life that serves my personal artistic adventures, while striving to make the community around me a better place.  A permaculture aim is to interact with the earth so that your needs as a human are met, while improving the ecosystem instead of depleting it - beyond sustainability to regeneration.  There’s an interesting parallel there.  

Learning to play jazz piano on a high level takes an incredible amount of time and energy.  It’s a lifelong discipline.  I spent years doing nothing but practicing piano, listening, living, breathing jazz.  For me there was no other way of going about it.  It feels that with the study of the other disciplines that I mentioned above, my dedication to music has waned a bit.  Some of my friends have continued to be directly dedicated to their craft.  My dedication has been somewhat indirect over the last several years.  However all of the other disciplines give me something to write music about.  They enrich my life and the artistic journey.  For me art is better when it’s informed by other disciplines.  And I have continued to strive for things as a musician.  My latest home project is called 24 Standards - please check it out.  But when I spend several hours a day in the yard instead of at the piano like I used to, I sometimes question my direction.  So some encouragement, like what Ellen and Lio shared, is appreciated.  I’ll keep moving forward in a multitude of ways….  

Some garage photos:

BEFORE:

Daylight showing through.  

DURING:

Didn't sleep very well that night:

It takes a village:

 AFTER:

Windows fixed.  

Thanks for reading! 

Mapping

Yesterday I attended a permaculture gardening workshop at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappingers Falls, NY.  It was facilitated by Delvin Solkinson and Grace.  It was an inspiring afternoon.  While I was familiar with many things that were discussed, it was helpful to hear it from another inspired perspective.  And it was great to connect with like-minded people.

One thing we've talked about is mapping.  I've done some mapping already, but there is much more to do.  When we bought the house almost a year ago now, we had to get a property survey done.  It was annoying to have to pay for it at the time, but it's actually really nice to have these maps now!  I'm using them for my designing ideas, first in designing our "dueling gardens" chicken coop location idea, as you may have seen in my previous post.

Although I'm trying to be patient and do more observing during this first year, I have added some elements.  (Hey, we will have been year hear in just nine days!)  So I needed to create an upgraded map of the design elements.  I included structural elements, some water sources (rain barrels, and outdoor spigots), some trees and shrubs, and perennials.  I want this map to serve as a base map that I can use for mapping other things.

Next I will do some sector mapping.   Sectors are essential directional influence maps.  So for example, creating a sun sector map by calculating sunrise and sunset locations in all seasons.  Or mapping prevailing wind patterns.  I've been observing wind, but to be honest, I have no clue where the hell the wind usually comes from here.  It seems to be everywhere.  Maybe it has to do with our proximity to Mount Beacon.  I'll be sure to share the sector maps with you soon.  

Wildlife and Biodiversity.

I am out doing chores this morning and happened upon some nice wildlife, including a couple critters I haven't seen here before. I take it as a good sign, and I hope to see more new friends in the future.  

A little toad.  I pretty sure that chicken wanted to eat him.  But I set the toad down a little ways from the fence.  I'll let him choose his own fate.

The hibiscus started flowering, and it's loaded with buds.  

Moments later I saw this honeybee leaving a hibiscus flower.   He was covered in pollen!  So much so that flying seemed a challenge.  Pollen butt.  Nice to see!

We used to call these lady bugs.  Then they told us in school that they're really called Ladybird Beetles.  But now I see they're called Asian Lady Beetles.  Maybe it's here because my wife is an Asian lady.  I think they're good in the garden.  They eat aphids.  Back in Brooklyn I actually bought a box of them to combat aphids.  I spread them out over and around the infested plants.  But apparently they preferred some other kind of lunch because they all left within minutes.  

Hooray for biodiversity.  Hopefully it's a sign that some of my efforts are creating good soil. The food chain starts in the soil with microbes.  A diverse population of microbes means more diversity up the food chain.  

An interesting parallel to note is the decrease of microbes in the soil that commercial commodity monoculture crops are grown in, with a decrease in diversity of our culture.  The soil in those monocultures is essentially dead.  It's just there to hold plants in place while the farmers feed it chemicals. These huge crops of corn and soy are used as building blocks for junk food, fast food, chain restaurant food.  It's why you get the same exact meal at any TGI Fridays across the country.  (How sad and kind of disgusting, right?)

Could it be that a population fed from monocultures starts to become a monoculture itself?  Go to nearly any city in the USA and you know what you're going to find there: A Walmart, a Home Depot, a Starbucks, and all the same chain and fast food restaurants.  

BUT, happily it does seem to be changing for the better.  There is a really strong artisan movement building, don't you think?  People making highly specialized food, drinks, and goods right here in America.  You can find that stuff.  You pay a little more for it.  But the quality and craftsmanship is awesome.  Perhaps it's not just a coincidence that the artisan movement is happening along side the rise of organic, small-scale, microbe-friendly food production.  That notion excites me.  

I've been reading a book called Will Bonsall's Guide to Radical Self-Sustaining Gardening.   It's pretty over my head honestly.  But through seed saving, Mr. Bonsall is preserving, developing, growing, and eating al sorts of rare varieties of foods - veggies, fruits, and grains.  It's really amazing to me to think about the healthy biodiversity he must be creating in himself and his family.  He's got all these unique varieties and strains of foods developed right there in the biome of his property.  This food is intimately connected to his immediate environment.  When he and his family eat it, they are themselves becoming biologically intimate with nature around them.  Plus they've got so many varieties that you and I will never find at a store of even at farmers markets.  They've gotta be the strongest people in the country!  He's obviously on a serious mission, going way beyond most peoples' capabilities, but gardening and seed saving were things that nearly everyone did at one time.  That, and more active lifestyles, among other things, are factors that I believe made our ancestors stronger, happier, more disease resistant.  Doesn't it kind of seem like we're all a bunch of weak complaining pussies these days?  I think we gotta get our soil diversity up - with our own hands.  Then grow some food in that soil - with our own hands.   Then cook it - with our own (dirty) hands.  Then eat it.   

Here's to diversity!  

Ooo!  I just saw one of those black and yellow butterflies checking out the cone flowers.  A Tiger Swallowtail maybe? Nice. 

  

Habitats and Hens

Hello friends.  It's been awhile since I've done a post here aside from that little article I linked to yesterday.  While I have some exciting developments to report, the truth is that I've felt a bit overwhelmed, embarrassed, and depressed about how my gardening efforts are going.  I spent a week in Minnesota at the end of June visiting family.  My parents and my siblings are extraordinary gardeners.   Their gardens were very inspiring, but also very humbling.   Their plants were much further along than mine, as so are the gardens of my friends in Beacon.   Here I've been studying so hard, working hard, and blogging - hoping that I'll  inspire people with what I'm doing.  But my plants are so behind.  How embarrassing.   

There are some reasons why my stuff is behind, and I find them encouraging.  1.) I haven't even been here a year yet.  I'm still learning the patterns here, as I will be for years to come.  2.) The sheet mulch beds that I've done are supposed to take some time to get good.  Plus I made the mistake of using whole leaves as my main organic material.  If I had shredded the leaves, I think I'd be seeing better results.  I won't forget  that next time.  3.) I've been filling my head with a ton a new information.  Things will take time to sink in.  I'm aware of a pattern of mine:  I study theory and concepts like crazy and end up with inflated ideas that might not be the most realistic.  I've done this in music, in yoga, in eating, and I'm finally learning from that tendency.   Seeing my families' gardens and learning from them was a great lesson in practicality, and the real world.  

I'm trying to remember that this blog is not an expert advice column, as I stated in the beginning.  I'm just figuring it out and learning as I go, and I'm sharing that experience with you.  

I didn't take many photos in MN, but here's one of my parents front yard.  The place is popping!  

Now onto the developments!  We've been doing some habitat creation here, starting with human habitat.  We needed outdoor eating habitat, so we built a classic picnic table!  We've been eating most every meal at it since its completion.   

Akiko sanding.  

Akiko's paint job.  We painted it before assembly to protect the wood at the joints.  

Assembly

The finished product!

We also built some Adirondack chairs.  In desiring some good outdoor hanging habitat, we were on the lookout for some chairs.  You see these plastic Adirondack chairs all over.  They're cheap, and tempting.  Wooden ones are harder to come by and expensive, so I thought I'd try building some.  I'm very happy with how they turned out.   I've been sitting in these chairs playing banjo, and I'm sitting in one right now writing this very post.  

Akiko painting the first chair

Akiko and Minnie trying them out.  We went with subtle colors as you can see.  

Learning to play my new birthday present in a homemade chair.  Not too bad.  

Picnic table and chairs are essential to the design of the property.  I have all sorts of big ideas about all pollinator habitats, fruit trees, annual vegetables, solar panels, and everything that we're going to have here in the future.  But it's important not to design ourselves out of the picture.  Some lawn space and hangout banjo space is important.  

The other major habitat I've been working on is for chickens.  Our friends Sara and Justin bought a house in Beacon in December.  Their house had a coop in the back yard.  They didn't want to raise chickens, so they offered it to us.  I disassembled it in April, moved it with the help of a neighbor, and it sat in the garage for a couple months.  What prevented me from erecting the coop right away was location consideration.  I had a few ideas:

My first instinct.  Coop is under a maple, but farther from the backdoor and really far from the vegetable patch.  

Coop is closer to the vegetable patches, and partially shaded. 

Similar to number 2, except oriented in a different direction.  

Farther away from the house, close to the empty lot next door (which probably won't be empty forever)

Finally I settled on number 3.  The idea is to give the chickens some shade, have the egg boxes fairly close to the back door, and have the hens in proximity to two annual vegetable patches.  The concept is called “Dueling Gardens”.  I read about it in a book by Harvey Ussery called “The Small Scale Poultry Flock”.  The idea is that you alternate planting between the two patches, and the chickens forage on the one that isn’t planted.  I really love this idea.  The chickens eat bugs, weed seeds, and leftover veggies.  They stir it up, add their manure, and are happy as can be.    It also gives the soil a period of rest and rejuvenation every other year.  It seems like a win win situation.  Another benefit of location #3 is the potential to collect some tree fall through off of the coop roof.  Rain that falls through a tree hasn't been studied much.  But apparently, the rain picks up all sorts of minerals and all sorts of other goodies as it falls through the tree.  It might be a good fertilizer to water with.  I plan to get a gutter and a rain barrel for the coop eventually  

I managed to put her back together!

I had so many scratches all over myself from that hardware cloth.  The design on the end is of two sliding doors.  One will lead to one veggie patch, and one to the other.  I rigged them with ropes and latches.  

I built the roosts out of some branches I trimmed off the maple to make room for the coop.  They use them.  

Predator proofing.  This wasn't the easiest job.  

I was able to go a foot down on this end because it was farthest from the tree.  

Around the rest I had to go flat against the ground because of all the tree roots.  

I put the sod back on top, although most of it didn't survive.  

By the time I had the coop reoriented, erected, and secured with 1/2 inch hardware cloth it was mid June, just days before my aforementioned trip to MN.  So I waited until I got back to seek out some hens.  Plus we had to the get the coop inspected by the city of Beacon, and I wanted to do that before getting the birds, so that I could make any necessary modifications with ease,  Happily, we passed the inspection without any problems.  

Via a post on the Beacon Hen Keepers Association Facebook page, I got connected with someone who was selling some Speckled Sussex hens that just started laying eggs.  Perfect!  I picked them up on the evening of June 30, and just like that we were chicken keepers!  

They were pretty afraid of me the first couple days.  But they’ve warmed up quite a bit to me, especially because I’m tossing them watermelon rinds every day (I love summer!).  They go nuts for them.  I spend the first few days fencing in the run, which will be the second vegetable patch.  I managed to get it up after a few days, and boy were they happy to get out and stretch and eat wild stuff.  Later I moved the strawberry patch and some perennial flowers out of the run so they wouldn’t get eaten.  The chickens immediately scattered the mulch that I had around those flowers.  They love some bare dirt for dust bathing.  

Their first night in their new home.  Pretty freaked out, as you can imagine.  

 Minnie and the hens are getting used to one another.  

The run / future annual garden bed fenced in.  

Hens in the run.  Digging up that mulch, finding stuff to eat.  

One permaculture concept is the idea of “stacking functions”.  That means seeing the multiple functions and benefits of a particular design element, and placing it so to maximize those benefits.  So here are some of the benefits of having a backyard flock of hens:

1.) Manure.  The person I bought the hens from said each one produces three cubic feet of manure a year.  Now that is a lot of shit.  This, if managed properly, is great for the soil.  I'm attempting a deep litter method of manure management.  Basically I add a lot of carbon rich material to the coop floor and eventually to the run.  As the chickens shit in it, I add more carbon material little by little and and eventually it becomes a nice compost to use on the garden.  The original vegetable patch has deep mulch on it already.  For the new patch, I'll let them work on the grass.  If it starts getting stinky in there I'll start adding some carbon material.  But I'll plan on sheet mulching the new bed (I think I'll do a better job) after harvesting everything we can out of the original patch and moving the hens onto it.  

2.) Weed eating.  Speaks for itself.

3.) Bug eating.  Chickens are supposed to eat a lot of harmful insects, including tics.  I’ve really enjoyed watching them chase the occasional flying insect.  

4.) Tilling.  Chickens are used to create new planting spaces.  Put them on a small patch of land, and they’ll scratch it all up, removing the vegetation, fluffing up the soil and adding some manure in the process.  

5.) Composting.  Chickens can speed up a pile by mixing it up for you, and eating kitchen scraps and turning them into manure.  Just today I came across some leaves a neighbor had set out by the curb.  Finally some brown material!  So I built a pile in the run inside a cardboard box without a bottom.  I’ll remove the box after the materials have broken down a bit.  If I didn’t have a box, it would probably still work, but I thought the chickens would spread it all out before it broke down.  Maybe they’ll just peck through the box too.  We’ll see.  

6.) Eggs.  Many hen keepers are only thinking of fresh eggs.  But the eggs are more of a bonus for us.  I’m thinking about all the above benefits before the eggs.  However, I’ve been enjoying them for sure, as have been many of my friends.  Eating eggs from your backyard is a good way of connecting to the local ecosystem.  The chickens are taking things that I don’t want to eat and don’t digest so well: worms, insects, weeds and their seeds, grass, etcetera, and converting them into a highly energy dense, nutritious, and delicious thing that I do enjoy eating.  I’m connecting to, and benefitting from, the existence of all those worms, insects, etcetera, in a way that I wasn’t before.  

7.) Warning.  If there’s an animal that wants to eat my garden veggies or the hens themselves, they will probably start squawking when it shows up.  I haven’t experienced this, but it’s something I’ve read about.  We’ll see.  They do get noisy if Minnie gets too interested in them, that's for sure!  

8.) Entertainment.  I’ve spent quite a lot of time just watching these hens do their thing in the run.  It’s fascinating.  Better than TV.  They pretty funny animals.  

Am I leaving anything out?  Can you think of any other functions of these chickens?  

There is a lot said about the environmental harm of eating animal foods.  However all of that is based on the industrial feed lot operation model.  Those are unquestionably the saddest, most polluting, most backward, sinful, awful, ridiculous systems ever.  Please do not buy that food.  Do not order it at restaurants.  Ever.  Please.  Those operations are the  opposite of a balanced ecosystem.  There the manure is pollution.  The shit that made our soils fertile is now polluting it!  How heartbreaking.  I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  Eating eggs out of your back yard is animal food intervention.  The two dozen eggs I've given away since my hens arrived are two dozen less that are potentially being purchased from an unbalanced, unethical food production operation.   

Now let's consider a natural balanced ecosystem.  You won't find a natural system in which manure is a pollution.  If you do, it's a temporary imbalance that will correct itself, unless it's human doings that caused the imbalance, in which case we might need to go in and fix it.   Harvey Ussery says, "Waste is not a concept that nature recognizes."  Everything is reused and recycled.  In nature, you won't find chickens crowded into a confined space with only two square feet of personal space each.   Can you imagine the damage they would do, and how they would starve?  In nature you find a population of birds that is supported by the available food, shelter, and predation.  Their population density is far from being a problem - it can't be until something, usually some kind of human related phenomenon, causes conditions for that population to explode.  We have done a lot of damage to the ecosystems of the earth.  If we were to suddenly disappear, some places would regenerate into a balanced ecosystem.  But some places would not.  In either place we can be a regenerating force right now.  With our daily habits and choices we can support natural, sustainable, regenerative systems.  We're trying to model our systems after nature, only tweaking them slightly one way or another for our benefit.  It's better that many of are here on this planet, because we need many of us to fix things.  Happily there is a growing movement of us, trying to do just that, which is very exciting.  

Got a little preachy there at the end.  Sorry.  I'm feeling better after writing this post.  I'm excited for what's to come in our yard and beyond.  Come on over and sit in some home made adirondack chairs and watch some happy hens work, and go home with some fresh eggs.  We have many to spare!