More projects complete

I finished the second raised bed for the garden on Sunday. I also dropped the posts for the hanging boxes. After I finished, dad came down and we seeded the back yard. We got a good rainfall that evening and now we have 4 or 5 days of sun, so hopefully we get some grass by the end of the week. I think I may need to water it, but luckily dad also brought me his old water softener tank to use as a rain barrel. I need to get it filled and up on a stand and then I need to get my gutter installed for the kitchen addition.

I decided to only go with 2 raised beds this year and add on to the garden later. This decision has mostly to do with money. It costs me about $30-$35 per bed for the lumber, not to mention the time that it takes to build and level the box. I like spending much of my free time with my family so I chose to be done with what I have. It should be more than enough to grow what we need for this year. After all is said and done, I have approx. 48 square feet of garden bed and I am planting the leafy vegetables in the hanging boxes. This year, from seed, I'm growing:

Roma Tomatoes
Heinz Canning Tomatoes
Cauliflower
Yellow Bell Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Yellow Banana Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Serano Chili Peppers
White Onions
Green Onions
Lettuce
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Brussel Sprouts
Yellow Wax Beans
Snow Peas
Cucumbers (Pickling)
and a few other things I can't remember right now.

We will also have the herb garden out front and Gena is planting a pumpkin patch in the front yard somewhere as well. We also bought a blueberry bush to try to grow in the backyard somewhere.

All in all, we are going to have a huge garden eventually and hopefully we can get to a point where we no longer go to the market for produce. That is the goal, knowing where your food comes from and being self-sufficient.

Been busy

Since we got back from our little vacation, I have been incredibly motivated. I saw a lot of things in San Francisco that gave me some really good ideas about sustainable living. We came back and I got really excited about getting outside and getting things done.

The first thing I got working on was the compost heap. I have been neglecting it lately and I realized that this kind of behaviour must end. I knew it would be in the way if I decided to expand that garden at a later date and I also knew that I wanted it out of the lawn when we tilled up the back yard. So I moved it. There are pictures of what it looked like before and what it looks like now in the album Stuff I Made

I also tore out the ugly shrub in the front of our house. We are planning to replace it with peonies and other perennial flowers. We also will be planting some herbs in the planter box and another flower garden in front of the porch. Along with this small improvement, we also just tilled up the entire back yard. I will post some better pictures when it isn't raining outside, but for now the pictures are in the Stuff I Fixed album.

I also recently found out that the pressure treated 1x6 boards and 4x4 posts that Home Depot stocks no longer contain arsenate (arsenic), which means I don't have to line my planter box with plastic! HOORAY for the EPA! We will be staining it and planting in it soon I hope.

New pictures will come as I get more things done.

Got another project done

Okay, so this doesn't exactly have to do with farming, but neither do a lot of the projects we will be completing this summer. I love this hi-fi and I have been looking forward to working on it since my grandpa gave it to me like 4 years ago. The speaker plate took me the longest since I could never find a good time to bore the holes I needed. It may be difficult to see exactly where everything is located in relationship to the actual cabinet. If I am able to, I will take some more pictures of the bottom to show exactly what I modified. In the meantime, I took a few shots of what I finished tonight and put them in a new album called Stuff I Fixed.

From Stuff I Fixed

From Stuff I Fixed

More Kombucha

I'm sure this is going to start getting repetitive, so I won't post about it for a while after this. I just want to add a quick update about where I am with this stuff. I just put up some new pictures. I got one almost perfect quart on my first try and then when I used my new scoby to make another quart it got mold and I had to ditch the whole thing. I ended up with one more good quart using black tea instead of green, so this time I got 2 quarts going with black.

From Food I Made

I think the reason I got mold in my last batch was because the tea I used wasn't an organic loose leaf variety. I think there was something in the tea or the bag itself that tainted my culture and grew the mold. The reason you cannot use earl grey or any other type of herbal tea is due to the oil and potential other contaminates. I can't be sure that it was the teabags that caused the problem, but I had no issues with the 2 quarts I made using pure organic loose leaf teas.

I am about to go get all the stuff ready for the garden right now. I have a lot of catch up to do to get a positive result this summer. Hopefully every year that the kids get bigger it will be easier to take care of these details early in the spring. I also have my plans drawn up for the garden beds and hopefully this week I can obtain the lumber I need to get them built.

Wish me luck as I have plenty of work to do in the coming weeks! I am definitely wishing myself luck.