Agricultural Learnings of Winter for Make Benefit Glorious Urban Homestead

My writing muse mostly deserted me for a while there.  But I feel a post on the PASA conference is owing, and I also recently attended a mini-seminar on potatoes.  So I figure I can summarize useful stuff I picked up in one go.  Here's a rundown of things good things that happened at the conference and things I've learned recently.

As usual, there were free seed packets to be had at the conference.  I got some from Seed Savers Exchange but also found to my chagrin that they were giving away some I had just ordered from them.  Johnny's, also as usual, had a free shipping coupon on offer as well as their nifty 14-month calendar, which will hold me till next year's conference.  Knowing Johnny's typically gave out this coupon, I managed to hold off ordering from them until after the conference.  There were also nice coupons and useful schwag such as pencils and pens from Organic Valley. Lots of good free noshy bits were available at various times too.  I bid on a few lovely things at the auction, but didn't win, so I came home having blown less money than I did last year.  New at the conference this year was an informal seed swap table.  I picked up some cilantro and echinacea seeds.  I'll try to remember to bring some of my own seed next year to give away.

I learned about a very promising technique for trellising tomatoes that involves pretty serious pruning, which I plan to try this year.  I know my track record is execrable when it comes to delivering posts I promise to write "soon."  So I'll just say that when it's time to put my tomatoes in the ground, I'll try to get a post or two together on this trellising technique.  I should say that I put my tomatoes starts in about ten days later than most gardeners in my area, around June 1st.  Then the trellising doesn't really start until the plants have grown for 3-4 weeks.  If you want to play along with this trellising method on the strength of my non-existent description of it, I can tell you it will require very sturdy and tall metal posts; one for every ten feet or so of row.  T-posts are preferable, but the very large U-posts can work too, and that's what I'll be using.  It also calls for aluminum wire, preferably 15-, 16-, or 17-gauge.  Twine is definitely not a viable alternative to the wire for this method.  And you'll need something to clip the plants to the wire.  Twisty ties can work, but the farmer recommended the reusable, cheap, and easy-to-use tomato clips from Johnny's.  She didn't say how many per plant, but I would think 10 per plant would be in the right neighborhood.

Okay, here are a couple of bite-sized tips I can pass along from the conference.  Those posts mentioned for the tomato trellising - they're not the easiest thing for one person to pound into the ground.  Particularly if that post is 7' tall and that person is an average woman.  There's a great tool that makes the job a lot easier.  This was specifically mentioned by this female farmer, and it so happens that I already have the tool and can back up her endorsement from my personal experience.  It's a post driver, and it's basically indestructible.  Two people can work together to use it, and that makes things even easier.  But I've gotten a 7' post into the ground by myself with this tool.  Well worth having if you place posts on a regular basis.  The second tip is how to get those posts out of the ground by yourself.  The technique is simple.  Fill a bucket full of water, and pour it all out right where the post goes into the soil.  Apparently this will instantly loosen the ground up enough to pull the post out easily.

I heard about the use of horsetail (Equisetum spp.) as a natural anti-fungal compost tea spray for a variety of garden plants.  It's supposed to prevent powdery mildew on squash plants, help tomatoes and potatoes resist blight, and help fruit trees resist fungal diseases as well.  I don't know how efficacious it is, but this is the sort of remedy that can't really do harm.  So I'm definitely willing to try it and see what happens.  I'm going to hope we don't have another blight year, but I always get powdery mildew on my zucchini plants, so I should be able to test this spray this year for sure.

I attended two talks by Michael Phillips, The Apple Grower.  Both of them were excellent and a bit overwhelming.  What I learned about fruit trees, their diseases, pests, and health, would be very difficult to summarize even briefly here.  I learned a lot though, and will be reading through his book as well as his website, very carefully.  He also has another book coming out later this year.  I realize that I haven't really paid much attention to my fruit trees, or taken all that good care of them.  The intensive devotion to his trees that Phillips practices, as a professional orchardist, is something I will probably never be able to approach.  But there are plenty of things I could put into practice that would likely help the overall health of the few fruit trees on our homestead.  I'll try to write about these things as I do them.  Certainly I'll experiment with using the chickens to help break pest cycles under our mature apple tree this year.  I put in a suggestion at the conference that PASA bring Phillips back for a full day track on fruit trees.  He obviously had a lot more to say than was possible in the time allotted to his talks.

Audio recordings are available of all workshops presented at the conference.  This is some consolation for the fact that I can attend only one workshop per time slot.  If only I could find a way to be in two places at once.  I left a list of the workshops I'd like to hear audio recordings of with a friend who was staying later than we did.  So I've got those to look forward to.  Sometimes a great presentation is only a mediocre audio recording, because all the visual is lost.  But usually I can get something out of them, and sometimes speakers will agree to email their power point presentations or handouts to interested folks.

I also came back from the conference with verbal permission to nag three people by email.  The first is a woman at Rodale who responded immediately and positively to my inquiry as to whether or not Rodale might be interested in hosting a scion wood exchange and workshop on how to graft fruit trees.  (Scion wood is a small branch taken from one fruit tree and grafted onto either bare rootstock or another fruit tree.)  The Rodale Experimental Farm is not terribly far from where I live, and it has large apple orchards.  A scion wood swap fits well with the sorts of things they like to promote.  And it looks like they will; I've already gotten an email back from her that says they'll try to put on something like this next year.  Awesome!  The second person is a livestock veterinarian with a passion for raising animals on pasture.  She's not in my immediate area, but has agreed to come to my tiny homestead when she's next in the neighborhood and consult with me about the feasibility of (some day) having a few miniature dairy goats here.  This is something I would love to do, but I think it would take 2-3 years of site preparation to work the way I would want it to work.  The third person is the woman who made the mind-blowing fermented ketchup which I sampled at last year's conference.  She agreed (again) to give out the recipe.  So I definitely intend, very politely, to nag her by email until she coughs it up.  My attempts to reproduce the recipe last year were a complete failure.  If she follows through, I'll post it here.

I guess I'm learning to maximize the schmooze potential of the conference.  It really is a seething wealth of walking expertise.   And there's a lot more to tap into than just the formally scheduled talks.

As for the potato class, I learned a few useful things there too.  For one thing, the majority of potato diseases mostly cause only cosmetic defects.  Hollow heart, and scab - these affect appearance, but not safety.  We can eat tubers affected by these diseases quite safely.  In fact, the instructor said that the potato has an awfully good track record as far as food safety is concerned.  Humans don't tend to eat potatoes raw, and our cooking methods for the tuber take care of pretty much any microorganism from the field.  This is great news for gardeners and homesteaders.  We don't produce for market, so it matters very little if our potatoes aren't picture perfect.

Seed potatoes have a "clock" that determines their physiological age, as opposed to their actual age.  The clock starts ticking when the parent plant dies back, or when the potato is harvested, whichever comes first.  Temperature determines how fast the clock moves.  Seed potatoes are ideally stored at slightly colder temperatures (34-36F/1-2C) than potatoes destined to be eaten (42-44F/5-7C).  The more warmth the potato experiences, the faster it ages.  The "younger" the seed potato, the fewer stalks the plant will send up, and the larger and fewer the tubers will be.  The "older" the seed potato, the more stalks the plant will send up and the smaller and more numerous the tubers will be.  Overall, the difference in total yield by weight is insignificant from an older to a younger seed potato.  There are several other differences in the way plants from young or old seed will behave, but here's the interesting application of this knowledge... The ideal seed potato weighs 2.25-2.5 oz. (64-71g).  You can cut larger potatoes down to use for seed, but it's better to use uncut potatoes if you can.  So if you want to deliberately grow potatoes to use as seed potatoes, it pays to use "older" seed potatoes for your planting.  If you want your potatoes just for eating, "younger" seed potatoes will give you fewer spuds to scrub per serving, and fewer small potatoes that might escape your notice during harvest.  Good to know, eh?

And here's another interesting thing I learned.  When potato varieties are developed, part of the process is to grow out new strains in test fields which have been deliberately infected with various potato diseases.  This is done to observe resistances to common potato diseases, so as to decide which new varieties might be commercially viable.  As an aside the instructor mentioned that test fields infected with potato scab virus universally clear the virus spontaneously after a few years, and thereafter it's difficult to reestablish the virus in that field.  This off hand comment captured my attention quite dramatically.  It has me thinking about soil biology, and how little we really grasp what's going on in there. I guess if you've got scab on your garden potatoes, you can just cut off the superficial blemishes and count on the disease going away on its own, eventually.  That would definitely work for me.

Well, that's all I got for today.  I'll try to be better about regular updates.

Headed for the Conference

I'm off to PASA's Farming for the Future conference in a few hours.  I have two hopes.  Firstly, that winter will give us just enough of a break to make it there and back again safely.  Secondly, that I learn plenty of interesting tidbits to share with all of you, and come home with the fuel-injected sense of motivation and excitement that the conference has provided for the past four years.  Honestly, I don't know how I'd get through the impending spring busy season without this incredible boost.  It's worth every penny of the registration fee.  I'm really looking forward to the fun!

Natural -and Homemade- Rooting Hormone

 Originally uploaded by peter-rabbit

Hey!  This is important!  I just learned that it's really easy to make a DIY version of rooting hormone solution.  Rooting hormone is used when gardeners and orchardists want to propagate plants from cuttings.  I've never used it, mostly because I've never really wanted or needed to grow plants this way.  Not to mention I'm suspicious of most chemical things sold for use with plants.  But cuttings are one of the best ways to obtain - or give - plants cheaply.  Sometimes it's the best way from a genetic standpoint too, since not all plants produce offspring which share the desirable qualities of the parent plant.  Obviously, I'm no expert at plant propagation by cuttings.  I'm pretty sure that some plants do a lot better than others with this method though, and I know cuttings are made from various parts of different plants (stem, leaf, etc.)  So do a little research before relying on cuttings and rooting hormone for any critical propagation.

So...here's all it takes to make your own rooting hormone dip.  Find a healthy, vigorous willow tree and take several cuttings of its branches with plenty of fresh green leaves on them.  Any variety of willow will work.  Where I live, willows leaf out just ahead of almost any other tree in the spring, so if you don't have a willow tree of your own, keep your eyes open in spring to locate some in the wild or in parks.  Look near running water or in swampy areas.  Spring is a good time to propagate things from cuttings too, so it seems fortuitous that willows are conspicuous at this time.  Strip a small pile of leaves from the willow branches and chop them up finely as you would a culinary herb.  Including some of the very soft willow branches in with the leaves is fine.  You should have 2 cups (~ 0.5 liter) of well chopped willow material.  Put it in a large non-reactive container, such as a stoneware bowl.  Cover with 1 gallon (~ 3.8 liters) of boiling water and let it steep overnight, up to 24 hours.  If you can't boil water, room temperature water will do, but let it steep for a full 24 hours.

That's your rooting hormone dip, ready to use as you would any commercial rooting dip.  After it has steeped you can store it, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for up to two months apparently.  But if you have easy access to willows, it's probably best to make up a fresh batch each time you want to propagate from cuttings.  This willow rooting solution has the added benefit of retarding fungal, bacterial, and viral infections in the cutting.  So you can soak your stems in the willow solution immediately after cutting them if you need to get your pots and soil ready.  Pretty nifty, I'd say, for a product that's free for a pleasant hour or so of effort.

Being able to make your own rooting hormone dip is a great tool for permaculturists, frugal gardeners, and doomers thrivalists alike.  So get out there and get yourself some cuttings, and share some with friends and neighbors!

Other news: honey bee arrival has been delayed by yet another week.  Came home yesterday with fig trees and will get them into their large containers within a few days. Post coming on the figgy details.

Dispatches from the Curing Front

I spent yesterday in a kitchen with three farmers and several hundred pounds of pork and beef. We worked on curing pork bellies, fatback, and preparing sausages in real casings. We also regularly sampled finished specimens of lomo (Spanish, cured pork tenderloin), pepperoni, basturma (Lebanese, cured beef), bresaola (Italian, loin cured with red wine), and several other delicacies. As I had no meat of my own to contribute, I brought along a dish of pork organ paprikash, and some of my homegrown potatoes for lunch.

It was hard work, but it was also fun. I personally prepared about 45 pounds of bacon, 30 pounds of tesa, and about 15 pounds of salo, Ukrainian cured fatback. (The picture above shows a bus tub with three of the whole pork bellies I prepared. The liquid in the tub isn't blood; it's maple syrup.) The simple repetition of the steps gives me a reassuring sense of familiarity with the process. I came home with six pork jowls from pasture-raised hogs to cure at home. I'm very glad of this as I really miss having home-cured guanciale on hand in my larder. I will either pay for the jowls or give some of them back to the farmer for payment. These jowls are much, much leaner and meatier than the two I previously cured, but I look forward to seeing how they turn out. I plan to start them curing today.

The batch of lardo I started at home has taken a detour. As soon as I took them out of the cure and hung them up in our root cellar to dry down, we had a heavy, multi-day rainstorm. The humidity in the root cellar got as high as 90%, and the pieces of lardo were all wet to the touch. I panicked and decided to get them out of the damp and add a little more preservation to the mix. I smoked all of them. Smoke is itself a preservative, and has the nice side benefit of adding a flavor I love. So that batch of fatback is no longer really lardo; I have no idea what to call it. It's drying down now in the refrigerator, though I could just as well put it back in the root cellar. I've used bits of it for cooking so far, and it gives a really lovely flavor to dishes. I may start over with another batch of lardo.

I also learned yesterday that I probably could have just let the lardo go in the high humidity brought on by the storm. As long as the temperature stayed cool, the temporarily excessive humidity probably wouldn't have been a problem. I should be able to use the root cellar for drying cured meats year-round so long as the temperature stays below 60 F (15 C). Since the root cellar is on the northwest corner of our home and mostly below grade, I think there's a fair chance it will remain cool enough all through the summer. Humidity of 70-75% is considered ideal for hanging cured meats, but higher levels are not problematic unless they persist for a long time or are accompanied by high temperatures. In the case of dried sausages, even higher humidity is desirable during hanging, since low humidity results in case hardening, a condition in which the outer surface of the sausage dries so quickly and thoroughly that it becomes an impermeable barrier to the moisture in the center of the sausage. In that case the center stays very soft. Contrasted with the hard outer surface, this results in a sausage that is ruined so far as texture is concerned.


Most of all, what I took away from both yesterday's cure-fest and my own fumbling experiments with home-curing is that this is really a very easy method of food preservation. Cavemen did it; there's just very little that can go awry with a salt cure. It makes no sense that curing meat is regarded as such a dangerous and arcane practice. This is a revelation to me; I was as much under the impression that meat needs to be handled with a level of caution approaching paranoia as anyone else in American society. But I now think that if you're beginning with meat that has been cleanly raised, slaughtered, and butchered, (in other words, no industrial meat) you'd be hard pressed to go wrong. It's ridiculously easy and there's hardly anything to it, beyond a measure of hygiene and common sense.

If you live where humidity is reasonably high and temperatures reasonably low for at least part of the year (or if you can arrange those conditions), and if you can get locally produced meat that hasn't gone through an industrial meat processing plant, you could safely cure meats at home. Very little equipment is needed for a beginner who just wants to cure whole cuts of meat, especially if you're working with small quantities. A scale is helpful, but not absolutely necessary. If you want to make sausage, the equipment needs go up, as does the need for stricter sanitary controls. With whole cuts of meat, there are far fewer opportunities for contamination. All you need is a supply of salt, perhaps some sugar, spices or herbs, a container for the curing, and a suitable place for hanging the meat to dry. You can easily improvise equipment for the hanging, either skewers, or butcher's twine, or a saved net bag that onions are sold in. It certainly helped my confidence to begin curing during the winter months when outside air temperatures pretty well precluded spoilage. But so long as you have an area that remains cool enough, you can do it anytime of year.

If you want to learn about home-curing through reading, there are many books out there. I got a few recommendations yesterday which I'll be requesting through my local library. The few books I have personally read and can recommend are:

The River Cottage Meat Book
Cooking by Hand
Home Sausage Making

As I have the chance to read more titles on charcuterie, I may update this list of recommended titles. In the meantime, explore and experiment! There's a whole world of home-cured deliciousness out there!

Bits of News

Once again, I have snippets of news to share, but no one item meriting a post of its own.

I'm attending a three-session class on soils given by the Extension Office in my area. Last night was the second class meeting. I'm learning some interesting things. I was surprised to learn, for instance, that the county I live in has 183 different soil types as defined by the US Soil Survey, a higher number than any other county in Pennsylvania. That's a lot of diversity! I also learned that visiting the website of the Soil Survey will give you a fairly detailed report of the attributes of soils in nearly any part of the US, for free. (Even though it's got a "shopping cart" - it's really free.) You can look up parcels by address or by navigating to them by a map. I also learned about Sudax, a cover crop I'd never even heard of. It's some sort of cross between varieties of Sudan grass, and it loves heat. The idea is to mow it several times during the season, so that it sloughs off parts of its extensive root system into the soil, adding organic matter each time. If it's not mowed, it gets tall and almost woody, like corn (maize). We get a free soil test with the class enrollment. Just as soon as the snow cover melts away from the garden, I'll get in there for some samples.

I've started some seedlings indoors. Let me tell you, this is a challenging endeavor with two young cats in the house. I've already chucked a couple of cell packs of tatsoi in the cold frame, figuring they had even odds on surviving the cold nights versus the depredations of two rampaging young felines.

It's that tantalizing time of year when the air is full of promises of spring. Birdsong has returned, the bulb flowers are pushing up leaves, and the dawn is coming earlier each day. As much work as spring is, it's stunningly beautiful, and well worth the wait, in my part of the world.

I've begun my second experiment with home curing. Really, I think I've caught some sort of cured pork bug - the ease and the success of the guanciale drives me to do more. I bought ten pounds of fat back from a grass-based farmer in my area, and I started a batch of lardo last Friday. That's pretty much what it sounds like: cured pork fat. Though in some circles, the euphemism "white prosciutto" is used. Lardo is not rendered fat, despite the similarity with the English word "lard." Lardo di Colonnata is a centuries old traditional product, which was eaten like a lunch meat by quarry workers at the source of Italy's finest marble. In fact, lardo di Colonnata is traditionally salted down in rough hewn marble troughs. Sadly, all our rough hewn marble troughs were spoken for. My lardo is progressing nicely in a ceramic crock pot. I went heavy on the seasonings, with fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, sliced garlic, black pepper, and dried bay leaves. It smells really good. In a few more days I'll remove it from the curing mix and find somewhere to hang it to dry down. I plan to use it in place of cooking oil for certain dishes, especially pastas. As a cooking medium, it will have the benefit of adding a great deal of flavor. It'll probably also grace the occasional homemade pizza. If the lardo works out well, I may try salo next, which is a more simply spiced Ukrainian/Hungarian version of lardo. I'll keep you posted.

Chicken Breeds

We first added a tiny flock of backyard chickens to our mini-homestead in spring of 2008. We really enjoy having them, and they've been easy to manage. I'm only a slightly-advanced-beginner chicken keeper. So I'm curious about the differences between various laying breeds. Having had only two breeds, we just don't know all that much about the range of chicken personality traits. In fact we were surprised that there were any significant differences in behavior from breed to breed. Don't know why this is so. It doesn't surprise me at all to see behavioral or personality traits differ between, say, German shepherds and Jack Russell terriers.

By chance we started with Red Star hens, switched briefly to White Marans, and are now back to Red Stars. I feel lucky to have started with the breed we did, since it seems to me now that Red Stars are ideal for our situation. We could easily have been less lucky; our feelings and decisions about keeping chickens could have turned out very differently had we started with a different breed. So I would caution anyone who has never kept chickens before, especially those with limited space and in close proximity to neighbors, to research the breed options carefully before getting your birds.

I'd like to hear from others on the traits of other breeds. First though, descriptions of what I've observed in the hens of the two breeds I "know"...

Originally uploaded by -Mandie-

Red Star - An extremely quiet breed. The only noise they make above normal, very muted, contented or mildly excited burbling noises are when they are truly alarmed by something, or when actually laying an egg. They are very docile and not highly strung, meaning they calm down quickly after an alarming event. They eat like vacuum cleaners however. Someone described them to me as the "Labrador retrievers" of the chicken world. This is accurate in my observation. However, they are also very unfussy eaters once they become accustomed to the idea that what I throw in their pen is generally a treat. They readily eat many weeds and kitchen scraps, as well as sub-par produce and many garden pest insects. This means their eggs have fantastic coloration (in the yolks) and nutrition. They are excellent layers even after two years of age. A great choice for those with little space and neighbors close by.

White Marans - A heritage dual-purpose breed. These are larger birds than the Red Stars and far more vocal. They will loudly protest captivity as soon as the sun is up (sometimes before it's even properly up), which can be problematic in the summer. They also seem to have "fits" of nervousness over nothing in particular which spreads from one bird to the next and leads to loud alarmed squawking of the entire flock which can go on for 15 minutes or more. They are fussy eaters with little interest in several common garden crops including lettuce greens and tomatoes. They did enjoy summer squash and Japanese beetles however. As is to be expected from a dual-purpose breed, they are not great layers even in their first year of laying. The eggs they do lay are absolutely gorgeous however, speaking here of the dark coloration and occasional speckling of the shells. In general, while I support heritage breeds, this one is not a great choice for those in suburban or densely populated areas as their noise could easily annoy neighbors. Also not a great choice for homesteaders or those trying to maximize home economy by supplementing purchased feed from the homestead's own resources. For those without nearby neighbors who want one breed to do two things (meat and eggs) moderately well, this breed may be of use.

Do you keep chickens? What can you say about the characteristics of the breeds you know? If you keep either Red Stars or White Marans, do your observations differ from mine?

One Dove, Four Finches, Fat Hen

These are the things my garden showed me yesterday. The songbirds showed up as I was making my early morning inspection. Just after moving and feeding the girls, the garden beckons. Each day there is something new now, in this season of rampant growth. More seeds sprouting, seedlings getting taller, butterflies showing up, tender crops already under assault from hungry insects. The finches are merry, brassy little wights. They flit and twitter, and have a go at each other now and then. They like to creep around the mounds I've built up for the squash and melons, just as much as they enjoy the view from the top of my bean poles. They don't mind me as I move slowly around the outside of the garden. Not so the dove; she's a nervous, flighty thing, cautious and easily spooked.

Even though my first response is anxiety that these birds might pluck one of my coddled seedlings from the ground, I like seeing them in my garden. My second and more reasoned thought is that they are allies who are searching out insects on which to break their fast. I take their presence as a sign of health in my yard. If there were no life in my garden soil, there would be nothing to interest these birds. But I see the life there, centipedes, salamanders, worms, spiders, and bugs, each time I open the soil to place a seedling. I see the mushrooms fruiting from last year's hay mulch, and I take it as encouragement that a diverse ecosystem occupies my little patch of earth. As improbable as it may sound, this is deeply important to me.

I had a Duh! moment yesterday afternoon. I've been working so hard at all the tasks that need doing that a nap was inevitable. I'd been telling myself too that I should find a little time to peruse the weed book I got at weed school back in February. Weeds of the Northeast is a heavy volume with detailed pictures and descriptions of all the common weeds of the northeastern US. I've never been very good at identifying weeds, and I figured there was a decent chance that at least a few of the things I've regarded as weeds out in my yard were actually useful plants.

As my eyelids grew heavy, I turned to the page on lambsquarters, also known as fat hen. There on the page was one of the most common and prolific weeds in my garden. I stuck a bookmark in the page and drifted off for a solid snooze. I awoke groggy and staggered out to the garden and the hens, with the book in tow. Sure enough, there was the weed, which matched right up with the picture in the book. The real test, of course, was to see if the hens really would eat this stuff. I'd given them quite a lot of mustard greens right before my nap. But I tossed in some fat hen, and watched delightedly as they took right to it.


I didn't know whether to feel triumphant or chagrined. It's great that I now have another free green to give the girls, and I'll be especially thrilled if fat hen lives up to its name. Even we could eat this leafy plant if we chose to. On the other hand, I can't tell you how many of these plants I ripped out of the ground over the last few years. It's good to be relieved of my ignorance. Another instance of finding the value right under my nose. I'm going to have to devote some more time to reading that book.

What I Learned from Earth Hour

Did you turn off your lights last night? Without much planning or fanfare, we decided to participate in Earth Hour. We started a little early, around 8 pm. We were both tired from working in the yard, and content after a dinner of homemade pizza. I had some good escapist fiction that beckoned. Fortunately, we happen to have two oil lamps. So we took one apiece and settled in for a good read.

I have to say that as happy as I am that we could get around our house and function with non-electrical light, oil lamps aren't things you really want to read by, unless you've got a lot of them. Normally we use these things as supplemental light on the table when we want to have a celebratory meal. I did find that we could get more light by really cranking up the wicks. But that just meant we were consuming both wicks and oil at a faster rate. My eyes did adjust to the dim light, but I still think the eyestrain from reading wouldn't be a great idea over the long run. And I can't imagine my life without a good deal of reading.

Some of the blogs I read that deal with preparing for life after peak oil, or the next great depression, or political collapse strongly suggest turning off the electricity at the junction box for a weekend or a week, just to see how well you can function without it, and to see in what areas you'd like to be better prepared or equipped. I've never done this. But having just turned off the lights for an hour and a half last night, I can see that some sort of light other than oil lamps would sure be nice, if it came to that. Perhaps solar lanterns, or some hand-cranked battery powered lighting. Reading by oil lamps would probably ruin my eyesight sooner rather than later. It took less than an hour with the lights turned off to learn this.

Solar lanterns on the wish list. What did you learn during Earth Hour?

Meat Rabbits on Pasture

Over the weekend I attended a workshop on income opportunities in agriculture. One of the speakers was Daniel Salatin of Polyface Farms. The son of Joel Salatin, Daniel began raising meat rabbits twenty years ago when he was only seven years old. So he knew quite a bit about producing rabbits on pasture. This is a topic I'm very interested in. Since we eat meat and want both to be frugal and to reduce our carbon footprint, it makes sense to produce some of our own meat ourselves. Given our small residential property, rabbits seem to be one of the best possibilities.

I'm going to share what I learned from Daniel Salatin's presentation. WARNING: If raising animals for slaughter and consumption bothers you, you may want to skip this post.

Daniel raises rabbits that he has more or less bred himself over the last two decades. They are mostly a cross between the New Zealand White and California breeds, though he also once had a Dutch buck that contributed to the gene pool. His current breeding stock show coloration typical of none of these breeds. He said that he selectively bred for those animals that did well for him on their Virginia farm. It so happened that the ones who did well showed recessive traits in coloration. But he had no preference at all in their coloration when he made breeding decisions. The rabbits have tawny-golden fur with slightly darker coloration on their foreheads. Very attractive rabbits.

When the does are ready to give birth they are removed from pasture and kept in indoor cages. The kits and mother doe are kept indoors together for five weeks after birth. At five weeks, the doe goes back on to pasture, and the kits are kept indoors alone for one more week. Daniel said that the 5-7 week age is when the kits are most susceptible to coccidiosis. So although he must transition them to pasture very soon, he removed the mother at that point so as not to introduce two stresses (separation from mother, and change of scenery/feeding) simultaneously. After a week alone the litter is put together in a pen on grass.

The rabbit pens used at Polyface Farms are 3'x8' and about 2' high. They are designed hold 10 rabbits at a time, but usually hold one litter each. The frame is constructed from 2x2's with chickenwire siding. The roof is made from corrugated aluminum roofing, which is admittedly expensive but extremely durable, and can be re-used for decades. The bottom of the pen has long thin wooden slats running the 8' length of the pen with a reinforcing cross bar on top of the slats in the middle of the pen. When asked, Daniel claimed the slats are set about 1.5"-2" apart, although they looked more widely spaced than that to me, based on the pictures he showed. I would have guessed they were about 3" apart. But I'll go with the stated spacing when we construct our pens.

The critical aspect of the slats is that they be arranged parallel to the long sides of the pen, and that the pen always be moved in the direction of the slats. Rabbits will feed on grasses and other greens, but only if the tips of the plants are pointing upwards. They like to nibble from the tips down towards the roots. If the stalks are bent downwards by the slats or anything else, the rabbits will ignore the greenery and only eat whatever other feed is provided.

These pens get moved at least once per day, and often more frequently than that. As a rule of thumb, Daniel recommended that the rotation period for the pens be a full year, although he said they have had no problem at Polyface when using rotations as short as 6 months. In other words, he recommends that the rabbit pen not be put on the same piece of pasture more frequently than once every 12 months. Even for a small operation, that's a significant space requirement.

Pasture can supply 25-40% of the rabbits' dietary needs. They will eat clover and other high protein greens, but actually prefer plants that Daniel Salatin referred to as "stemmy" or scrubby. He specifically mentioned beet greens, comfrey and other plants with developed stalks, including green rye and winter wheat. He also said that rabbits will do very well over the winter months if they are provided with root crops for their consumption: carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, etc. The will eat hay in the winter months if nothing else is available. His standard purchased feed for rabbits is non-medicated alfalfa pellets.

The Salatins have never seen any evidence of either tapeworms or coccidiosis in their rabbits. They have periodically sent tissue samples for testing, which has never revealed either disease in their stocks. Coccidiosis would most readily show up as white spots on the liver of the animal. They do not and have never used any prophylactic antibiotics or other preventative medications on their rabbits. According to Daniel Salatin, even if a rabbit did have coccidiosis, the meat would still be safe for humans to eat, since the disease is species specific. But obviously such an animal would not be healthy, and he would not sell any animal he knew to be infected. (NB: Accuracy of this information is disputed. Please see the comment section for another perspective on coccidiosis.)

Rabbits are slaughtered on Polyface Farms at 12 weeks of age and about 4-5 lbs live weight. They dress out at about 3 pounds each. The Salatins adhere to a "Levitical" slaughtering practice that calls for the rabbits to first be stunned and then bled to death. After twenty years of practice, it takes Daniel less than three minutes to dress a rabbit. This work is done outside with buckets to collect the blood, with the rabbits actually hung upside down from a clothes line to bleed out.

Although the rabbits he raises have attractive pelts, he does not sell them or use them for any purpose. He said there's very little demand for rabbit pelts and what market there is prefers white fur. He allowed that a cottage industry could likely find some use for cured pelts, but with his other family and farm responsibilities, he has not had time to develop any such project. I'll bet some very warm hats with ear flaps could be made from rabbit pelts. He did show a photo of some of the farm cats dining al fresco on the organs.

I spoke briefly with Daniel's wife, Sheri, and she said that they have far more demand for rabbit meat than they can meet. She said if they had them, they could sell 300 rabbits per week! No doubt such demand came about through the Salatins developing their own market and through the cache of the Polyface Farms name. I didn't get this down in my notes, but I believe they said they sell their rabbits whole for $4.50 per pound.

I also asked her if they ever sell live rabbits as breeding stock. She said that they did, and that the price depended on the age/size of the live rabbits at the time of sale. Polyface Farms doesn't ship any of their products, so if you're interested in their rabbits for breeding stock, you would need to pick them up on the farm yourself. I do wonder though whether they might be persuaded to deliver live rabbits with one of their regularly scheduled deliveries to Washington DC, Maryland, or Virginia.

I found a great blog written by a Polyface Farms apprentice. Check out his posts about their rabbit operation, including pictures of just about everything I've mentioned here, if you'd like to learn more. But if my descriptions of the slaughtering bothered you, trust me, you don't want to see these pictures.

Based on what I learned at this workshop, meat rabbits seem largely doable for us. The biggest concerns I have are that adding rabbits on top of our laying hens would put us over the zoning limits for "outdoor pets" in our suburban area. Since we only have 2/3 of an acre altogether, and much of that is devoted to our house, garage, and garden, we also might run into space limitations in our backyard if we try to avoid placing the rabbits on any patch of grass more than once per year, especially if we run multiple pens to keep does, a buck, and litters separate. And then there's the issue of where we would keep the rabbits over the winter months. I think we could manage the slaughter and dressing of the animals once we got over that hump.

I hope some of you found this write-up useful. I think I've included everything I learned, so I don't know what else I could add. But if you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer them. Are any of you thinking of raising meat rabbits in the near future?

Related post:
Going Mobile with a Backyard Flock

A Chilly Classroom

I'm off this afternoon to take a hands-on class on pruning fruit and nut trees, courtesy of the county Agricultural Extension Office. The cost? Eight dollars. This is great since the guy who said he was willing to barter some of my bread for the pruning of our old apple tree has never followed up. For $8 I can learn how to maintain the tree myself.

It's an outdoor class of course, and our temperature should peak just below freezing today. Add to that a stiff 20 mph wind, and this will be a test of my fortitude. And my long underwear. Good thing my sweetie got me some lovely fleece-lined leather work gloves for Christmas last year. (Yes, they've already seen some service.) What a great present!

If you live in the US and have any interest in gardening related topics, you should get to know your county's Agricultural Extension Office. There are a lot of resources (such as the Master Gardeners) for your immediate area under that roof, and your tax dollars are supporting it. In many areas they offer classes such as the one I'll be attending today. My county offered a free class on composting last year, with a free compost bin given away to each attendee. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend. Maybe they'll offer it again this year; I wouldn't mind a free extra compost bin. Our county's Extension Office also offers bare root tree and fruit seedling sales each spring. This year I'm getting four blueberry bushes (two each of two different varieties) for $32, with no delivery charge since I'm picking them up myself. Hard to beat that.

Check your local Extension Office out. You might be delighted at the resources and values you find!

Things I Learned at the Conference

I'm back from the PASA conference, and feeling very happy to be home. My cat is delighted about our return too, and has been sucking up to us shamelessly since last night. I learned a lot, but being away from home takes it out of me. I missed my bed, our well water, easy control over my own diet and meal times, and hanging out in my comfy pants as long as I wish in the mornings. Home is best.

But the conference was great. I learned a lot, and felt enormously encouraged by the energy generated by 2000 other gardeners, homesteaders, sustainable farmers, ethical seed vendors, and concerned eaters. There was a palpable buzz to the assembly; I could just feel the exchange of information and ideas happening among the members during breaks between sessions. My husband attended an IPM (integrated pest management) workshop and has returned home particularly fired up about planting things to provide habitat and food for pollinating and predatory insects. There was a speech by a local level politician who seemed to get it on issues of farmland preservation and government incentives for sustainable farming practices and small scale sustainable energy production. Raj Patel gave a good keynote address, and I picked up coupons for organic foods and free shipping from Johnny's Seeds that will probably save me more than $50. We bought three sustainably produced Pennsylvania cheeses at the cheese tasting put on by PASA member farms.

The conference furthered my progress on two of my goals for 2009. I happened to meet the woman who coordinates the Master Gardener Program for our county. She gave me the skinny on when the program will start up, when the classes will meet, and how the pre-test works in terms of selecting participants. (It doesn't; it's only a tracking metric for student progress.) It was nice to get a chance to schmooze her. And I got containers of compost worms from two different members, in exchange for some of my homemade bread. Settling the worms into their new home is on the agenda for this afternoon.

Here's a representative sample of random information I picked up at the conference. Almost half of these things were learned outside of a formal session or workshop. Many of them came from networking with other members in casual conversation.

There is no inspection of and no regulation over the sale of rabbit meat in the state of Pennsylvania.

It took Joel Salatin (the "high priest of pasture" at Polyface Farm) quite a while to figure out how to raise meat rabbits on grass, but apparently he did it, recently. No, I don't have the details just yet, but I'm working on that. (Update: follow the link for the details.)

Pretty much nothing will grow with less than 10 hours of daylight. At my latitude that means no growth from November 11th to February 1st. No wonder my hayframe arugula has gone nowhere these past few months. (Run the calculations for your own latitude here. You can get your coordinates off google maps, by the way.)

Many weed seeds require a light flash to germinate, which puts the old-timer practice of tilling the fields or planting at night into a different perspective.

We're probably best off cutting down that young white pine tree in our back yard if we want to maximize our edible landscaping. Not even the blueberries (which can tolerate soil pH as low as 4.5) will do well planted as close to it as our space constraints will require.

Celery is a good crop to grow in a persistent damp spot, if you have one in your yard.

When trying to eradicate a well established but unwanted plant, cut it to the ground when the plant has set buds but not yet bloomed. The energy stored in the roots will be lowest at that point, though really tenacious plants may still require a few rounds of cutting.

"Primocane" refers to the new growth canes on berry plants which form leaves but do not fruit in their first year. "Floricanes" are canes in their second year of growth which bud and set fruit. A few blackberry (and possibly raspberry) varieties have recently been developed in which the primocanes manage to set fruit.

In favorable conditions, it will take about 15 years to produce tree canopy over a denuded stream bed in Pennsylvania. The forested border around waterways should be at least 50 feet on either side, and 100 feet when the sides are steeply sloped.

You can identify blackberry canes damaged by frost by scraping the skin of the cane. Undamaged canes will show a bright green layer around a bright white core, even in winter. Damaged canes will reveal a brownish green coloration.

CR Lawn (of Fedco Seeds) is a hoot, and wields a respectable vocabulary. He can toss off the word "chary" in extemporaneous conversation and use it correctly. He can also give a cogent presentation without Powerpoint, and he can handle lots of questions. Among his competitor seed vendors he praises Southern Exposure, Turtle Tree, High Mowing, Johnny's, Territorial, and Baker Creek.

Farms that follow organic practices and use compost often have soils with an excess of phosphorus. The longer organic practices have been in place, the higher the chance of this imbalance occurring.

Timberleaf Soil Testing provides soil tests better geared to the backyard gardener than does Penn State Extension.

Sunflowers are a great asset in a garden for attracting bees and other pollinators, but they have significant allelopathic properties, and should be planted in the same part of the garden every year so that they do not retard the growth of other crops. I've had them on the north edge of my garden, and planned to keep them there. Still, it's good to know why my plan was a good one.

It's time to give John Jeavons' writings on bio-intensive gardening a fair shake, even if I don't plan to pursue this method. Jeavons alleges that rutabaga, parsnip, and leeks can all produce more calories, acre per acre, than potatoes.

Verticillium wilt, a fungal disease of the tomato and its solanaceae relatives, can be combated by planting fava beans in the same bed, chopping the bean plants into bits, and working the residue into the soil. Severe infestations of the fungus may require several years of this treatment. Any tomato plant with this disease must be destroyed rather than composting it, or the disease will spread with the compost.

Though utility companies are required by Pennsylvania law to "buy" electricity generated by alternative energy installations at private residences, they are not required to pay the homeowner anything, only to reduce the electricity bill for the residence to $0. Thus, it is important to know our true electrical needs when sizing a solar or wind installation, as there is no financial incentive for producing more than we need.

There is a company called Cold Brand that produces sunflower oil in New Jersey from sunflowers grown in Pennsylvania. I can't find any further details on availability though. It would be nice to know more so that I could source cooking oil from relatively nearby.

In principle, it's possible to transplant fully mature asparagus plants during their fall/winter dormancy period.

Here's a list of the books we heard about at the conference that we're going to be requesting through inter-library loan:

Our Next Frontier: A Personal Guide for Tomorrow's Lifestyle, Robert Rodale
Photovoltaics: Design and Installation Manual, by Solar Energy International
The Winter Harvest Handbook, and The New Organic Grower, by Eliot Coleman
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits, by John Jeavons
Biological Control of Insects and Mites, by Daniel Mahr

And here are some few pictures from the conference.

Weed School. We were given taxonomic keys and magnifying loops, and asked to identify these twenty invasive weedy plants common to Pennsylvania.

In the second half of the day, we had a demonstration of how several different tractors and tillers can be used for weed control.

The PASA Benefit Auction. There were some lovely items donated by sponsors and members to raise money for PASA. This corner cupboard, salvaged from an old farmhouse caught my eye, though we have no room for it. And the basket of handspun yarn looked beautiful as well. But I know my habits well enough that I couldn't justify bidding on knitting supplies.

The only auction item I actually wanted was a small hod basket from Johnny's Seeds, paired with a log inoculated with shiitake plug spawn. I coveted the coated wire basket, which would be ideal for harvesting potatoes. A gentle shake, and much of the soil clinging to the spuds would fall right through. Other vegetables could be hosed down, right in the hod basket. This was a "bag" auction, which meant we couldn't bid on it, but instead had to buy raffle tickets and take our chances with everyone else who wanted it. I put all $10 worth of my tickets in that bag, but didn't win. I may succumb to temptation and add a hod basket to my forthcoming order for row covers from Johnny's, taking advantage of that free shipping.

In general, it was a nice feeling to wander among lovely products and be able to admire them without feeling any tug to acquire them. The craftsmanship was often amazing, but these items aren't needed in my life.

On the other hand, we felt good about supporting Pennsylvania dairy farmers with cold hard cash.

Pennsylvania cheeses. Wallaby, a Monterey Jack type from Keswick Creamery, Fat Cat, a "blue-less blue" from Birchrun Hills, and Mountain Valley Sharp Cheddar from Goot Essa , a co-operative of Amish dairy producers.

All in all, it was a great four days of meeting interesting people and learning. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, and plenty of contacts and resources to follow up with. Should be a good year for the garden.

Cheap Thrills

Part of frugality is learning to adapt to the opportunities and the resources all around you. There are various advantages and disadvantages available to rural, suburban, and urban dwellers, and to people of every age range. As someone living on the rural/suburban fringe, nature, or something quite like it, is one of the resources available to me. I can forage for wild greens and berries, and many friends and neighbors have sufficient space for fruit trees from which they may or may not harvest. There's enough wild game in my area that we could substantially supplement our diet with venison and rabbit if we chose to hunt.


But nature offers more than just the chance to feed myself cheaply. The natural world is an ongoing education too. We don't have children, but boy could we come up with some homeschooling lessons if we did. This lovely piece of insect architecture materialized on a branch directly over our driveway this summer. That's a bald-faced hornet's nest.

Bald-faced hornets are actually misnamed. They're really a species of North American wasp with a range that covers most of the US and parts of Canada. The salient facts to me though are that these creatures are aggressive defenders of their nests, and they can sting repeatedly (often on the face) without losing their stinger. It sure made us nervous for about five minutes. Then we reminded ourselves that the bald-faced hornets were busy - very busy, in fact - minding their own business, and so long as we did the same, our paths would never cross. We left them to it.

Then in mid-October, we had a large vehicle pull into our driveway. With alarm I watched it plow right into the branch holding that nest. I waited to see whether an angry swarm of hornets would emerge to unleash hot vengeance on anyone nearby. Fortunately, mercifully, the hive had departed. We picked up the fallen nest and brought it to the porch.

Eventually, after admiring the whole nest for several weeks, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to cut it open and have a look inside. All my attempts to photograph it have been stymied by the infinite gradations of gray that are present in the fabric of the nest. Here's the best photo I was able to take.


This sort of construction just amazes me. I studied the layers and details of this hornet's nest for about an hour after I cut it open. I still occasionally look over it in amazement. I feel really lucky to have this sort of entertainment and education available to me at absolutely no cost. True, I don't know the scientific names of the materials and different parts, or exactly how the hornets formed their home. I could learn those things from a book, no doubt. But I now have some things that are better than book learning. I have a profound sense of wonder, the ability to actually handle this object, and direct contact with this impressive feat of construction by one of the "lower orders" of the animal kingdom.

Oftentimes I find that frugality is not about making more money or even saving more money. It's not about paying off debt, making the smartest investments, or finding the best deal on something I want to buy. It's about rediscovering the value of stuff that is already available to me, in many cases for free. In those moments when I immerse myself in the richness all around me, money becomes irrelevant. And those are moments worth cultivating.

PASA's Farming for the Future Conference

Before getting back to our regularly scheduled content after the holiday, I'm going to make a plug for one of my favorite organizations, and a great upcoming opportunity for anyone who takes food issues seriously.

PASA is the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. They're a non-profit group of farmers, consumers, and those of us who are sort of in between, who work to address issues of sustainable farming, local food, and food quality. I don't think of PASA as a faceless group, or a non-profit entity. When I think of PASA, I think of the real people I know, small scale farmers who still give a damn about the food they produce and the people they help to feed. I think of the incredible wealth of knowledge that I have access to because of PASA, the contacts I've made, mentors I've met, and the local grass-fed and -finished prime rib of beef I'll be preparing for Christmas dinner.

Each year PASA holds its annual Farming for the Future Conference in State College, PA. It's held in chilly early February, about the only time of year farmers in these parts can reasonably be expected to get away from their farms. I've attended this conference for the last three years, and I plan to do so next year too. Every single year I've come away energized, excited, having made new contacts, and having learned invaluable things that I, a dabbling homesteader, can take home and put into practice on my 2/3 acre suburban lot. Most of the people who attend are Pennsylvania farmers, including many Amish, but I've met many plenty of non-farmers and folks from Vermont, Ohio, Maryland, New York, and Virginia too.

If your interests include high quality food, gardening, homesteading, crop or livestock farming, building local economies or viable communities, local food, organics, post petroleum age sustainability, value added farm products, community supported agriculture, or anything loosely connected to these issues, you'll find something of interest at the PASA conference this coming year. PASA always assembles a stunning roster of speakers and presenters. These are people of long experience and great vision, who know their topics intimately. At past conferences I've heard Joel Salatin and James Howard Kunstler speak, and gotten tips on growing apples from the likes of Micheal Phillips. I've heard the first hand accounts of two young entrepreneurial micro-farmers who sold more than $60,000 worth of produce grown on one acre of land on the Winooski River in Vermont, and another farmer in northern Maryland who sells fresh greens from his open fields year-round, even when he has to harvest them from under the snow.

The conference proper is always on a Friday and Saturday. But there are intensive, all-day, limited-enrollment seminars as optional add-ons before the conference itself gets underway. There are a number of tempting offerings for next year. I'm considering the Wednesday Weed School and the Thursday Hands-On IPM and Biocontrols track. I would really like to learn more about pest management, and how to distinguish the eggs of the beneficials from those of the pests.

Although this will be an expense I consider a luxury, I have no difficulty making the decision to attend. Carpooling has been easy to arrange each year, and I've yet to pay for lodging while attending the conference. PASA takes pains to keep this conference affordable, and offers many discounts that may reduce the expense of attending. Farmers are not wealthy people, sadly. Though there is an optional meal plan offered with registration, I've found that just grazing on the abundant and delicious donated snacks has been sufficient to cover my caloric needs while at the conference. In fact, I usually come home with food. In the end though, the few hundred dollars I cough up to PASA goes to a cause I firmly believe in. And I definitely get my money's worth.

If you're in or reasonably near Pennsylvania, check out PASA and their 2009 Farming for the Future Conference. If you plan to attend, please let me know in the comments. Maybe I'll see you there!