Processing Firewood, and thoughts.

Earlier this week I spent a few hours processing firewood with hand tools. Unlike when using a chainsaw, the hand tools allow time for thinking, and this post is partly about the firewood, and partly about the thoughts that went with the activity.

Copparded Ash

Looking Back, and Forward.

A short while ago, I posted about the books that I’ve read this year, Reading List, and I’ve written two posts about the direction that I’m taking to become more self reliant, here at the Sustainable Smallholding. Creating a Permanent Agriculture, and 2012 Plans, Experiments, and Direction, both look at where I’m heading.What I wanted to do was expand on the same theme, and add a bit more detail.

The catalyst for this post was the understanding of how much has changed this year. I’m moving away from no dig gardening, to digging, and double digging, once in a complete rotation. I am concentrating much more on ‘staple’ foods, and less on interesting, or unusual vegetables, and despite being passionate about trees, and Forest Gardening, I recently found myself wondering if perhaps I should have left a bit more room for growing grains.

2011/2012 Tree Planting Starting in Earnest

Hi All

I started planted a few of the potted trees back in September. These were mainly False Acacia, and Box Elder, grown from seed for the Coppice and Orchard. There are still a few of these to do, as I’ve been concentrating on the vegetable growing areas recently. That changed today, as I was told that the first batch of my fruit trees were due to arrive. These trees are cider apple trees, on M25 rootstocks. Sometimes the blog might make it seem that everything is always well planned, but these were an impulse purchase, sparked by my first proper attempt at cider making.

Can I have too Much Compost?

Yesterday evening I read ‘Growing Green’, by Jenny Hall and Iain Tollhurst, which had been recommended to me by a friend, Nick Vowles. There was a lot in the book that I already knew, but, as always, there is always something new to learn. The book is about Stock Free Organic farming, and much of the book is devoted to listing the standards that you need to adhere to to be registered. The book deals with farming at all scales, so quite a bit of it, the bits that dealt with machinery, were of little relevance, but there was enough new information to have made the purchase worthwhile.

2012 Plans, Experiments, and Direction

It’s only November and I already have almost all of my seeds for next year. Some of that is down to seed saving, something that I should have done more of in the past, but the rest is down to thinking ahead. It all sounds a bit organised, but some of the seeds came too late to sow this autumn, and will have to wait until spring. The seeds that I have are very different from what I’ve grown in the past, and really show the direction that my food growing is taking, and the pattern for my experiments next year. New additions include rye, perennial rye, spelt, perennial wheat, soya beans, and millet.  Increases include lots more broad (fava) beans, but with a substantial reduction in the salads, and leaves. This all fits in with my desire to grow all of our own food. We eat a lot of grains, so unless I grow grains, I will never produce all that we eat.

Polyculture Pictures. late October 2011

Hi all

These Pictures have been waiting for a week to publish, but I haven’t had time.

chicory seedlings

The picture above shows the chicory seedlings that were sown recently. The warm soil has allowed them to germinate, fairly easily. They are in a mixed Polyculture of Beans and Echinacea, with the beans as the primary crop.

Late Autumn, and Still Feeding Bees

The mild weather has allowed my bees to get out and forage, which is useful, as they are light on food. The colonies did not build up well, due to the lack of forage during the Summer, and I was late to start feeding. Having removed the feeders last week, with not enough food being taken down, I had hoped that the bees would bring some Ivy nectar, but that has not been the case. The future for my late season forage is shown below.

Chinese Mint Bush

Creating a Permanent Agriculture

My interest in growing grains has just increased, with the arrival of more seeds, this time from America. The packet contained a corn variety, a variety of millet, and most exciting of all, a perennial rye. Luckily I have all winter to consider how to link this in to my Polyculture Experiment, and where.

Maximilian sunflower

Polyculture Update. Mid October 2011

Well the original polyculture is progressing nicely, although the initial seeding of chicory was a bit dense, and will need thinning out. In my mid September Update, I tried to explain how the beans were interplanted with the grains, but here are a few pictures, which I hope will clarify my system for you.

The picture is taken looking across a five foot bed, and shows five rows of plants, and groundcover. Row one is rye/bean/rye/bean. Row two is bean/bean/bean/bean/bean. The rows then alternate.

The picture below is a variation, which instead of a row of five beans across the bed, has two clusters of  four beans, one each side of the centre of the row.

alternative layout.

The benefit of this layout is that the beans could remain, or be cut back, when the second year’s grain and corn are planted. With the first layout, all of the beans are replaced by the new plants.

2011 Reading List (So far), Research, and Possibilities.

I tend to do most of my reading and research over the Winter, once the day length shortens enough that I don’t feel too tired to study after a day working outside.  The pattern has changed this year, and I’ve recently had the chance to get a batch of reading underway.  My own feeling is that if we want to replace our current system of food production, heavily reliant on fossil fuel, but want to avoid the sheer hard work of subsistence agriculture, then we have to use our imagination, and our intelligence. Now the military version of intelligence is ‘information that has been processed’, and so with that in mind, our ‘intelligence’ depends on an input of information, and a reasoning/evaluation phase, in order to come up with something that is useable. Much of what I read online, falls into two categories. The ‘I’ve just found out about XXXXXXX and here are some links to other sites that tell you all about it’ category is very common, and I tend not to read any further. The second ‘popular’ category is the ‘ this is what I’ve done today/this week/since my last post’ type. Most of what you find falls into one of these categories, including quite a bit of what I write.  Of more interest are the sites that point out the unusual stuff. Not weird and wonderful, but new ways of doing things. I usually read these, even if they don’t relate to what I’m doing now, because there is normally something that I can use, or at least consider using. The most valuable sites are those where the writer is either doing something completely new, or unusual, or is writing about direct observations (information) and interpreting that into something useful (creating intelligence).

One thing that many of these sites do, is to review/list useful books, and many of the books that I’ve read recently have come from a recommendation online, or have been listed on a useful website, or blog.

Having checked my account with a major online retailer, I was shocked to see that in 2011, I had bought 47 books for myself, and had read almost all of them. I didn’t calculate how much I’d spent, nor did I check back to see what I’d bought September to December 2010. That figure does not include library books, nor books from second hand bookshops, nor online reading.