Pipe dreams

I'm quite certain that I am not the only one who day dreams about the future and what might happen.
These days it seems my woolgathering has been focused more around the farm/ranch that I will eventually open with my dad. I'm not sure if that is because I have already been to college once before or some other reason. What I should really be thinking about is now what could happen but, what is happening currently. That being my GI Bill funding has finally come to an end. What this means is that I'm now back in the position of having to support myself the old fashioned way. Either that or I have to win the lottery. Sadly counting on the second option is right out. The thing that I have found most difficult to accept or even understand is how hard it has been to find employment since I graduated. When forced to reflect on that I would have to say that most likely it has been the result of looking in the wrong area or of not adequately presenting myself. Another element to that is probably that I am looking to support myself not find a job that will be my "career". Out of all the jobs I have had the only two that could possibly even fit into the career category are working in kitchens, and the military. Right now I would say military would by far be the best option. Speaking of that I just found out that I am back within height/weight standards for the Army. My plan for the moment is to go back into the reserves, but I reserve the right to go back on active duty too. I think what is really happening is that I know what to expect from the military life. That and I don't know in the absolute sense how valuable the degree I am pursuing will be in my life. It almost seems like it will be worth it more to go back into the military, get 20 years, retire and then start the family business.

What would that business look like?
It certainly will not be a "commercial farming" operation. It would definitely have elements of that. There will certainly be livestock, cows (mainly for meat), maybe some pigs or goats, sheep, certainly there will be chickens, and I would like to have a few horses (dual purpose, riding and work). We would grow at the minimum a majority percentage of our own feed (51%+). We would have an mixed orchard of peaches, pecans, pears, blackberries, blue berries and maybe even some grapes. There would be at least an acre of garden just for us, everything else would be market stuff. Specialty stuff like honey that we could produce in house, or specialty heirloom produce. We would have solar inputs to keep down electricity costs, we would try to minimize reliance on fuel consuming items, by heating with wood and using large animals for a portion of the work. I would like to have at least 100 acres of land but closer to 200 would not be bad in my book. That way we could have a little land in woods to use and to hunt in too. Not that I've spent any time thinking about it though right?

Does anyone else have something long-term that they have been planning or hoping for?

It looks like fall at home

But it is now officially winter. Today I took, fifteen yard bags full of leaves from around my families neighborhood and they now cover my garden. Mulch is by far my most effective defense against weeds. It is also completely free for me too. If things go as planned I will not have to do any serious amount of weeding to plant my new seeds and transplants this spring.

Pipe exploded

Well one of my outside pipes bit the dust today. In the middle of the day right when the temperature was on the way up to 40 it suddenly was shooting water up into the sky. Lucky for me I have emergency shut off valves for just this reason. So I went to the local hardware store and got an endcap to make the temporary repairs. 65 cents and half an hour later I had running water again. This time I made sure that it was adequately insulated (I thought it was pretty good the first time). Fingers crossed that I don't have to make anymore repairs tomorrow.

It froze

The whole garden is completely frozen. It is also covered so I'm hoping that some of the tougher greens, like the Swiss Chard will survive. I'll have to wait until its around 30 to know for sure, but fingers crossed.

Adventures in season extension AKA Hoop House ver 1.0

So my hoop houses that I built this Tuesday lasted until yesterday morning. Apparently the combination of cold weather and small amounts of frozen precipitation cause catastrophic failures of low tunnels. At least this is the case with ones made with painters plastic and duck tape.
This is the result.

The worms

So far the worms have survived. Luckily this is despite my best efforts to ignore them. You see my house is kept cold 90% of the time and I fear sometimes that they will suffer from that. But so far so good. I did get some cool pics from the Texas Worm Ranch folks when I took my class. I won't talk about the behind the scenes bits but I think these pics will show that they know whats what about worms. Hopefully in about 6 weeks I will have some worm castings to add to my soil and seed starting mix. That will definitely help me get a head start on things for the spring season.

The lesson

The goods

Last week I was able to get some pretty good stuff out of the garden. I got to harvest red romaine lettuce, collards, swiss chard, spinach, and the last of the carrots. I'm pretty pleased as this is my first fall doing this gardening thing on my own.

Baby it's cold outside

You know season has really left summer behind when you can smell fires in the air. Although we Texans have only had one day were we could see our breath its still time to make sure the garden is protected. I have my first set of hoops up over two of the raised beds that are still producing. I'll finally be able to finish that set up tomorrow with the help of an extra set of hands. We will be stretching plastic over this in preparation for the freezing temperatures set to hit on Wednesday. Additionally I hope to build a cold frame to protect the third raised bed. I have also been mulching lately with leaves, wood chips, and leaves. This helps to maintain moisture and modulate soil temperature. If everything goes according to plan I'll continue to produce greens and perhaps even some root vegetables throughout the winter.

Update. I built a short lived hoop house. Here is the final result while it lasted.

I have my own seed bank

Not in the true sense of the word, but I'm starting to amass quite a neat little collection.

Here is what I do have:
Waltham Butternut Squash
Red Cored Chantenay Carrots
Hearts of Gold Cantaloupe
Cherry Belle Radish x2
Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard
Detroit Dark Red Beet
Muncher Cucumber
Dark Green Zucchini
Early White Bush Scallop Squash
Hale's Best Jumbo Cantaloupe
Marketmore 76 Cucumber
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Crimson Sweet Watermelon
Cherokee Wax Bean
California Wonder 300 TMR Pepper
Clemson Spineless #80 Okra
Roma II (Romano Bush) Bean
Early Prolific Straightneck Squash
Chives
Witloof Di Bruxelles Chicory
Spaghetti Squash
Golden Beet
Globe Artichoke
De Pierre Benite Lettuce
Tete Noire Cabbage
Bacalan De Rennes Cabbage
Romanesco Broccoli
Brunswick Cabbage x2
Red Romaine Lettuce
Merveille des Quatre Saisons Lettuce
Florence Fennel
Carob De Maussane Pea
Hairy Vetch
America Spinach
Wando Peas
Laurentian Rutabaga
Purple Top White Globe Turnip
French Sorrel
Russian Tarragon
English Lavender
Holy Basil
Chervil
Burdock
Caraway
Coriander (Cilantro)
Cumin
Red Clover
Lacinato Kale
Tendergreen Mustard
Old Fashion Mustard
Dill
Georgia Collards
Italian Dark Green Flat Parsley
Florida Broadleaf Mustard
Brown Mustard
Zebrine Shallot
Jaune Paille des Vertus Onion
Purple of Sicily Cauliflower
Autumn Giant Leek
Atomic Red Carrot
Charentais Melon
Petit Gris de Rennes Melon
Ananas D'Amerique A Chair Verte Melon
Blue Berries Tomato
Gold Rush Currant Tomato
Black Vernissage Tomato
Green Zebra Tomato
Cherokee Purple Tomato
San Marzano Lungo No.2 Tomato
Roma Tomato


These are obviously not in any particular order. Sadly I don't have the space (at least not yet) to plant all of these. I will however do what I can to keep everyone up to date on what I plant in the future.

Tomorrow

I'm pretty excited for this weekend. I'll be driving over to Garland, TX to participate in a vermiculture class. Texas Worm Ranch is putting on this worm composting class. What will happen is we will get a chance to learn how to compost using worm bins. This will help me use my kitchen and paper scraps in a way that should help make my soil much better for the spring coming up. As far as I know there are still some slots left people should definitely go.

Chicken coop for Black Friday.

Many people went out on black Friday and bought TV's and other consumer electronics. We instead bought a chicken coop. I am really excited about this new addition to the homestead. All I need to figure out now is what chickens to get, where to get them, and when to get them. Any ideas? Im looking to start out on the easier side for my first go at raising poultry so the lower maintenance the better for me right now. 

The first of the garlic

Last Saturday planted my first round of garlic bulbs. I have three different varieties of garlic that are going into the ground this fall: Lorz Italian, Broadleaf Czech, and Early Purple Italian. I look forward to the summer so I can get my hands on what must be a good haul. I'm something of a fiend for garlic so this will be great. I think this weekend I will plant the second/final round of garlic. And I'm getting a hoop house built. It looks like I'll have it done just in time too as the first frost might hit sometime this weekend.

Fall housekeeping

This is the what happens when a garden bed gets away from you. The good news is that I have finally fixed that problem. At least in part anyway, I decided to let the plant bearing larger fruit to stay until it finally gives up. 

Before

The biggest grasshopper ever?

I found this bad boy this weekend while I was clearing out the old cherry tomato plants. They had finally given up the goose so I decided it was time to clean house and add some compost to get things ready for a winter run of greens and root vegetables. This fine specimen was something along the lines of 3 1/2 inches long. I have a sneaking suspicion that he might have been the culprit for plenty of my pest damaged collard greens.

Small town living

You know you are living the true small town life when the barber you go to hooks you up with some fresh quail eggs. I might even have a continuous stream of the eggs coming.

What is this?

I found this stuff when I pulled off some cardboard that I put down to kill off weeds in one my beds. I have no idea what this is though. Any ideas?

Small fall garden update

     I have fallen behind in my blogging of late. This is due to prioritizing my energy mostly on school work. Chemistry is not a dear friend, (sadly that is just not how my mind works). But on a truly positive note my garden is not so bad as you might think.
     My tomatoes are still going, albeit at a reduced rate. My larger varieties are finally making a decent showing. Squash and I are destined to remain bitter enemies it seems. I've tried three different varieties this year (both summer and fall) sadly they have fallen short of expectations. I got a late crop of Anaheim peppers which is nice. Glad I let them hang around during the summer heat. They will be making a nice addition to some chili here soon if things cool down enough. My spinach didn't work out the way I had hoped, but they are making a showing now. So too are my rainbow Swiss Chard, and Georgia collards. This year my garden has been a lot of error and trial. That is not usually how its said but it is certainly how it feels. The red Romaine lettuce seems to be doing better now that the most of the oppressive heat has past.  I have about three pounds of garlic that will be going in here soon so I won't be running out next year. This is especially good as I hate having to buy garlic in the store. Its too expensive for the quality and lack of variety that you can find. Lucky for me I went with all heirlooms and a few different ones just in case some don't perform as well as I hope.

     I found a source of some free horseshit horse manure which I am really excited about. I should be collecting that in the next week or so. The plan there is to amend the soon to be backyard garden with that for the spring, and still have enough to let it compost over the winter for use when I need it.

     If I can keep my self honest my goal is to start keeping some good records about the goings on here in the terms of inputs and yields that I get starting in the spring. What this really means is spreadsheets, which I do not like, but will hopefully help me keep track of some good metrics going forward. Things like how much of my own produce I actually eat, what didn't work, what does, all that good stuff will be nice to have for subsequent years. 

    On a separate note the backyard re-fencing is almost complete which means...one step closer to hopefully some chickens in the spring. That will be triply beneficial, I get good pest control, I get eggs/meat, and I get poultry litter to fertilize with.

Hopefully I will have some more stuff to share soon,

Ryan

Change happens

There is nothing that highlights changes like absence. The old saying goes that a watched pot never boils. The same can be said for your garden, and really life in general. On Friday I drove back to Alabama to visit my Alma Matter and several friends from college. I arrived back home yesterday afternoon. I ended up being too worn out to really look at the garden from any closer than my driveway. But today I found a pleasant surprise, tomatoes I thought would never ripen suddenly had. Even more exciting is that my raised bed is flush with newly germinated seeds of several kinds. What will soon be my fall crop of mustard, carrots, collards, swiss chard, and lettuces are popping up with great speed. My fall squash plants are thriving and putting out little creeper vines too, which means I have to put up some trellising. That will hopefully keep me from having the same problems I've had with my tomatoes. Mainly that they have sprawled out and nearly taken over a single garden bed. 

On a less exciting note weeds and grass also has a way of popping up when you turn your back on it. That means there is some weeding and grass pulling in the newer beds to begin soon. After that will come some serious bed prep and mulching to choke out the weeds. Of course if that all happens soon enough I can plant out all my root vegetables and some cabbage varieties. 

Soil test results

Something like a month and a half ago I took soil samples from my yard. I did this so I  could find out what my soil quality is. Here are the details.

My only concerns right now are adding some organic matter and maybe seeing if I can get my soil slightly more acidic. Ideally I just want to get it down to maybe 6.9 or so. I have no idea if that is even realistic since the soil is almost completely neutral. Luckily for me I am in an Animal Science program at an agricultural college. I'm hoping to score some natural fertilizers in the form of various animal manures. Chief among them are chicken and cow manure, with horse manure added in for good measure. If anyone has a recommendation for lowering my soil pH please leave me a comment. 

Ding Dong the squash is dead

I just pulled up my squash plant that had completely taken over my raised bed. One day it just started to die on me so I decided it was time to cull that bad boy. I'm pretty sure that it was caused by an infestation of squash bugs. That said I cut it up and added it to the compost pile. Of course the bugs I found got squished too.

Trip to the city municipal yard

So about two weeks ago I woke up to a notice on my front door from the city that basically said, do you have a ton of stuff you can't fit into your trash can? Well it turns out that I do have just that. So later today I will be taking at least one trip to throw away the stuff that I haven't decided to recycle instead.This is a big deal especially considering that we tore down the shed that came with the house when I got it. It was definitely a necessity as that structure was not going to cut it. I was as tall as that building, and it had been totally hammered by a nasty hail storm a year or so ago. Maybe I will have some more pictures later today.

Counting down till fall garden time

I've made some new preparatory steps toward having the fall garden I want to have. The biggest things in terms of time and money are machinery. My dad has had this old wood chipper/shredder made by Troy-Built for years. He hasn't used it in probably half a decade though, so we thought it might be pretty rough getting it started up. As luck would have it, it started right up like a champ and we ran a few pieces of large shred from the city through it to make sure everything was still working. The next step was giving it a much needed oil change. I did that yesterday and you would not believe what that old  oil looked like. Frankly I'm not sure I would classify it as oil anymore. It really seemed like some black toxic ooze, I've never seen anything quite like it honestly. Luckily the process was simple and I was prepared from last weekend when we got supplies at the local hardware shop. On to the big money item. After much deliberation my dad decided to finally replace his old beaten up front-tine rototiller. Lucky for me he decided not just to replace but upgrade as well. He ended up getting a monster Craftsman rear-tine tiller. Even more lucky is that for the foreseeable future I have custody of it. Realistically this means that at least until I finish preparing my fall garden beds (of which I plan to have between 4 and 8 more) I am keeping it down here at my house. 

On the much cheaper and easier side of things, the majority of my seeds have sprouted and are well on their way to being ready for planting in another ten to fourteen days. If you take a look back at my older post Seedlings are hatching you can see just how much of a difference a week and change makes in plant size. 

Please ignore my random hangers.

As I'm sure you might have guessed the big guys in this picture are squash. 

On to a list of what is in this seed starting rig. I have dill, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, peas, and two different lettuces, one is a red romaine, the other is a crisp-head variety I think. This was just a portion of what I hope to plant this fall. Now that some new seeds have arrived (heirloom of course) I can get the ball rolling on some of them. I plan on adding beets, swiss chard, collards, mustard greens, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, and a few winter cabbage varieties. There may also be some spinach, and more lettuce too. I'm also expecting my tomatoes that were giving me a hard time earlier to make up for that now. I was lucky enough to have the first tomatoes ripen earlier this week. They have obviously been consumed already. If I can remember to I will take pictures of the next tomatoes that ripen up 

Happy Homesteading

Seedlings are hatching

It looks like some of the seeds that I started last week have already germinated. Fall garden here I come. 

Stink Bugs and Squash Beetles

I kept thinking that I had escaped the risk of having a pest attack on my tomatoes and squash plants. I was very wrong. This morning while out watering and checking to see if my summer bearing tomatoes had finally ripened I saw them. Stink bugs crawling on the fruit of my tomato plants and squash bugs on my patty pan squash. So what are my options right now? Really their are only two that I am considering for this season. Option 1 is to hand pick all the mature bugs that I can find. 2 Neem oil. It seems like a combination of both will work best. Picking off the bugs I can find will hopefully limit the immediate damage that is done to the fruit already on the vine. The application of Neem Oil should help limit problems with future bugs that hatch later. I just need to wait for the local feed store to open up tomorrow and the required oil will be in hand.

My squash is so covered in bug eggs

The blackberry bush

So my dad gave me some bare root stem clipping from one of his blackberry plants that he chopped down. I figured why not plant it and see what happens. Well it's going pretty damn good. 

This is the "plant" about 3 weeks after putting it into the backyard. As you can tell from the bottom of the picture there are some brand new buds growing. So I'm hoping next year I'll end up with a little crop of blackberries. This is really great especially because I transplanted this way out of season. 

Happy Independence Day

Today is the 4th of July which of course means we celebrate our independence from Britain 240 years ago today. To celebrate I did what most of us do. I cooked out. I hope you all remember the real reason for the is holiday, and enjoy our freedoms while we can. 

Plant updates

So I took my pitiful looking tomato plants out of raised bed number one and transplanted them about a month ago... which turned out to be a great idea. I moved them to a bed that had been sitting for a while and was left unkempt by the previous owners.

One of the old beds. 

What I did in the way of prep was really just scrape the old weeds and weed barrier plastic up and plant the two new plants. These are them below. The picture is obviously not from the day of. I'd say it is from maybe 2 or 3 weeks post transplant.

Same bed with a second planting of tomatoes 

 I would say about two weeks after that my initial planting of tomatoes from the raised bed decided they didn't like their home. Lucky for both them and me I had a new home available for them.

These are the transplanted plants. Probably less than one week post transplant.

The plants initially struggled but I kept them watered pretty regularly for the first week or so. I also supplied them with some mulch. Admittedly I haven't put anywhere near enough down yet but I had all my old tree branched chipped by the city (a service they provide free once a month) so those wood chips will soon become mulch and compost fodder. I will probably add another much more current pic tomorrow to show all the marvelous new growth.

Plumbing.

Well my water no longer tastes like 60'year old rust. Of course getting there wasn't easy. To save money we did all the work, digging included by hand. We got the basic outline and planned route of is our new pipes laid out on the first day. Aside from one portion of gravel this was the easy day.

The new shed

This thing is pretty legit. It is definitely a vast improvement over my old one that was dilapidated and falling over. That thing has been around for I don't know how long.  All I need to do with it is get organized so I can fit more tools in there.

2 thousand-ish is not bad for a good working shed that I don't have to bend over in. I'll post some interior shots eventually. The old shed is still standing for the time being. 

State of the homestead address

The arduous task of getting the plumbing set up has begun. My dad and I have spent my last three days off getting basic trenches dug and finding out where the old pipes come in and split off.

In this picture my dad is hitting pay dirt. We found the old cutoff valve for the house about ten minutes after this. Of course he found it somewhere we didn't expect at all, under about 6 inches or soil, where it will obviously be of the greatest use. I wasn't really worth much during this process because on the second day I ended up being sick. Luckily I've since gotten over what I suspect was just a head cold (is there any other kind? Maybe the flu I guess.)

This is the aforementioned buried treasure, (AKA my cutoff valve) this almost made it unnecessary to install a new one. If it hadn't been for the fact that outside faucets weren't affected I would have left it alone altogether. 

The trench that eventually housed brand new pvc pipe. 

So much rain.

Normally Texas is one of those states that people think of as being really hot and dry. Usually I would agree with that assessment. This last month or two though have been really rainy. Several inches a month. But the last 7 days have been particularly nasty. We got about 6-8 inches in just one week. That is not small feat down here.

My first international visitors

As I sit here in my office chair, I have discovered the first page views from a country outside of the United States. They happen to have seen my page from my favorite international country, France! This is almost making me wish I had kept up with my French language studies from high school and college the first time around. So I would like to say bienvenue to everyone who reads my blog. If you like it please leave me a comment, and if you really enjoy it tell me what you would like to hear about.

On another note I have officially made it to 100 pageviews. This is pretty exciting stuff. I hope you all enjoy visiting.

It doesn't always work out like you want.

Life is one big experiment. And like all others this one does not come with a map or a guarantee of success. My raised bed went together like clock work which is great. Its just the after that is giving me a hard time. I planted it out and everything was going fine for a while. Now it seems that I counted my chickens before they hatched (before I even got them as the case is for me). Either the rain has gotten to my plants, which I doubt, or I used too much of the manure and humus mixture in combination with the topsoil I filled the bed with. This is more than likely the case as I planted some backup tomato plants about two weeks later in a different bed and those seem to be doing fine. What has caused my problems? I think that the levels of nitrogen are way to high from an overabundance of manure. This has caused my roots some problems and is killing my first planting. If this is the case then eventually I will pull the failed plants and some of the soil in the raised bed and remix it with an amendment of native soil and in an attempt to balance out the npk ratio and the percentage of organic matter. If nothing else this will be a lesson learned on my journey to growing my own food. Hopefully by this time next year all I will need to buy from the grocery store are the meats, dairy, and some fruit that I cannot grow my self (at least until I have some more land...but that is still down the road). The one thing I am certain of is that my thumb is green. The herbs that I am growing and the fruit and vegetable production class I took way back in 2013 have proven that much. That and the fact that I helped my dad garden as a kid, and even created a producing garden for his house this year are definitely reassuring. I'll have some more pictures here in the near future.

The first raised bed

I finally built and planted out my first raised bed about 2 weeks ago. It has 3 different types of tomato, an Anaheim pepper, a cabbage, and I've seeded some carrots and beets.

During the process

One of my sad little tomatoes. 

Owning a home comes with a lot of projects. Luckily for me the gardening ones happen to be the kind that I like. Hopefully I'll have some fresh gardening news soon.

Simple breakfast

Nice and easy breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and cantaloupe. I could do this every morning. 

Eggs from the neighbors back yard

My new neighbors are awesome. They keep chickens and brought me some fresh eggs. You won't find them like this at the grocery store. They tasted better too. 

What is this?

This is pretty simple, I have some plants that might or might not be weeds. If anyone knows what they might be I'd love some help. 

Family visit & Timber

My aunt and uncle have come down for a quick visit. While they are here we may go see the local museums. The Dublin bottling plant, and the Ben Hogan museum are the main touristy things around here so off we go. In other news the tree in my front yard has been felled. The best part of the whole thing is it only took around an hour to go from start to finish.

My uncle doing some heavy lifting.