I mean, let's be real here. We vote people into office whom we believe to have our best interests at heart and will be our voice in the grand scheme of things. However, even at the local level, it seems some politicians have more of a personal agenda than a logical one.
For example, in the city of Eastpointe, MI (my home town) it is considered illegal to keep chickens or other farm animals. Their reasoning? From what I was told by the mayor is that chickens, especially roosters, are just so loud. They're a nuisance. However, when we measure the noise caused by chickens (male and female), we find that they are no louder than the average dog. In fact, they'll crow at the same things dogs will bark at! The average dog barks anywhere from 60 to 100 decibels. Hens? Roughly 60 decibels AT THEIR LOUDEST. And roosters? They HAVE to be just ridiculously loud, right? Nope. 90 decibels. But wait a minute, why do they seem so much louder??? Because, my dear Watson, it's not a typical "city sound". Tell me, when you go to a black tie type of event and you see a huge sea of suits and ties, nothing really stands out. Now stick a man wearing a bright green t-shirt and blue jeans in there and tell me where your eyes are drawn. The same concept works with sound. It's why we notice the sound of sirens over our music and the other driving noises on the road.
Well, then there must be a logical reason for why chickens are illegal, right? I mean, they must carry diseases, or stink, or maybe their fecal matter is damaging to the ground-water or something?
Ha, therein lies the real kicker.
NONE OF THE ABOVE. Let me just repeat that: NONE OF THE ABOVE!
Chicken diseases aren't transmittable to humans when they're kept in small flocks. Avian flu and viruses like it are only a danger in commercial-grade situations where the animals are kept in completely unsanitary conditions and uncomfortably close quarters with hundreds and thousands of other chickens. What happens is their immune systems are worn down to nothingness due to breathing in their dried, powdered fecal matter and ingesting nutritionally deficient food. The only way to combat these diseases in this situation is with heavy drugging both for their comfort and for their "health". Comfort? What? Oh, you didn't know? Commercial chicken feed contains traces of fluoxetine (aka Prozac) and drugs like it. Why? To keep them from tearing each other apart. Literally. They also cut their beaks for this reason. So they pump them full of antibiotics (great for us, too right? I mean no harm can come from that....), mood altering drugs, and literally the junkiest "food" money can buy. Then, they sell them plucked and packaged to us, the unquestioning consumer.
Stinky? HA! Have you smelled dog poop lately? Better yet, have you compared the two in both quantity and stench? How about in value? Yes, value. Chicken poop is worth its weight in gold. In fact, you can buy it as an all natural fertilizer/manure product. It's basically a nitrogen-charged super growth supplement from what I've seen in my experience (which happens to be first hand). It composts like a champ and makes commercial "fertilizers" look like crap (HAH!).
Contamination and ground-water....hmmmm well if we're going to take THAT route, which would have a case of, salmonella or cancer? Don't answer that. I know you're not stupid. But let's think about this for a minute. RoundUp is readily sprayed to take care of those pesky weeds. I mean that crap is about 99% carcinogenic and pure poison to everything it touches. It is NOT biodegradable, NOT environmentally safe, and we're (please note that the "we" in this is NOT myself.) dumping it by the bucketload practically on our lawns and crops that are now available in RoundUp Ready form. As for commercial fertilizers, unless you buy organic and REALLY know what you're getting, they're pretty much all oil based and do more damage than good. THAT crap will leak into groundwater a lot faster than poo of any sort will.
So let me just put this into perspective for you all:
It is perfectly legal to purchase and pour into our lawns ALL sorts of chemical poisons. It is perfectly legal to keep dogs which can get louder than roosters. It is considered normal to ingest eggs and meat from chickens pumped full of growth hormones, mood altering drugs, and low-grade feed that have lived their short lives in cramped, unsanitary spaces. These chickens aren't processed one at a time with care. They're processed in a factory by machines....hundreds....thousands at a time.
However, it is illegal to keep and raise chickens on property YOU pay for. It is illegal to experience the joy of harvesting eggs from your own backyard chickens each day. And why? For no apparent reason.
"Oh, but people will complain if their neighbors raise chickens!" Really? Let them. I mean honestly, I complain about so many stupid things and nothing gets done about those....Actually, the last time I complained about something, I had it tossed back into my face (regarding the building of Eastpointe's 10,000th senior home). So why isn't the same tactic used here? The only conclusion I can find that makes any sense is that someone within the city government at some time had personal agenda. I'm NOT accusing the current mayor of this, just to be clear. I don't believe she wrote the law on this. However, laws without purpose are not only unjust, but VERY scary things. It's a slippery slope down the road to dictatorship and yes, even cities can be dictatorial. Look at New York.
I suggest any and all readers contact their city officials about any unjust or pointless laws or ordinances and do what you can to nullify them. Maybe it seems like a lot of pointless effort, but it makes a point more powerful than a riot could. Riots are pretty simple to put down. Rebellion involving intelligent minds is a much harder flame to extinguish.
Viva la Revoltion.
Showing posts with label chickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chickens. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Chickens in the city???
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| Our 15 Golden Buff chicks at 1 day old |
Right now we have them in our apartment with a heat lamp and have been watching as they "fly" themselves up to their little perch and then jump back down again. It's absolutely hilarious to see how clumsy they are!
We already have 14 fully grown chickens at my future in-laws' house, 13 of which are Golden Buff hens (egg-celent layers! Each lays about an egg a day!) and 1 black Jersey Giant rooster (he's a veritable mack-daddy and is VERY protective of his ladies).
How do we have chickens in Warren, MI? Well, there's a fun story!
We first got our chicks in late spring of 2012. We purchased 4 awkward mixed breed chicks from a local pet store and started learning the ropes of the do's and don'ts of backyard chicken raising. I remembered reading something about Warren allowing chickens as pets and went ahead with the purchase while I was living with Samm's parents. Once we had the coop built and an area set up for their "yard", we went ahead and ordered 15 Golden Buffs from the Meyer Hatchery in Ohio. Our order came in (much to the surprise of the post office workers!) and we had one rooster and 14 hens. We were thrilled even though the rooster ended up getting sick and dying within a week or so of their arrival. As they grew and the roosters got louder, a neighbor complained and Animal Control came to investigate. It's then that we were told about the city ordinance against keeping farm animals and that we would be fined if they weren't off the property by 5 days from then. I was furious and felt like an idiot for having believed something I found on the internet. Well, Samm stayed up all night with me and found just what we needed to get the city off our backs. And as it turns out, ANY city in Michigan regardless of ordinance is subject to the same.
The Michigan Right To Farm Act: http://legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-Act-93-of-1981.pdf
This law states that anyone can keep and raise farm animals anywhere in Michigan so long as they are looking to sell a product or make some form of income from them and they follow the Generally Accepted Agricultural Management Practices (GAAMPs).
GAAMPs: http://www.michigan.gov/mdard/0,4610,7-125-1567_1599_1605---,00.html
We checked over these documents and saw that we were following the law perfectly. So, we printed out a copy for ourselves and for the city, wrote up a letter explaining how we are within our rights, and headed on up to city hall.
You ever had a police officer pull you over for something you didn't even know was a law and then tell you that ignorance isn't a valid argument? Well, they definitely don't enjoy their ignorance of laws being shoved back in their faces!
My future father-in-law, Bill, and I went up to City Hall together to educate them and get them off our backs. We were very calm, as were they, but they gave us the run around. The police sent us to the city attorney, the city attorney sent us to public services, public services sent us to the police, and finally we talked to animal control. They told us we were wrong and they were unaware of any such law. They said that zoning laws didn't allow for us to sell eggs out of our home and so we had no choice. We then explained that we were delivering eggs and would be selling them at farmer's markets and would not be breaking any zoning laws. They then took the copies of the laws and the letter and talked loudly to themselves about how they'd "..love to have chickens, but it's illegal."
Of course, that was in September of 2012 and here it is almost May of 2013 and we have yet to hear a word from the city.
Staying educated and current with the farming and zoning laws is important if you're going to raise any kind of livestock. If you're armed with knowledge, you're untouchable. Mostly. We can get into government bullying in another blog though. For the purposes of this one, let's just assume your city government is comprised of reasonable individuals who are there to be public servants. Good for you for living in such a city! In any case, you HAVE to stay current or you may end up losing your right to have the animals you so deeply crave.
Why bother going through all the trouble of knowing these laws and building a coop and feeding and cleaning up after animals? The rewards are many!
We as a society have lost touch with where our food comes from. Our kids don't know that chicken nuggets are made of chicken. They don't know that hamburger is made of cow. They couldn't find a tomato in a potato stack. Sounds ridiculous, right? But it's sadly true for a majority of children in our country. There's become this disconnect between the farm and the plate...and I see this as such a moral slap in the face. We're blindly eating what's handed to us in a fancy package and not thinking about the cost of it. Sure, we're looking at the price, but what is the cost? What does it cost to feed an animal? What does it cost to package and ship eggs and meat? How about to butcher an animal? You start to realize that food is something we've learned to take advantage of due to an abundance here in America. I, for the first time in my life, killed and butchered my first chicken last year. I did 3 of them total and those first 2 took a real mental toll on me. I had never killed an animal like that before. It's so personal when you've raised the creature yourself and you are taking its life with your bare hands. It's humbling. "You appreciate something more if you do it yourself" is something I've heard my whole life and this was the first time I really realized how true this statement was.
Raising chickens has allowed me to not only indulge in the best eggs I've ever tasted, it's helped me to understand the relationships found in nature. We let our chickens roam freely through the backyard most days and I noticed that once that started happening, the number of bugs flying around us decreased dramatically. I also noticed that their scratching at the lawn made the grass healthier....not to mention their poop. Their poop, when composted, is some of the best fertilizer out there. At least this is something I've read time and time again. I'm really looking forward to doing some good composting with the massive amount of fecal matter these beautiful birds leave behind.
There are other reasons for raising your own chickens. For example, arsenic is found in commercial chicken feed along with fluoxotine (prozac), caffeine, antibiotics, and growth hormones. Ever notice how much younger girls are developing nowadays? I don't have the proof to link the two right now, but I'd be willing to bet money on this among other contributors. We'll have to discuss the never-ending profit cycle for companies like Monsanto and Pfizer in dealing with our food in another blog posting, but for now, let's focus solely on the health factor. Maybe I'm crazy for thinking this way, but if we are what we eat, aren't chickens what they eat? If we don't feed them natural foods, how can we expect a natural product? Did I mention that chickens are like mini garbage disposals? No? Well check this out. When you have chickens, you just save your fruit peelings and vegetable scraps, stale bread, over-ripened fruit, grass clippings, spiders and flies you squish in the house....and feed them to the chickens. They'll LOVE it. Then you'll end up with high quality meat and eggs and even higher quality fertilizer from their waste. AND you'll save on garbage bags! Maybe not a whole lot, but every little bit counts, right?
I could go on and on, but I'll let this be as is for now and pick it back up another time. I've enjoyed keeping and raising chickens so much. Samm and I can't wait to have a house with some property so that we can have many different animals and raise them all together, just as has been done for millennia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/opinion/kristof-arsenic-in-our-chicken.html?_r=0
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| Samm holding one of the new bantam chicks |
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| Youtube Llamas with Hats... This chick loved it so much she decided to sit on Carl. |
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| 2 of our newest chicks |
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| An egg-sample of the latest batch of fresh eggs |
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| Depending on the day, eggs can be huge or tiny or anywhere in between. |
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| One of the best parts about raising chickens is seeing how different each egg is from the next. |
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| Chickens in the garden |
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| They aerate the soil and pick up your slack! |
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| Digging for bugs in the garden |
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| Chickens help keep pests under control in the garden. They eat very little of the actual produce. |
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| Our first eggs! |
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| We can spend hours just watching them do their thing. |
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| "There've gotta be bugs in here somewhere..." |
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| Scratching around the yard on Easter looking for a bug snack |
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| Our rooster proudly making his rounds through the yard amongst the Golden Buffs |
:)
Thursday, March 21, 2013
"It's the most wonderful time of the year..."
No, not Christmas time....the beginning of GARDENING SEASON!
THIS is my absolute favorite time, regardless of the fact that there's still snow and frigid temperatures to come. This is the time when I get all my seeds together, come up with a game plan for the growing season and begin my indoor starters.
I've been gardening now for about a decade and I've never felt so connected to nature or God doing anything else. There's something so spiritually rewarding to planting a seed and watching it grow into a full, fruiting plant. ESPECIALLY organically. I refuse to use chemicals or anything unnatural in my gardening so far as I can help it. I don't care if it's nitrogen, manganese, zinc, iron, or anything else. If it's made in a lab and thrown into dirt as an additive, it's not natural OR organic.
I have a lot of goals for this year's garden:
Compost.
I want to compost this year at both my parents' house and at my future in laws'. Since I don't get to have my own garden due to living in an apartment, I use their yards and we all share in the labor and fruits. It's kind of a sweet deal, especially since at my future in laws' we have 14 awesome chickens consisting of 13 egg layers and a rooster and they've been VERY productive! Best part of about that is chicken poo makes some of the best fertilizer money can buy...and for us it's free! Of course, you can't use it fresh or it has the potential to burn the plants and kill them. One whiff of that stuff and you'll understand why. But I plan on composting their poo and anything else that's biodegradable and thusly provide the gardens with their own helpings of all natural fertilizer that does more than add a few key nutrients, but the entire SPECTRUM of nutrients. It's going to be a challenge to get out there and turn that crap each day, but I'm making a point to stay motivated! Nothing worth doing ever came easy, right?
Proper crop rotation.
I've had a nasty habit of planting whatever I want wherever I want and then wondering why certain plants produce less fruit than others....DUMB on my part! I never thought too much about crop rotation before as a necessity. "Can't we just fertilize the crap out of it and hope for the best?" Sure. We can do a lot of things. For instance, we can eat 20 McDoubles and then fast for a month in order to maintain body weight. The thing is, it isn't practical or smart. Artificial fertilizers like Miracle Grow have a huge impact on your plants, absolutely. The problem is, those plants are getting an overdose of key nutrients and are starved of others. The result is one heck of a showroom tomato...but if we're going by taste, I'll take the smaller, more flavorful organic tomato any day. When we deplete the soil of specific nutrients via growing the same crop over and over again year after year in the same place, letting the soil rest or artificially enhancing that soil aren't enough to really bring the quality back. Monocultures have a nasty habit of creating deserts. If you pay attention to what's happening between soil and plant, you'll really get an idea of how nature was intended to work. For example, one year you decide to fill your yard with corn. Corn as far as the eye can see (up to the back fence...then it's just fence and another yard that you WISH was yours but whatever). Corn requires a LOT of nutrients, a key one being nitrogen. If you keep planting corn over and over again, you'll deplete the nitrogen content of the soil down to nothing. BUT if you rotate from one year growing corn to the NEXT year growing beans, well you've effectively replenished the soil with nitrogen! I know, I know....that's crazy talk! Plants USE nutrients..they can't possibly replenish them! They do both, in fact. Mother Earth News has some wonderful tools to help with knowing which crops to rotate and when. If you can rotate between crop types, you can have a successful garden.
Utilizing ground cover.
I'm not talking about fancy tarps so much as fancy herbs! I want to try something this year that I've never heard of anyone else doing, but it could be fun! I want to minimize weed growth around my plants that I do NOT dig up each year by planting creeping thyme, oregano, mint, and parsley all around. Yes, I'll still have a good number of weeds poking up, but it'll make better use of the space around my grapes, trees, yucca, and so on than wood chips or a tarp.... Plus, weeding the garden is therapeutic for me. I like to take out my aggression on that stupid crab grass and whatever else the crap is growing where I don't want it by pulling them out by their roots and throwing them into the fence where they'll hang and die! If we weren't talking about plants, that would have sounded incredibly morbid....but yeah, I like to get my hands dirty and yank out those pesky weeds. There's just something fulfilling about doing things yourself, you know?
More raised beds.
Raised beds are absolutely wonderful. I didn't think so before, but after experimenting a little last year, I'm sold. They provide better protection from rodents, certain bugs, and weeds on top of looking nice. They're also great for creating good drainage situations for your plants that are rather particular about being water-logged. I know my parents' backyard tends to flood after a good rain and having the one raised bed made a big difference for those plants. It's also easier to harvest, especially root veggies like carrots and beets, or leafy greens like chard and lettuce. However, I refuse to go out and BUY raised bed kits. That's just dumb to me. Why would you spend money on something when you can use pretty much whatever's laying around! I used a whole bunch of old bricks I had laying around the yard from when I wanted to build my own pizza oven...obviously I didn't accomplish it so I utilized the bricks and created a raised bed next to the garage where the ground was severely sunken in. It worked like a charm! You can use old pop or wine bottles, old leftover lumber, paint cans, plastic tubs, whatever you want or have laying around basically! Yes, you'll need to fill them with dirt and that can be pricey if you're buying it all from a store...but if you're composting already, problem solved. Of course, if you're already composting...you've probably thought this through!
Paying more attention to the needs of the plants.
Men. We never stop to ask for directions and HATE to use instruction manuals. However....even I can admit that I probably should. So, I vow to follow the instructions provided on the seed packets much more closely this year! I have another nasty habit of planting things where it's convenient for ME and not where it'll be the most productive for the plant. This year, I'm reading every step provided and doing my best to follow them and plan my gardens for SUCCESS.
MORE SEED SAVING!
This is a key thing for me. Anyone who knows me knows how strongly opposed to Monsanto and their big ag attitude of "no seed shall be grown that we do not own". These corporate bullies are all about buying a whole new crop of seeds each year from their distributors. That's one way to keep food costs up and farmers' profits down... Not for me though. I'm going to expand on my seed saving project that I started last summer and try to save as many seeds from each crop as I can. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it all, but it's a process. I want to make it so that I never need to buy seeds again...now, wanting to buy new varieties or new types of seeds is a completely different story. That's because I want to try something new. But I want to keep a steady supply of "staple" seeds on hand at all times, saved from previous seasons and free for me to share or store.
Aquaponics (take two)
For those that don't know, aquaponics is the all natural, waste-free version of hydroponics. Basically it combines aquaculture and hydroponics to create a super-charged growth method and complete ecosystem. You start by setting up a hydroponic grow area, outdoors or indoors is largely irrelevant for this. Then, instead of the gallon buckets and bubblers and artificial additives for the water, you set up a fish tank and raise fish. Now, they can be fish for decorative purposes or you can raise something edible like trout or tilapia. The type of fish only matters if you plan on eating it. Instead of using a filter to clean the tank of fecal matter, you pump the water out of the tank and into the grow beds just like in hydroponics. The water floods the beds and the plants soak of the ammonia and other waste from the fish, then the water pours back into the fish tank clean and ready for another go around. It's a no waste system that, once established, can produce fruits at up to 6 times the rate of a conventionally grown plant. Too cool. I had a set up like this at my in-laws' last year and it was AWESOME! The problem is, I had too many fish in too small an area....and not a big enough grow bed or enough plants to filter the waste properly. THIS YEAR I know what I did wrong and plan on correcting it. I won't give up!
Spending more time in the garden.
Life gets in the way too much sometimes and I end up wanting to just sit inside and read a book or watch TV rather than go out and observe my plants, pull weeds, or work on a compost pile. Instant gratification isn't always all that gratifying. I want to spend more time learning patience through watching my plants grow and produce. Nature in action is better than any TV show or movie EVEN on Discovery or National Geographic. Just sitting in the garden gives you time to reflect and plan. It's got a healing quality to it. Just being surrounded by God's work...by things you had a hand in growing...it's an indescribable feeling that so many don't stop to even consider. I spend a good amount of time in my gardens, but not nearly what I'd like to. This is a new year and a new chance.
So I started some seeds today. Not a whole lot, but enough to get my blood pumping with excitement and anticipation! I planted some Artichokes, Asparagus, Purple Broccoli, Black Krim Tomatoes, Eggplants, Jalapenos, Orange Bell Peppers....all heirloom seed varieties from www.victoryseeds.com and I'll be planting more as the directions allow..you know since I'm following them and all.. I'm really pumped about the prospects of my gardens this year and all the joy they'll bring to me and those I share them with. This year is kind of my beginning the rest of my life year....I'm getting married in May to the most wonderful girl on the planet (for me!) and raising chickens and gardens and getting closer to earning my degree and becoming a registered interpreter for the deaf! All in all, I'm happy. Money is always tight and always an issue, but give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. I like to think of me doing my part in gardening sustainably as giving back to God somehow.
Morality is doing what is right regardless of what is told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/grow-it/aquaponics-the-basics.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
http://www.motherearthnews.com/city-farming/i-say-compost-you-think-of-rotting-food-dirt-flies-a-horrible-smell-for-that-reason-most-people-wont-even-consider-composting-at-home.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
http://www.motherearthnews.com/grow-it/how-to-rotate-crops-zb0z1302zsto.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
THIS is my absolute favorite time, regardless of the fact that there's still snow and frigid temperatures to come. This is the time when I get all my seeds together, come up with a game plan for the growing season and begin my indoor starters.
I've been gardening now for about a decade and I've never felt so connected to nature or God doing anything else. There's something so spiritually rewarding to planting a seed and watching it grow into a full, fruiting plant. ESPECIALLY organically. I refuse to use chemicals or anything unnatural in my gardening so far as I can help it. I don't care if it's nitrogen, manganese, zinc, iron, or anything else. If it's made in a lab and thrown into dirt as an additive, it's not natural OR organic.
I have a lot of goals for this year's garden:
Compost.
I want to compost this year at both my parents' house and at my future in laws'. Since I don't get to have my own garden due to living in an apartment, I use their yards and we all share in the labor and fruits. It's kind of a sweet deal, especially since at my future in laws' we have 14 awesome chickens consisting of 13 egg layers and a rooster and they've been VERY productive! Best part of about that is chicken poo makes some of the best fertilizer money can buy...and for us it's free! Of course, you can't use it fresh or it has the potential to burn the plants and kill them. One whiff of that stuff and you'll understand why. But I plan on composting their poo and anything else that's biodegradable and thusly provide the gardens with their own helpings of all natural fertilizer that does more than add a few key nutrients, but the entire SPECTRUM of nutrients. It's going to be a challenge to get out there and turn that crap each day, but I'm making a point to stay motivated! Nothing worth doing ever came easy, right?
Proper crop rotation.
I've had a nasty habit of planting whatever I want wherever I want and then wondering why certain plants produce less fruit than others....DUMB on my part! I never thought too much about crop rotation before as a necessity. "Can't we just fertilize the crap out of it and hope for the best?" Sure. We can do a lot of things. For instance, we can eat 20 McDoubles and then fast for a month in order to maintain body weight. The thing is, it isn't practical or smart. Artificial fertilizers like Miracle Grow have a huge impact on your plants, absolutely. The problem is, those plants are getting an overdose of key nutrients and are starved of others. The result is one heck of a showroom tomato...but if we're going by taste, I'll take the smaller, more flavorful organic tomato any day. When we deplete the soil of specific nutrients via growing the same crop over and over again year after year in the same place, letting the soil rest or artificially enhancing that soil aren't enough to really bring the quality back. Monocultures have a nasty habit of creating deserts. If you pay attention to what's happening between soil and plant, you'll really get an idea of how nature was intended to work. For example, one year you decide to fill your yard with corn. Corn as far as the eye can see (up to the back fence...then it's just fence and another yard that you WISH was yours but whatever). Corn requires a LOT of nutrients, a key one being nitrogen. If you keep planting corn over and over again, you'll deplete the nitrogen content of the soil down to nothing. BUT if you rotate from one year growing corn to the NEXT year growing beans, well you've effectively replenished the soil with nitrogen! I know, I know....that's crazy talk! Plants USE nutrients..they can't possibly replenish them! They do both, in fact. Mother Earth News has some wonderful tools to help with knowing which crops to rotate and when. If you can rotate between crop types, you can have a successful garden.
Utilizing ground cover.
I'm not talking about fancy tarps so much as fancy herbs! I want to try something this year that I've never heard of anyone else doing, but it could be fun! I want to minimize weed growth around my plants that I do NOT dig up each year by planting creeping thyme, oregano, mint, and parsley all around. Yes, I'll still have a good number of weeds poking up, but it'll make better use of the space around my grapes, trees, yucca, and so on than wood chips or a tarp.... Plus, weeding the garden is therapeutic for me. I like to take out my aggression on that stupid crab grass and whatever else the crap is growing where I don't want it by pulling them out by their roots and throwing them into the fence where they'll hang and die! If we weren't talking about plants, that would have sounded incredibly morbid....but yeah, I like to get my hands dirty and yank out those pesky weeds. There's just something fulfilling about doing things yourself, you know?
More raised beds.
Raised beds are absolutely wonderful. I didn't think so before, but after experimenting a little last year, I'm sold. They provide better protection from rodents, certain bugs, and weeds on top of looking nice. They're also great for creating good drainage situations for your plants that are rather particular about being water-logged. I know my parents' backyard tends to flood after a good rain and having the one raised bed made a big difference for those plants. It's also easier to harvest, especially root veggies like carrots and beets, or leafy greens like chard and lettuce. However, I refuse to go out and BUY raised bed kits. That's just dumb to me. Why would you spend money on something when you can use pretty much whatever's laying around! I used a whole bunch of old bricks I had laying around the yard from when I wanted to build my own pizza oven...obviously I didn't accomplish it so I utilized the bricks and created a raised bed next to the garage where the ground was severely sunken in. It worked like a charm! You can use old pop or wine bottles, old leftover lumber, paint cans, plastic tubs, whatever you want or have laying around basically! Yes, you'll need to fill them with dirt and that can be pricey if you're buying it all from a store...but if you're composting already, problem solved. Of course, if you're already composting...you've probably thought this through!
Paying more attention to the needs of the plants.
Men. We never stop to ask for directions and HATE to use instruction manuals. However....even I can admit that I probably should. So, I vow to follow the instructions provided on the seed packets much more closely this year! I have another nasty habit of planting things where it's convenient for ME and not where it'll be the most productive for the plant. This year, I'm reading every step provided and doing my best to follow them and plan my gardens for SUCCESS.
MORE SEED SAVING!
This is a key thing for me. Anyone who knows me knows how strongly opposed to Monsanto and their big ag attitude of "no seed shall be grown that we do not own". These corporate bullies are all about buying a whole new crop of seeds each year from their distributors. That's one way to keep food costs up and farmers' profits down... Not for me though. I'm going to expand on my seed saving project that I started last summer and try to save as many seeds from each crop as I can. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it all, but it's a process. I want to make it so that I never need to buy seeds again...now, wanting to buy new varieties or new types of seeds is a completely different story. That's because I want to try something new. But I want to keep a steady supply of "staple" seeds on hand at all times, saved from previous seasons and free for me to share or store.
Aquaponics (take two)
For those that don't know, aquaponics is the all natural, waste-free version of hydroponics. Basically it combines aquaculture and hydroponics to create a super-charged growth method and complete ecosystem. You start by setting up a hydroponic grow area, outdoors or indoors is largely irrelevant for this. Then, instead of the gallon buckets and bubblers and artificial additives for the water, you set up a fish tank and raise fish. Now, they can be fish for decorative purposes or you can raise something edible like trout or tilapia. The type of fish only matters if you plan on eating it. Instead of using a filter to clean the tank of fecal matter, you pump the water out of the tank and into the grow beds just like in hydroponics. The water floods the beds and the plants soak of the ammonia and other waste from the fish, then the water pours back into the fish tank clean and ready for another go around. It's a no waste system that, once established, can produce fruits at up to 6 times the rate of a conventionally grown plant. Too cool. I had a set up like this at my in-laws' last year and it was AWESOME! The problem is, I had too many fish in too small an area....and not a big enough grow bed or enough plants to filter the waste properly. THIS YEAR I know what I did wrong and plan on correcting it. I won't give up!
Spending more time in the garden.
Life gets in the way too much sometimes and I end up wanting to just sit inside and read a book or watch TV rather than go out and observe my plants, pull weeds, or work on a compost pile. Instant gratification isn't always all that gratifying. I want to spend more time learning patience through watching my plants grow and produce. Nature in action is better than any TV show or movie EVEN on Discovery or National Geographic. Just sitting in the garden gives you time to reflect and plan. It's got a healing quality to it. Just being surrounded by God's work...by things you had a hand in growing...it's an indescribable feeling that so many don't stop to even consider. I spend a good amount of time in my gardens, but not nearly what I'd like to. This is a new year and a new chance.
So I started some seeds today. Not a whole lot, but enough to get my blood pumping with excitement and anticipation! I planted some Artichokes, Asparagus, Purple Broccoli, Black Krim Tomatoes, Eggplants, Jalapenos, Orange Bell Peppers....all heirloom seed varieties from www.victoryseeds.com and I'll be planting more as the directions allow..you know since I'm following them and all.. I'm really pumped about the prospects of my gardens this year and all the joy they'll bring to me and those I share them with. This year is kind of my beginning the rest of my life year....I'm getting married in May to the most wonderful girl on the planet (for me!) and raising chickens and gardens and getting closer to earning my degree and becoming a registered interpreter for the deaf! All in all, I'm happy. Money is always tight and always an issue, but give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. I like to think of me doing my part in gardening sustainably as giving back to God somehow.
Morality is doing what is right regardless of what is told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.
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| There were probably about 50 tomato plants here, all heirloom and all pretty productive. I just couldn't bring myself to thin out the "herd" :P |
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| The outer edge of one garden. In this section I grew carrots, beets, herbs, cucuzzi, zucchini, and cucumbers mostly. There were some tomato plants as well, but only a couple. On the far right is the entrance to our chicken yard! |
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| My first raised bed. As you can see, the bricks are all different colors and sizes, but it got the job done at no extra cost and my beets, lettuce, carrots, greens, and herbs were all AMAZINGLY productive! |
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| Here you can see some of my tropicals I planted alongside some veggies. The center tree near the fence is a fig and there are two more on either side of that one. The leaves in the very center near the front are from my lemon tree. Sadly, it died this year due to my neglect, but it fruited! |
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| Here is my bamboo trellis. I've become pretty proficient in constructing sturdy trellises out of bamboo and twine. The plants here are sunflowers, broccoli, cabbage, blue corn, cucuzzi, and wildflowers. |
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| Corn, Cucumbers, Dill, Beans, and Peppers |
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| This is the basic concept for any aquaponics set-up. You can make them as simply or as elaborate as you'd like, just make sure you do it! It's super cool! |
http://www.motherearthnews.com/grow-it/aquaponics-the-basics.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
http://www.motherearthnews.com/city-farming/i-say-compost-you-think-of-rotting-food-dirt-flies-a-horrible-smell-for-that-reason-most-people-wont-even-consider-composting-at-home.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
http://www.motherearthnews.com/grow-it/how-to-rotate-crops-zb0z1302zsto.aspx#axzz2OEILQpnX
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