SlavaOn
Jedi Master
Hello.
One part of living an independent life is to produce your own food.
For the last decade or more, that I lived in the American suburbia, I really didn't have an opportunity to do the above. I was able to raise a bed of tomato plants or a few strawberry plants and that was it. Last summer, the house that we were renting had a garden plot surrounded by the tall chain-link fence (to stop the deer from eating all the vegetables) and I dipped my toes into gardening deeper. I grew peas, squashes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, kale, radishes, beets and mini watermelons. And I saved a lot of seeds.
This year, I am turning the tables. Our new house will be build on 1 acre of land, all surrounded by woods, far away from HOAs and hard-top roads by this summer (it is in Piedmont region of Northern Virginia, on an Eastern side of one of Appalachian ridges). I have been studying the efficient ways to create gardens and to maximize the production on small plots of land. The way to do it is called permaculture. I will point you to a popular online forum that covers all topics related to permaculture: http://www.permies.com/forums
I found that the heating is possible very efficiently with rocket mass stoves; the green houses could be made to produce all year long if they are partially underground and use the earth as the accumulator of heat; chicken coops could be made from recycled wood using storage pallets; Hugel-kultur technique uses buried wood as a fertilizer for your plants.
This is what I have embraced in the earnest. I have had a huge surplus of poplar trees after the lot had been cleared last summer. I could use them for firewood, but I didn't need that much! So, I piled all these huge logs on the bottom of the hill, where they will be soaking water run offs and feed the plants for years to come. I will cover them with soil when the excavation of the basement starts.
And I almost forgot to mention the mushroom farm. I used the stumps from those poplar trees and infected them with mushroom spores.
It is done by drilling holes and hammering wooden dowels that have the mushroom mycelium growing in them. Such wood-loving mushrooms as reishi, shiitake and a variety of oyster will be thriving in poplar logs. It is estimated that mushrooms would bring 10% of the weight of the wood that they consume in its fruiting bodies over the next 6-10 years.
If a hive of wild honey bees, that lived in one of the poplar trees, survives this winter, I am going to have some honey.
Hopefully, all the above will make me somewhat food-independent. I will be glad to share my experience as I go. Wish me luck!
SlavaOn
One part of living an independent life is to produce your own food.
For the last decade or more, that I lived in the American suburbia, I really didn't have an opportunity to do the above. I was able to raise a bed of tomato plants or a few strawberry plants and that was it. Last summer, the house that we were renting had a garden plot surrounded by the tall chain-link fence (to stop the deer from eating all the vegetables) and I dipped my toes into gardening deeper. I grew peas, squashes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, kale, radishes, beets and mini watermelons. And I saved a lot of seeds.
This year, I am turning the tables. Our new house will be build on 1 acre of land, all surrounded by woods, far away from HOAs and hard-top roads by this summer (it is in Piedmont region of Northern Virginia, on an Eastern side of one of Appalachian ridges). I have been studying the efficient ways to create gardens and to maximize the production on small plots of land. The way to do it is called permaculture. I will point you to a popular online forum that covers all topics related to permaculture: http://www.permies.com/forums
I found that the heating is possible very efficiently with rocket mass stoves; the green houses could be made to produce all year long if they are partially underground and use the earth as the accumulator of heat; chicken coops could be made from recycled wood using storage pallets; Hugel-kultur technique uses buried wood as a fertilizer for your plants.
This is what I have embraced in the earnest. I have had a huge surplus of poplar trees after the lot had been cleared last summer. I could use them for firewood, but I didn't need that much! So, I piled all these huge logs on the bottom of the hill, where they will be soaking water run offs and feed the plants for years to come. I will cover them with soil when the excavation of the basement starts.
And I almost forgot to mention the mushroom farm. I used the stumps from those poplar trees and infected them with mushroom spores.
It is done by drilling holes and hammering wooden dowels that have the mushroom mycelium growing in them. Such wood-loving mushrooms as reishi, shiitake and a variety of oyster will be thriving in poplar logs. It is estimated that mushrooms would bring 10% of the weight of the wood that they consume in its fruiting bodies over the next 6-10 years.
If a hive of wild honey bees, that lived in one of the poplar trees, survives this winter, I am going to have some honey.
Hopefully, all the above will make me somewhat food-independent. I will be glad to share my experience as I go. Wish me luck!
SlavaOn