Greenhouse

I was talking to a guy at work the other day, turns out he is a urban gardener with ideas. He did not know what GMO was, and when I explained it he talked about how he planted grocery store garlic and the roots cut from store bought onions he and his wife had eaten. It is written all over that that is not the way to do it, but he says he has good success. He has chickens in the city and knows nothing of genetics, though he is able to keep his 4 chickens healthy and laying. He wants to put in a small water tank and raise tilapia and prawns and is trying to secure a bank owned forclosure commercial greenhouse to house his indoor tanks. He says that the bank that is trying to get rid of them has quite a few of them and that next month if they do not sell at auction they are there for the taking, free. I told him I was all about that and he promised to keep me informed. He needs one for a small city yard, I can take as many as they have probably. If these greenhouses are a reality, it's a true game changer and things would happen quickly. I would put it to where you could just see it on the left in this picture.

The Garlic is in

I planted two bulbs each of hard and soft neck garlic with a strip of rye grass in between. I turned the plot where I had planted the turnips and beets and put the garlic there, nothing had come up so I added all the organic stuff I could find and tilled in a bag of sand. The rye cover crop in the other little plot looks good and won't need messed with till spring. There is so much to learn.

All I can do now is long range planning. Long long range, two to four years, I need a barn and I want a pond. I am having some trouble deciding on a barn site, the most convenient place holds water in the spring. I have a tractor, perfect for my needs a 1968 gas Ford 3000, about 40 hp. A hickory tree fell on it in an ice storm a couple of years ago, but my neighbor fixed it up and it runs fine, its just not very pretty. I want a 4 ft PTO tiller when I can find one, it will be a while before I have a garden big enough to need it, but I want it.

I have my second generation of chainsaws, I already tore up a couple learning how to use them, got it down now. I need a maul to split wood. I want a riding mower. I have a brush-hog but it is a rough imprecise tool, I need something more powerful than the little push mower I have. I want all manner of woodworking tools, I have plans, but I figure I can just accumulate them over time from estate sales and Craigslist etc.

I have lots of plans and Ideas, I would love a greenhouse someday. I want to increase my beehives from 2 to about 6 and understand more of what is going on with my bees. I think in the after a couple of years the bees will eventually pay for themselves, we shall see.

So far from here to there, though each journey begins with one step.

What it is all about.

There are so many aspects of life to think about and I have decided to try to move to a more simple existence, from a completely urban one to some level of a completely rural one. I am hoping there will be more meaning in my existence by doing this. I already have the land and the house. I am hoping the transition will not take more than three or four years.

There so many levels of self-sufficiency to consider. I mean, is it more important to be off the grid or to grow all of your food? Are overall expenditures an overriding factor, or do you worry more about your carbon footprint? If you consider existence finite, how much time do you spend doing what you dislike and how much do you care about your legacy, or that which comes once you are no more?

I suppose it is small parts of all these things, though I do know that if I was certain of the answers I would be wrong. It’s always that way, the one who is absolutely sure is almost always absolutely wrong. Go figure.

I want to be reasonably self-sufficient, grow and gather a large part of what I consume, keep my energy consumption down for the planet and my pocketbook, live long in good health, have a plan when I get out of bed in the morning, be a friend to most and be missed when I am gone. Hopefully this will document the real life application of my efforts to achieve these things.

This is a $40 tiller.

Sweet, don't you think?

The two plots are rye grass as a cover crop and turnips and beet as a fall crop.

I am just getting started on this thing, learning how to use everything. Nice pic though, don't you think?