Finally found time for another post...lets catch you guys up.

I apologize to my few followers on this blog for the long quiet, things have been crazy at work and I have had very little spare time at home that I wasn't just bone tired and beat down. Here is why...

Your looking at the temp app. on my cell phone, and yep, that does say 124.1 degrees F (with temps over 130 degrees coming off the deck of the ship) and those were my last set of work gloves after line handling last week. But you don't come here to listen to me complain, your here to ooh and ahh over pics of our little micro-farm, so I won't keep you guys in suspense any longer...

The garden did well despite the drought. Lynne was very good about keeping up on the watering and the weeding, we got tons of tomatoes, zucchini, melons, some beans and such...

 

The mint came in very well, I think we are going to be set for some time to come on that front. Mint tea is a staple in the fridge and great in this heat.

The herb garden was only partially successful. I really didn't have the time to give to it that I should have...I have some ideas on improving the soil quality this winter...hopefully next year I'll have a better turn out.

We got some chicks late in the spring / early summer, just as the weather was warming up.

We used one of the empty spaces in our rabbit hutch to server as their nursery until the chicken tractor was completed.

The tractor under construction, but due too the rate the chicks were growing at, they got to move in before we had it completed.

The chicks quickly getting bigger.

The completed tractor and the chickens today. I still need to put the wheels on the back of the thing but we are currently using two had truck to move them around the yard. No eggs yet, but they should start laying any day now...the rosters have just about got their crow in. It was hilarious the first time I heard on try to crow, it's voice breaking like a teenagers.

We intend to let the birds be free range, but are having trouble with one of our Aussie's killing the birds (2 so far). Going to have to watch them like a hawk when the dogs are out...

Also, no rabbits as of this time. We do intend on getting some, but we have to be careful and be sure to get a breed that can take the heat down here. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Well, that about catches us up. Still no cease and desist order. Until next time my friends.

A Public Service Announcement - Death be to Fire Ants

Yep, still no cider...but I am sipping a Shiner Bock at the moment, isn't that close enough?

No, I don't think so either...but onto the subject at hand...Fire Ants, or more accurately, how to f'ing kill the little f'ers! (No, they don't like me either.)

Now, if you live in the south, and many of us do, you have no doubt been introduced to the presence of these little critters from south of the border. Yep, that's right folks, much like the Africanized bees that are illegally crossing our border as we speak, the Fire Ant was the one that showed them the way (makes one wonder...can Fire Ants swim? I digress).

So you have several options...gasoline and fire (a redneck's favorite), poisoning (expensive and if you want it in your water, put it on the ground), or the organic, non-toxic, totally natural, tree hugging, hippie dippie method of Fire Ant death...

Yep, grits...I crap you not.

It works like this...Ant sees grit, ant eats grit, ant gets thirsty and goes down into hill for water OR even better, takes grit to queen ant on her little dirt fire ant throne and lets queen eat the grit. Then ant drinks water. Grit expands, ant does not, ant does the best impersonation of popcorn it can.

If it doesn't kill the hive outright, it will force the hive to move to more "environmentally friendly" pastures.

How much does one use? Well, that depends on the hive...but I just use  enough to cover the top of the hill with a thin layer. Every other day or so I check and see if it need a new dusting and poke the hill with a stick...if ants come out, they get more grits until between ten days to two weeks later the hill looks something like this...

Notice the caved in tunnels? The dry center? The layer of new growth? This hive is gone.

And, not only is it clean, non-toxic to Yankees (yeah, try telling a northerner that grits taste "good", Life Partner is sitting here saying "Grits are GROSS!") and pets, but are cheaper than dirt (should know after buying all that potting soil)...at about $1.00 to $1.30 per can at the local Mega Mart.

So, I hope this post helps and you too will be living the life of a Fire Ante free homestead, urban or otherwise.

Peace folks! :-)

The Best Laid Plans of Mice...

I know, I know...I promised Cider...well, that was the plan, especially because I knew I was going to be working this weekend after we had to cancel our camping trip...(Boo!)...and I was going to be getting thirsty doing thirsty work and all...

But, lets get caught up on what we've been doing...

 We now have eight full beds and two single row micro beds along the southern edge of the garden.

To date we have planted tomatoes, sweet onions, red onions, peas, squash, water melon, honeydew melon, and we have about 1/3 left open for further cultivation.

Planting has begun...

We have two shade arbors built from recycled/reused  materials (some needed patching and reinforcement).

  

Arbor for chard shading and something for beans to climb.

The herb garden is in...plans seem to be the first point of deviation and I have different medicinals that I had originally planned, but almost all my original culinary herbs...also added were two aloe plants and a rose bush.

And we are planning a larger one...the circle is 24 feet across and there are pepper plants along the perimeter of both gardens.

Notice the jungle that is our front yard? Centipede sod is the bane of my existence...

Our mint bed is planted and that is a pepper plant beside it. We do quite a bit of container gardening and especially with mint, if you let it go, it'll choke out an entire bed of herbs. (Yes, that is an old lid from a luggage  carrier that at one time was strapped to the top of some middle class families car on it's way to Disney Land. Did I mention we recycle a lot?)

The strawberry bed has it's bed of fertilizer down and is just waiting me to scrape enough dirt out of the middle of the main garden to fill in the box.

And as if that wasn't enough, the ever industrious Life Partner started several other plants from sprouts she had started from seed.

We got a lot done this week. So now we relax...got more to do tomorrow...

Today We Rocked!

Tilling up ground for our garden doesn't sound like it would be much work...Not with a modern tiller sporting a 6.5 horse power Briggs and Stratton motor on it...

Until you realize you are tilling through centipede sod, in SE Texas soil (sand and clay mix) thats almost as hard as concrete at times. And before you can plant all that mulched plant mater needs to be raked out of the soil so it can be tilled again...today we did three passes on a virgin stretch and retouched the one we did yesterday.

We tilled enough for 8 4'x25' beds. Zucchini, Chard, Tomatoes, Radishes, Watermelon, Bell Peppers, Potatoes, Green Beans, Peas (if its cool enough) will be going in. We have some wire fencing that we intend to make almost an arbor with to run the beans through and plant the chard under it so it stays shaded

While my lovely girlfriend was rocking on the tiller and between helping her rake the main garden I was clearing the site for our herb garden with a hoe, rakes and shovel and other implements of destruction...It was a groovy thing and a good time was had by all.

I still have to figure out the layout but the plot is going to contain both cooking and medicinal herbs. I love Flat Italian Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (yes, I'm a Simon and Garfunkel fan). Garlic is alway a staple in my cooking. Cilantro/Coriander, Oregano, Basil, Chives, and just for Lynne, Curled Parsley.

For the medicinals I'm going to be looking for Feverfew, Catnip (going to have to containerize due to our cats having a bad drug habit - stoner kitties), Horse Mint, Rose for Rose Hips, St. Johns Wort and Comfrey (some where outside the bed as it get's huge)...maybe some others, still deciding on what I want.

That pile of mulch in the back is all the material I removed from the bed. It's now my compost pile. Tomorrow I'll be stopping at the bait shop to pick up a couple cartons of night crawlers to help the process along.

Our next door neighbor has graciously donated three rows of his field to us and we are probably going to put in gourds there (bird houses, gourd art, paleo canteens, rice wine bottles, etc) along with watermelons.

I was wanting to post some picks of wild edible from our front yard, but unfortunately was too busy working to play...but just to let you know...Cleavers are in season and great in salad, Clover is coming up nicely, Dandelions are young and tender, and First Year Thistle just about ripe for harvesting (but is almost as labor intensive as Black Walnut to process), Violets are in bloom and make a colorful addition to salads. Cat Tails are sprouting nicely in our drainage and Blackberry leaves and Pine needles make a tea, but rich in Vitamin C.

And while I'm harping on salads, we also have three jars of sprouts growing on our kitchen counter, radish, alfalfa, and bean sprouts.

My next post should be about making homemade hard cider.

Remember, no matter where you are, you can homestead. So to all my friends, keep up the good works.

Still no Cease and Desist order...

So I'm still up and running and no response from the Dervaes family concerning the lawsuit filed against them by the lawyers of Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen.

It's been a slow week at the "sub"urban homestead but the weekend brought plenty of opportunity  for us to get some work done. We are doubling the size of our garden and have cleared some land around the front of the property.

Last weekend I built solar evaporation still as a project and tomorrow will post the process and make some corrections to the method I documented on my FB account. Depending on how money looks, I'll also be getting the materials to start a couple of square foot garden beds and possible restart my herb garden that I had when I was stationed in Georgia.

Well, basically this was just a quick post to say I was checking in...should have pictures and other brick-a-brack up soon.

See you in the city...

Reasons I'm Starting This Blog...

Basically it comes down to some group of individuals telling people that they had to stop or change their blogs and websites to some other phrasing because they now had the term "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" trademarked. The said group is the Dervaes family of Pasadena CA. who have been urban homesteading for the past couple of decades.

While the Dervaes family have pushed the concept to the extreme, producing over 5000 pounds of food a year on their 6/10's of an acre, and have copious amounts of information on the subject published on their site, they are by no means the only practitioners of this philosophy...they are by no means the only contributors to the subject material, and are definitely NOT even the creators of the phrase, but are now asking people who have been writing and have copyrighted material in print to actually change the titles of their works. This is like trademarking the term "tennis shoe" and then telling Nike, Converse, New Balance, etc. they can no longer call their products tennis shoes.

This matter was brought to my attention last week. During that time I have watched facebook pages like Take Back Urban Homesteading, and associated  websites numbers increase exponentially over the last several days. On the down side, it looks like we are going to be heading into a long and protracted legal battle with the Dervaes family (who, according to rumor is loosing most of their business because of pulling this stunt), but on the positive, we are discovering dozens, if not hundreds of other bloggers out there willing to share their information and experience. Who knew there were so many of us out there? I can tell you one group that had no clue...much to their chagrin right now.

So what do I intend to do with this blog? Well, my groovy life-mate hippie girlfriend has been homesteading her place as much as possible for some time now and I've been interested in it for years, but have only recently had a chance to get my hands dirty. Along with chronicling our experience through the year in our "sub"urban homesteading (we live "just" outside of town), I will be writhing about disaster preparedness (living in hurricane territory, tornado country and close to a flood plain we need to be ready), and permaculture or sustainable independent living and self-sufficiency.

Until the next time...or the cease and desist order comes in...