Too tired to blog coherently...

So I figure I would blog incherently.

Ron and my Mom came by for a few days. We had a blast.

The beans have a potassium deficiency i was able to diagnose on them via google. I plan to treat them with wood ash and banana peel mulch.

Been reading the Bhagavad Gita.

I feel like I am getting more bang for my buck out here than most people get on religious retreats. 

If you have been enjoying the blog please comment otherwise I will just write in my journal instead.

Ted

P.s. looks like I buried a body here but its actually a new hugelcultur bed for Rhubarb!

Really Impressed with this video

tilling curses the Earth. less work more abundance:
http://vimeo.com/28055108

Chub Pond

Gardening Work Out

Early May:

Early June:


I have lost about 18 lbs so far, doing 4 hours of gardening work 5 days a week. I think I have added a few pounds of muscle too, so its not just fat loss, I am changing my body composition. I initially lost 10 lbs right away and then gained it back and then lost 8 more lbs. I am down to 192 now from 208 when I got here in April. Acoording to this website E:\See How Much weight can you lose Gardening.htm I am burning over 1600 calories a day. I am doing a lot of "hardscaping" i.e. building fences, stone work etc. in addition to some lighter stuff like planbting a weeding. I think carrying logs to the hugelculture bed has been the biggest physically demanding job.

Hugelcultur updates

So here is an update on the Hugelcultur bed. I have been putting compost over everything. It's about five feet high now.

I noticed its coming out at a steep angle, which is good from evreything I've read. But I don't want to lose a lot of top soil from the rain before anything comes up so I made these little stakes to put in, from maple: Then I put them in and criss crossed them with Cane from some Jerusalem artichokes. This grid should hold the soul in while roots have time to grow into it. I ended up using up all the compost. It was really rich compost with lots of worms and bugs and fungus and even a snake! It was great to work with this living medium. Next I put a few bucket loads of alpaca manure on. I should be ready to plant in a few days. I am thinking squash lettuce and some types of perenials.

Podcast is Up!

The video shown below that didn't work before now works! I was able to upload it to vimeo which allows longer videos than Youtube. Enjoy!

No Till discussion and Nature Walk account from Theodore Scott Heistman on Vimeo.

Hugelkultur

Its a German word that's fun to say and a way of making a "no till" "no fertilize" "no water" eventually "no plant" raised Garden bed. Here is a good link on how it works:http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur

So this was my brainstorming idea for Star to have some productive, low maintenance no till garden beds for her 70's 80's and beyond.

Here is what I have done so far:

So what I did here is grub out a rectangular bed. The bed runs roughly north-south with open areas on the east and west. So its a fairly sunny area. Its roughly 20 feet long by three feet wide. On this bed I put these really old hand hewn beams. There is an interesting story behind them.

Jeff's neighbor rescued them from a demolished building. They date to before the Civil War. He used the good ones to build a Timber frame house that he uses as a silboat building shop. They are very beautiful, you can see the hatchet marks. The ones that were a little rotted he had in a pile by the timber frame. They are some kind of really dense hardwood that no one has been able to identify. They come from the Primeval forest that once blanketed upstate NY. Really really close grained wood. 200 years old at least when they were cut. Jeff knows his wood but was unable to identify it. He showed them to a neighbor who is a carver and he had no clue either. My guess is Elm. Because since its extinct no one knows what it looks like any more.

So He cut these up with a chain saw into three foot length and I hauled them to the site from the edge of the drive way and managed to kick my own ass that day. The three foot lengths were close to a hundred lbs. Some were 4 feet. So I put these down as the foundation layer of the bed. On this foundation I placed some green polar logs Jeff cut into chunks and on top of that I placed variuous branches and sticks, some from a downed apple tree. Hardwoods are better than conifers. Over this layer I will place more rotted limbs from around the area and then mulch and manure and then finally the top soil. Then Star will plant it with buckwheat and allow it to season for the fall and winter.

Stay tuned!