Swing Dancing To a Plant-Based Beat

Stopped by our local feed store, Heretick Feed & Seed in Petersburg, back in August to pick up a bunch of collard plants and found out that they would have 17-week old hens in September. So I had them put my name on the call list and began to plan and build the run first. Heretick has been a great resource for feed, straw, pine shaving, diatomaceous earth and many other items that you can use in your urban/suburban homesteading work. I already had the chicken wire at the house, so I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a couple bundles of  2x2's, SPAX screws and went to work on an idea that I had been pondering for a good while now. Instead of building a single box and encasing it in chicken wire, I would build frames and then connect them to form a box. I didn't know how it would work structurally but I was soon gonna find out. So I got to building the frames, two of them 2ft x 8ft and then built six of them 2ft x 4ft. As you can see from the photo, the pieces fit w

It's early November and the leaves are still on the trees, in fact there we are still waiting on the bright fall colors here in central Virginia. We gleaned the garden in September of all the tomato and squash plants and planted some additional crops for the winter. I am hoping to be harvesting from the garden through November, into and possibly through December. I remember, as a child, getting and riding my bike in a t-shirt on Christmas Day. Also of the time my daughter, Caitlin, was swimming in the ocean on a soccer weekend trip to Virginia Beach during the first week of December. So there is hope! One of the things that I think about when I am planning my garden is not only what we like to eat, but also what plants give us the best yield for what would be the retail dollar. There are some plants that simply are not worth the time or space, either because we cannot grow them efficiently or the quality is better in the local market, where farmers grow larger amounts and they are

I had, what I call, a software epiphany on Sunday morning and it goes like this. As a part of my suburban homesteading project, I want to add a few chickens. Therefore I have been Googling chicken tractors, chicken coops, chicken houses, and practically chicken anything in order to come up with some plans to build a somewhat mobile chicken coop. My searches were not too successful as most people are trying to monetize every idea possible. They seem to be less willing to share info on these types of things or maybe some are just not capable of creating the drawings or plans necessary to present a project such as this in any meaningful way. So, I awoke on Sunday morning with this idea in my head and no way to get it out and it was driving me crazy. Once again sitting in front of the monitor I was reminded of Google SketchUp . Having a bit of experience in 2D AutoCAD and Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer , I decided to install it for a second time, after having installed it months a

We have constructed 5 raised beds made of cedar. I documented the construction at Instructables.com  where there are step by step instructions. I used the cedar because of its' durability and have been satisfied. The beds have different fills in each of them, with anything from a soil/compost mixture from a local greenhouse to a mixture of our own dirt and commercial garden soil. We are now supplementing all of the beds from our own compost bin and feeding it with compost tea, from my vermicomposting experiment that I will talk about in another post, that we are mixing up. From this small patch we have harvested peas, yellow squash, zucchini squash, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, collards, kale, eggplant, onions, 3 types of tomatoes, 2 types of jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, green peppers, green beans, lima beans, basil and parsley. Besides a few squash, to supplement what we lost due to squash vine borers, we have not purchased any of the other items all summer long.