Gardening
1

Filling The Trench Garden Bed

I always need another garden bed, but my goal this year is to work really hard on getting enough production from the garden that I can put away a decent amount of food. In the past, I have done some pickling, canning, and fermenting, but no large amount of food …

Fermentation

Compost Tea

Compost tea is a simple way to make your own rich, all organic fertilizer for all of your garden. Here is how I make mine: I started with a bucket full of compost. I filled the bucket to the top with water. If I happen to have some dirty dish …

Food Forest
1

3. Obtain a Yield

The most obvious example of “obtain a yield” is to grow food.  You do work planting, growing, maintaining, and harvesting a garden to get a yeild.  Amazing food that you can eat and then store the excess to eat through the winter.  Simple, right? We can make it a little …

Bugs
11

Permaculture Design Principles

The permaculture design principles are a set of tools that we are using to design a more efficient and sustainable homestead.  While we are using these principles in a certain way, according to what we have and our climate, these principles can be universally applied to create systems anywhere you …

Food Forest

What is Permaculture?

What is permaculture? Broken down into its parts, permanent agriculture. It is a sustainable living methodology including home, garden, and community. According to Bill Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, it is, “The conscious design and maintenance of cultivated ecosystems which have the diversity, sustainability, and resilience of natural …

Food Forest

Autumn is for Garden Bed Building

My autumn season has been incredibly busy.  Cut firewood.  Haul materials for new garden beds.  Along with all the regular chores of course.  I am preparing beds now so that the compost can start to rot in its new home and because the leaves are so numerous in the autumn.  …

Gardening

Chop and Drop: Weeds for Mulching

I have many areas around the house that are suppossed to be the yard.  However, being fresh cut forest, the wild field plants have taken over.  I plan to turn these wild plants and excess of trees into mulch.  The majority of our lot is wooded, so I don’t feel …

Gardening
2

Head to the Beach for Compost

We have lived in Maine for 3 years now and have not yet been to the beach.  We have been too busy working on everything to take a day or two to go to the shore.  But I finally have the perfect reason to go: seaweed for the garden soil. …

Bugs

Spring Preparations Part Two

Last week, I shared some of my spring preparations.  Well, it turns out that all we have done in the past month or two was prepare for spring.  So this week I will share more of what we have done to prepare for this year and some pictures around the …

Gardening
1

Spring Preparations

  I haven’t done any real interesting projects lately due to the urgent need to improve the soil for the gardens this year and every year to come.  We are focusing right now on cleanup and garden soil.  I have been raking leaves, building compost piles, cutting the logs that …