Blessings

It is 70*F with thunder and lightning and a constant pouring of rain from steel gray skies.  Christmas ham is in the oven.  Warm doggie at my feet, seed catalogs on the table (thanks, Mom, for the gift for even more seeds!), and dreams of gardens and orchards plotted on the property wall map behind me.  We've been so blessed this year.  Wishing you and yours blessings during this magical time of year, and throughout 2016.

From Our Home to Yours

2015 Recap and Some Lessons Learned - Part 1

The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly of  2015.

Next year's garden is always going to be perfect - it is what keeps gardeners gardening.  But I have to say, that while the 2015 season was wayyyyy far from perfect, I have been so blessed to be back on the land.  And despite 12 days of continuous rains that turned most of the tomatoes to mush, I think this may go down as one of my favorite gardening years... but I think I say that every year!

Summer Harvests

 Major Milestones

• Purchased home with 3.8 acres - suburbia to the left, 20-50 acre lots to the right
• Identified existing trees - black walnut, honey locust, winged elms
• Started first large garden in 4 years
• Had photos accepted to http://www.istockphoto.com/
• Took way more photos than in 2014 - way more than double
• Planted Trees
• 11 fruit trees
• 5 weeping willows that I grew from cuttings and that are now several feet tall
• 6 hybrid poplar trees that I also grew from cuttings and that are now 4 or 5 feet tall
• transplant of a cedar from the little woods to the wind break line
• Opened up some of the woods
• Wood mulched most of the existing trees in the pasture
• Harvested Black Walnuts (still more to process!)
• Gave away some of the harvest as Christmas gifts
• Bought local from local producers for Christmas gifts and consumption of things like jam and veggies that I didn't grow or that didn't do well
• Saved seeds from tomatoes, beans, cow peas, basil
• Froze more than 20 pounds of tomatoes, a pound of basil, lots of bell peppers
• Dried a lot of peppers
• Purchased tools - for gardening, for canning, for dehydrating, for jerky making
• Helped field dress my husband's first TN deer
• Began planting perennials in the herb garden
• Started most of my own vegetables from seed: tomatoes, peppers, beans, cukes, pumpkins, water melon
• Started many of my herbs from seed: basils, lemon balm, oregano, sweet marjoram, flowering sages, sunflowers
• Road in my first helicopter

View of South Kentucky from my first helicopter ride.

Things that love The South

I guess I could have predicted this, but it is good to have the observations any way

• Sunflowers - even ones planted in straight clay with competition from "weeds" grew and flowered.  Seeds from the same packet of Mammoth sunflower that barely made it to 5 feet tall in the desert with a 10" head grew 8 - 12 feet tall with disks that were nearly two feet across, with stalks 2 inches in diameter.  Bees, praying mantis, and all number of insects partook of their abundance.  I harvested some for seeds for 2016, and I left some standing for the birds.
• Cow Peas - Trialed several varieties - planted around my fruit trees for nitrogen, but also in quantities for eating and seed saving.  I don't think I will have to ever buy seeds for them again. The climbers - easily scaled the sunflowers, and even toppled two of the sunflowers from their weight.
• Basil - Grew nearly 4 feet tall - Mrs. Burns Lemon Basil being my favorite
• Peppers - had not grown a lot of peppers before.  Some of them didn't like all the rain, and some went bonkers, even with the rain.  Cayenne peppers - they loved it here.

Last of the Cayenne and Arroz con Pollo drying.

Squash Bug Hell

So I went on a two week business trip seconds before the Squash Bug Hatch. I came back to two acorn squash fruits and one black tail watermelon - the plants themselves were almost completely consumed.  All the cukes and pumpkins were dead, gone, kaput.  Have to tell my boss - no travel during Summer Squash Bug Battle season.

One of two survivors.  Teach me to go on work travel in August!

Next post to include more recap and plans for the future.

Black Walnut Tree (with view of neighbor's home)

Permaculutre Elements: Apple Trees

The Apple Tree: malus domestica 
The Graphics Fairy

Today's post is going to be a little different than my usual photos or updates around the little farm.  In this post and in an on-again, off-again fashion, I plan to run a series of element analysis from a practical permaculture perspective.  So here we go....

For those of you who might have read my High Desert Gardening Blog (pre-permaculture), you will know that the three little scrawny apple trees sitting out in my field are not the first apple trees that I have planted.  The reason is that they are easy to grow, I like to eat apples, and a number of livestock species also like them.

The Apple is a fruit tree and a member of the rose family. There are several thousands of cultivars, and it is commonly used as food for livestock and for people.

Family: Rosaceae    Genus: Malus        Species: Malus domestica

Sample Cultivars:  Arkansas Black, Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, Holstein, Pink Lady, Virginia Winesap

Intrinsic Characteristics

• Permaculture Zones: All
• Layers: Understory or overstory tree
• Placement: in orchards, gardens, food forests, wild wooded areas, and as specimens in ornamental landscaping. Also grown in containers and as espalier. 
• Size: cultivars range in size from 6 foot tall or less on dwarfing root stock, or upwards of 30 feet tall on some standard (own root) trees.
• Tree Type: Deciduous – loses leaves in the dormant season 
• Longevity - dwarf trees on root stocks may begin fruiting years earlier than own root trees, but they also pass away sooner

Outputs
Note that while some outputs don't need any additional inputs and can stand on their own, many of the outputs may or could.  Where space, time, and interest intersect, I will include them.

• For the Bees - nectar and pollen
•  Beauty - spring time flowers in shades of white from pretty dog-goned white to creamy white to pink
• Fresh food for - People, chickens, hogs, horses, goats, deer, and other wildlife
• Preserved for People - frozen (as sauce or pie filling), dried, as part of cider or rumtopf
• Leaves - composting or to leave around trees
• Scion wood - to graft onto root stock for new trees
• Seeds - to start new trees on the cheap to see what new variety you might discover
• Wood - for fires, smoking chips, building

Inputs
Note: some of these inputs may not be needed for your situation, but I'm listing a list here, so work with me.

• Wood mulch and/or compost
• Understory nitrogen fixers - peas, field or cow peas, clover 
• Stakes - for staking young trees
• Tree Wrap - for protecting young trees from sun scald or rabbits or to help keep trees dormant as long as possible during early springs
• Wire fencing - or other protection, especially in zones 3, 4 and 5 where there is deer and rabbit pressure
• Compost tea - to inoculate wood mulch and to spray on leaves to protect against various mildews and fungus, and as a type of foliar feed
• Pruning equipment - pruners, loppers, knives, saws, something to sterilize them between cuttings
• Harvesting equipment - long handled picker for taller trees, ladder, basket, cart or wheel barrow
• Other apple tree(s) - for pollination.  If others are growing apples near by, or if you have crab apples, this might not be an issue; however, you still may wish to plant a known pollinator just to be sure.  To find out what apples pollinate each other, check out this Online Pollination Checker.  They check other fruit pollinators, also.

Other Things to Think About

• Climate - are you in the hot, humid South where it rains "all the time"? Then you will need cultivars that are fungal disease resistant.  Are you in a "warm winter" area? Then low chill apples may be what you need
• Tree Size - do you have acreage where you will keep your trees 20 feet apart or more? Or will you be growing two trees to a hole in a densely planted suburban yard?  Or will you be somewhere in between?  What kind of trees do well like that?
• Dwarf and semi-dwarf trees -  you may wish to succession plan for trees that may only be at their peak for 15 - 20 years - planting a new set every few years ensures continuous production

Mulching Trees

Took me less than an hour to winter wrap my 16 trees and a couple of hours to mulch them. This leads me to believe that on a one woman scale, I can  probably more or less triple the number of trees and still care for them individually.  Maybe about 50 trees total?  And, perhaps, as I become more experienced, I will learn some tricks that will allow me to double that?  Anyway, here is my process.  Keep in mind, I did this once already, when I planted them, but with much finer mulch.  With the warm sunny days combined with lots of rain, the attack of the grass is never ending.  Several times during the summer I "chopped and dropped" the grass and other weeds; therefore, between the decomposition of the finer mulch and the attack of the grass, signs of the old cardboard & mulch are difficult to find.  Details of how I mulch below.

Farm dogs are good for guarding against zombie bunnies.

The city will load your truck or trailer for free if you don't have a cover for it.  Alas, I do have a cover on the bed of my truck, so all of this was hand loaded.  The windrows of mulch are at least as tall as a  house, so I back the truck in with the lid up and the tailgate down until the tailgate is a few inches into the mound.  I then take a stiff rake and essentially help gravity move the mulch into the truck.  Once home, I unloaded it onto a tarp near the garden and fruit trees.  Later on, when about half the mulch has been used, I will be able to drag the tarp about 100 feet so that it will be near my windbreak trees for the balance of use.  The pile looks so small for being a pickup truck full.  I was concerned that I would not be able to mulch all 16 trees, and I was right.  The last tree definitely got skimped on a bit.

This is what a pickup truck of mulch looks like.

This is what one of my apple trees looked like pre-mulching.  You can see the dry grass from the last time I cut it down.  The dry grass is a few inches thick and provides its own kind of mulch.

Before mulching.

First a layer of cardboard.  I'm not particular what kind.  I leave the tape and labels on it.  I would put a thicker layer of cardboard, but with 16 trees, I was kind of lean on cardboard, too.  A six inch deep layer of mulch over the cardboard should keep the weeds from coming through even after the cardboard decomposes.  The photo below shows a tree half-done.  Note that I do not put the cardboard or the mulch right up against the trunk of the tree, but aim to keep it about 6 inches away.

My favorite non-organic drink.  Not a purest, here.

This activity was timed to happen the morning before a drenching rain with the idea that the rain would settle the cardboard and mulch and mold it to the shape of the land.  Most of the windbreak trees did not get a full 6 inches of compost on them.  I think another trip to the city this week is probably in order.  The plan is to keep expanding the mulch to each tree's drip line as they grow.

Free Mulch from the City

There is some debate about whether or not mulch created from the city's tree trimming and yard waste pickup program should be used for food production gardeners (or by anyone at all).  Tree trimmings and such may have been subject to pesticide and herbicide spray or over spray.  Perhaps some of the materials carry disease that can contaminate your own plants.  All valid concerns; however, it appears that the mulch created by our municipality is harmless in those regards: 

• Beans, a particularly sensitive crop, thrived with this mulch
• Various fungus bloomed and faded throughout the summer season
• Earthworms are loving it under the mulch - we dug nearly 3 tree holes and saw less than half a dozen worms.  Where I have mulched, they are now proliferating.

One mostly full pickup truck bed of mulch = 54 five gallon buckets.

I think a contributing factor to the quality of the mulch is that it is regularly turned when it gets to the city's mulch yard. It gets steamy hot in many places, as evidenced by the steam rising from the various piles, and that contributes to the killing of pathogens and weed seeds and the breakdown of harmful chemicals.  They don't mix a younger pile into an older pile.

So after much consideration, I am now using the city's free mulch "everywhere."

• In the paths between garden beds
• Around young trees, and eventually about the larger trees in our pasture
• On garden beds to "winterize" them
• As the bottom layer of my compost pile

Future uses

• Sifted to incorporate the finer pieces into my garden beds
• As the "litter" layer to my chicken run
• In conjunction with cardboard and landscape fabric to deter weeds around the part of my home that we would like to keep looking "suburban" and along fence lines that I want to keep weed free so I can grow what I want along the fence lines

Speaking of cardboard, there are also debates about chemicals in cardboard.  The rain and the elements seem to be decomposing the cardboard with no ill effects, and it also actually seems to be quite beneficial.  Instead of hauling my boxes off to a recycle center, I used them as the underlay for various mulching projects.  After a few months of Southern heat and humidity, they are well broken down.  I imagine by next year I will not see any bits at all.  I've been retrieving the remnants of tape and labels, but even a lot of that appears to be decomposing.

Decomposing cardboard lifted from under mulch.
(Placed on winter killed grass for viewing purposes.)

Apples from the Farmers Market

My little fruit orchard is still in its infancy so my little apple trees are still several years from fruiting; however, that is not going to stop me from making home made apple sauce! 

One of my baby apple trees all wrapped up for winter.

Today was the last day of our local farmers market (The Mufreesboro Saturday Market), so I stocked up on apples.  Enough to make 2 batches of crock pot apple sauce (recipe below), an apple pie, and maybe have some to dehydrate.

Winesap, Granny Smith, Unknown, Roma

They smell soooooo goooood!

Unknown, but these are spicy delicious and crunchy

I am thinking that I made out like a bandit! I can't wait to be able to gather apples from my own three little trees one day. Grand Gala, September Wonder Fujii, and a Granny Smith.  Maybe put in some additional varieties in the spring?

*** *** ***

So my crock pot apple sauce is more like apple pie filling with an apple sauce texture.  Not quite as sweet and syrupy and gooey as apple pie filling, but full of that rich, complex, cinnamon, vanilla, clove flavor.  I know clove doesn't sound like something to add to apple sauce, but just a pinch leaves out the distinct clove flavor and smell while adding richness.  The following is for a large crock pot.

•  14 - 20 apples, depending on size, peeled and cut into chunks or thick slices (either way, they will cook down into sauce)
• 1 cup of warm water - maybe less
• 1/2 c cornstarch
• up to 1 cup sugar if you have mostly tart apples?  I've made this with no sugar before, and it is good that way, too.  In fact, sometimes I like it better that way.
• 1/2 to 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 to 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground clove
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or flavoring
• Optional: 1/2 stick of butter (if you aren't going to use real butter, skip this - margarine just doesn't really add anything in my opinion)

Fill the crock pot to the top - it will shrink down as it cooks.  Except for the optional butter, mix all of the other ingredients in with the water and pour over apples.  Dot butter on top like for a pie.  Cook covered on low for 4-6 hours.  Start checking every hour after the first two hours and turn off as soon as it is "mashable" with a wooden spoon.  Mash up and let sit covered for several hours to cool.  Sometimes a skin will start to form as it cools.  I use a wire whisk to reincorporate it.  This usually means that I used too much cornstarch.  Which may not be uncommon as I am not good with measuring things.

*** *** ***  

Sorry, forgot to take photos of the apple sauce process.  I did, however, take pictures of the Yellow Jackets while I was cutting up apples on the back porch.  I gave them their own bit of apple trimmings on the far side of the table, and for the most part, they were happy to enjoy their apples over there and leave the knife-wielding woman alone.  And speaking of apple trimmings - I spread the cores and skins around the corner of the property where we have seen deer tracks before.  I figure, worst case, the squirrels will enjoy.  And that is not a bad thing. 

Sneaky Yellow Jacket thinks I don't know that it is sipping apple juice.

New FaceBook Page

The Little Biddy Hen House is now on FaceBook!  Not sure what I'll be doing with it, but since I'm a FaceBook Junkie, I'm sure there will be something there.

Black Walnut Obsession and Other Updates

Thistle Down and Black Walnuts

Yes, I suppose I am obsessing.  Have 5 or 6 more five gallon buckets full to hull and dry.  And after spending 2 hours with a hammer cracking them to win barely a cup of nut meats, I ponied up $40 and bought a purpose built nut cracker.  I spent an hour learning to use it, and I think I will be able to shell 2 cups or so of nut meats an hour after a little practice.  Yay!  Black walnuts for baking this winter.  And maybe some to give away.  At $20 a pound or so on Amazon, I should make back my $40 this season.

Tiny Red Spider among the floating bubbles of Morning Dew.

One of the reasons I am so slow at stomping on walnuts (to husk them) and putting them into my bucket is because I am always distracted by some little insect or, in this case, a tiny arachnid.  Less than 1/4 inch long, this little red spider is a marvel of industry.  The whole web is about 5 inches across, and covered in morning dew.

Last of the Summer Basil.

I feel bad that with all the abundance of Basil that we had this year, I did not put more up for winter stews and spaghetti sauce.  But, I did dash out on the evening before our first hard frost and gather up a few trays to dry.   I also got a tray of lemon balm, Melissa Officinalis, to dry to add to tea this winter.

Walnut Harvesting Update

After some small experimentation, I have decided that, for my small scale processing, the boot method looks like it will work.

The one showing ridges is ready for drying - the others need another round of cleaning.

1. Look for walnuts where the husk has darkened on on side
2. Step on walnut with heel of "mucky boot" and squash
3. With rubber/latex glove, "squirt" walnut out of hull
4. Leave hull to decompose right where it is
5. Fill 5 gallon bucket until bucket is about half full
6. Use the "jet" setting on a hose sprayer nozzle to spray walnuts in the bucket until water just covers the walnuts
7. Use a 3 prong hand cultivator to mix the walnuts against each other until the water is really dark
8. I am discarding the water where I am trying to kill weeds on my gravel driveway
9. Repeat the rinsing cycle a few times
10. Spread nuts out to dry

I was able to process three times as many walnuts as my first try (4 hours for a mixing bowl full of walnuts) - in about half an hour.  I could have probably cut the time down, but I spent a lot of the time picking up walnuts being slow and lazy.  If I had put some energy into it, I'm sure I could have picked up that many walnuts in a much shorter time period. 

From what I have read, Black Walnuts often only produce every other year or every 3rd year or so. There are still buckets of walnuts to harvest, so I am assuming this is one of the "good" years. So gotta harvest enough to have walnuts for a few years of brownies and banana bread! (And I say that like I actually bake...)

These ones have been drying for about a week now. 

Black Walnut Harvesting

American Black Walnut - July 2015

Back in March and April (2105), when all of the trees had begun to leaf out, this one lone tree in the middle of the pasture remained leafless.  Earlier in the winter, my husband had cut vines as thick as my wrist from around her.  As all the other trees stirred to life, we thought that perhaps we were to late in rescuing her from the strangling vines.  By May, however, she began to leaf out, and as Summer brought warm rains and sunshine, she came into her own.  By July we knew she was going to gift us with many gallons of walnuts.

In less than 5 minutes I had gathered a 5 gallon bucket full.
There are at least 15 more gallons from her, and twice as much from her sister.

Fast forward to Autumn:  October has been cool and drizzly so far.  Portents of winter, but also the harbinger of garlic planting season and the walnut harvest.  I donned a sweat shirt, shorts, and mucky boots (after all, I'm from Northern Nevada, and it wasn't that cold), and headed out to try my hand at preparing walnuts.  Native North American Black Walnuts, to be exact.  I had watched my YouTube videos and read various blog posts, and now I was finally going to do it.

Being too lazy to find my small hammer, I substituted my small crescent wrench.

I only harvested a small 5 gallon bucket of fallen walnuts, and I was pretty sure I could process those by hand.  I had seen a video where the hulls were tapped all around with a hammer and then twisted off of the hard shell.  This seemed like an easy, no stress, low tech way to spend a Saturday afternoon on the back porch looking out at the drizzle.  Since I couldn't find my small hammer, I convinced myself that the back of a crescent wrench head was probably a better shape for mashing walnut husks, anyway.  And, indeed, it worked well.  As walnut juices stain, I was forewarned, and wore heavy dish washing gloves.  I listened to some TED talks and got into the rhythm of tap-tap-tap and twist.  I got to where I could hull one in less than half a minute.

After hulling 5 gallons of walnuts, the husks still added up to nearly 5 gallons.

Hulling the walnuts takes off the husk and most of the "fruit," but the walnuts are still covered in a fair amount of gunky stuff.  I can see where pressure washing them might make the final cleaning much easier than the method I used, but walnut husks and leaves contain juglone, and juglone prevents other plants from growing.  So I used the wash 'em in a bucket method and scrub 'em with a wire bristled grill brush.  I poured the resulting black water and sludge where I did not want anything to grow.  While husking 5 gallons of walnuts by hand was not a major ordeal, hand cleaning was.  Definitely going to look for a better method of washing them.

 

5 gallon bucket of un-husked walnuts equals one large mixing bowl of shell-on nuts.

All and all, I spent four hours to get on mixing bowl full of nuts.  And I haven't even shelled them yet.  They will need to hang out and dry for a few to several weeks, depending on temperature and humidity before I can crack them and find out what the actual harvest will be.  Still, even though I need a method that will scale, I'm pretty happy with this modest haul.

Can't wait for them to dry so I can crack some open and eat them!