Today I made/bought/learnt (for a post oil world) 5

[careinke]

Harvested the first wild asparagus of 2012. I love mixing them in with fresh scrambled eggs from my chickens.

[PrestonSturges]

I pinched a lot of blooms off the persimmon trees so they don't exhaust themselves. I let one make way too many fruit last year and it looks very tired this year.

[Shaved Monkey]

Cut the last of the hardwood for my final 2 veggy beds.
5 beds in total
So far have 2 planted up
One is waiting for the tomatoes and the other for the strawberries
Started some San Marzano seedlings ready to fill one bed totally in a years worth of tomatoes.
Also starting all the winter crops broccoli, cauli,cabbage,broad beans,parsnip.
These only grow here in winter everything else grows virtually all year.
Also planted Corn,French beans, Peas,Asian greens,Zucchini,cherry tomatoes.

Should be veg self sufficient in a month or two

[Shaved Monkey]

self sufficient ish

[Wednesday]

I went shopping for a motorcycle and found a good deal on a 150cc scooter. I didn't buy it because IM looking for 250cc Honda Rebel, but if I don't find what I want, I'm going back for that scooter. It has vintage styling like a Vespa.

[Loki]

Cut another couple dozen mushroom logs today from ash trees that were damaged in last month's snow storm. Chainsaws are fun

I'll be inoculating them tomorrow, got a new 8-amp DeWalt plug-in drill which drills through the logs like warm butter. Much better than the tired old cordless drill I used last week.

Haven't been practicing archery since my bales got knocked over in last month's flood, but I finally got new bales today and set them up, hopefully will get back into regular practice again.

[vtsnowedin]

Bought or ordered rather a 45 horsepower 4 wheel drive tractor with loader. John Deere 5045E assembled in India. They say late June delivery. Should be able to plow the potato field for the next thirty years or more.

[Wednesday]

Why do the mushrooms need to be innoculated?!
I made a replica of a Roman oil lamp out of French White clay. While this one dries, I'll make another with a steeper lip and compare how the wicks burn.

[rangerone314]

This past week & weekend, I moved a small cherry tree to a new spot, moved a small pear tree to the cherry tree's old spot, and planted the new gala apple into the small pear tree's spot. (this accomplished getting the pears & cherry trees closer to each other and got the new apple in a spot adjacent to the other 3 apple trees.

I also got a bit of the northern hedge planted, standard thuja + rose bushes so far although when I reach the shady area I will plant more holly. (probably another 110 across the northern and northwestern property lines).

In the area that is adjacent to the fruit tree bed and the northeast hedge, I got an area sheetmulched around a fig tree and a goji berry bush. (It is one huge mulched bed, the northeast hedge and the fruit-nut tree bed, separated by fence--probably about 5,000 square feet)

I fully weeded the northeast hedge & remulched and then managed to weed the entire length of the driveway along my fruit tree bed. (there is landscaping brick along the driveway and a wire fence). I also got part of the border area on the other side of the fence weeded also.

I continued working on the aesthetics of the house garden, planting two coral bell plants (one purple leafed, one gold) to complement the reddish-orange one and the green ones. Also got a few other flowers planted.

My Schisandra chinensis vine arrived!

[Loki]

I inoculated 27 logs today with 1000 shiitake plugs. Took 4.5 hrs, about an hour faster than my last batch. Better drill, better process, worked at a production pace. 2000 plugs down, just 300 more to go, which I'll do next weekend.

Wednesday, I'm using an old Japanese method of growing culinary and medicinal mushrooms. It involves drilling holes in a log, hammering a spawn plug in, and sealing it with wax. I'm stacking them in 'ricks' (criss-crossed stacks) on a pallet. I plan on watering them once a week when the rainy season is over. I'm going to try 'forcing' some of them in the fall, which involves soaking them in cold water to force a fruiting response. These logs should last 3+ years, I'm hoping for ~3 lbs of shiitake per log over their lifetime.

On paper log mushroom production pencils out, but profitability is totally dependent on production and sale price. If my guestimates are right I'll expand this little enterprise to ~1000 logs, which theoretically could provide ~$300/mo income (if I sold at near retail prices). But I need to see what production will be, so I'm only starting with a few dozen logs.

Log mushrooming is a marginal enterprise at best, which is why most commercial shiitake production uses bags with specially prepared media housed in climate-controlled warehouses.

[RedStateGreen]

Well, I've been pretty busy, put in a black mulberry (I read that birds and squirrels like them better than any other fruit so hopefully they will leave my cherry tree, grapes and persimmons alone and whatever they leave we'll eat), an almond tree, another bunch of asparagus and started planting potatoes in the back and red creeping thyme in the front.

In other news, my website which had gotten to $100/month now has taken a big hit.

So it's been a bit roller-coastery lately.

[AgentR11]

I learned something today, kinda guessed as much, but didn't want to think about the ramifications...

I won't turn away relatives looking for food.

Its such a small line, but the consequences are enormous. Glad I have suitable pantry & freezer space.

[careinke]

I learned something today, kinda guessed as much, but didn't want to think about the ramifications...

I won't turn away relatives looking for food.

Its such a small line, but the consequences are enormous. Glad I have suitable pantry & freezer space.

Me too, but I have a plan for that. I can shelter and feed them, but they will need to give me 4 hours a day of work. That way I can quickly build out to support everyone. Slackers will get one warning and then be asked to leave. After all, you can not be a feudal lord without some serfs.

I'm fairly confident I could absorb 30 people on any given day of the year, feed and shelter them, plus build out (with their help), to make property sustain us all indefinitely (or at least a decade or two).

The family, knows they can come at anytime, but they have to contribute to stay. That said, in the event of TEOTWAWKI, my family has a lot of useful skills: ASE mechanic, cement mason, framer, farmer, carpenter, electrician, cop, ex soldiers, and most of us have been cooks at one time or another.

[Shaved Monkey]

Helped organise 250 metres of irrigation pipe, the excavations to dig it in and the fitting and labour, to get the community garden linked to the dam via the pump house at virtually no cost to the Garden.
yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

We now will have reliable water supply.
Which will also be expanded for free by local contractors to supply soil for a sports ground extension.

Weekend will include marcotting of about 100 fruit trees to get ready for the garden and save us about $2,500 in having to buy them.

[PrestonSturges]

My web store made no sales this week, so i am cutting my price about 5% and listing on Amazon, also revising my Google ad campaign

I also took my ancient Schwinn Air-Dyne to a machine shop. The original bottom bracket used bearing races which finally disintegrated, but the replacement is a sealed cartridge design. However I need the shop to take a 2" reamer to the interior of the bottom bracket shell to make it a couple thousands of an inch bigger so the new sealed bottom bracket cartridge will slip in. Otherwise I'd probably cut the bottom bracket shell, wedge it open a little, and weld over the gap.

[Wednesday]

I enrolled in CPR class to renew my certification. Loki, the mushrooms are pretty interesting. I never heard of that before.

[PrestonSturges]

The hardy kiwi has some fruit this year! I think this is like the fourth year I've had it. It probably won't be much, but there are a multiple clusters.

[rangerone314]

Have not posted much; been very busy outside. Harvested 122 strawberries today, mostly from the large cluster in the blueberry area of the core garden. I've continued introducing strawberry plants to far flung areas of the garden so they will eventually fill in the entire 2,300 sqft+ area.

My 3 new jujube trees arrived, and I planted them with the other 4 jujubes and sheetmulched most of the areas around them into a large bed that is contiguous with the northeast hedge & the core garden.

I've cleared a large area right up to the stream, from where I had started earlier with a small colony of watercress. I laid cardboard down and have planted a dozen cranberry plants, to be followed by several dozen more, plus tens of thousands of watercress seeds closer to the stream.

[PrestonSturges]

My jujubes are kicking ass this year. I guess they are about 5 years old. There should be hundreds of fruit. The Li is about 8 ft tall and I have many lines to a pole and neighbor tree to train it into a more vertical shape. Because the new growth has the texture of rotten celery before it becomeswoody, it tends to flop over.

My Methley plum has ripe fruit, and they are sweet, slightly tart, and firm, nothing like the watery Methley plums in the supermarket.

My Moonglow pears are resistant to fireblight, but they seem be getting smacked by apple or cedar rust with the orange spikes. I have multiple Orient pear grafts to the Moonglow tree, and they are looking great and bearing heavily. I expect I'll cut off most of the Moonglow branches in favor of the Orient grafts.

[Wednesday]

I renewed CPR cert, registered to vote in my current county, and picked up an application to renew my passport that expired in January.