Categories
Beginning Farmers Crops & Gardening Farm & Garden Homesteading Permaculture

Make Compost Tea For Your Garden Soil (Excerpt)

garden compost tea
Chris McLaughlin

Adding decomposed organic matter to your soil with compost is certainly the best way to go. However, you can help spread the wealth by making compost, manure and herbal/plant teas. These liquid teas and fermented plant extracts utilized by biodynamic farmers and gardeners can deliver (depending on the tea recipe) beneficial micro-organisms and nutrients to your garden when you don’t have shovelfuls of compost available. 

There are recipes for disease suppression, biological support and general plant nutrition. The following is an all-around biodynamic compost-plant tea recipe. 

Materials Needed

  • 1 large, netted bag (or 3 smaller netted bags)
  • finished compost (2 pounds)
  • nettles (big handfuls)
  • comfrey (big handfuls)
  • 5-gallon bucket filled half to two-thirds of the way up with spring water (untreated)
  • heavy fabric or burlap as a bucket cover
  • dowel or branch, longer than the circumference of the bucket (optional)
  • aquarium air pump and tubing (optional)

Also Read: Compost like a pro with this simple technique.

Preparation

Place the compost into the large, netted bag (or one smaller bag). Add the nettles and comfrey to the bag or separately in their own if you’re using a smaller-sized bag. Place the bag (or all bags) into the water bucket. If you have a dowl or stick, you can attach the bag(s) to it for easy removal. Cover the bucket with the fabric or burlap.

Also Read: Make Compost Tea From Chicken Manure

If you’re using an aquarium air pump, connect the tubing to the pump and let it aerate the bucket of tea for 24 hours. If you’re not using a pump, lift the cover and stir the tea three times a day for a week. Dilute tea with water (10 parts water to 1 part tea) and use in the garden immediately. 

Excerpt from The Good Garden: How to Nurture Pollinators, Soil, Native Wildlife, and Healthy Food—All in Your Own Backyard by Chris McLaughlin, published by Island Press (February 2023). You can order the full book here.

 

Categories
Farm & Garden News

Join A Farming Organization To Grow Your Experience & Influence

A pink color farm bureau on the window
Farming organization

Owning and managing a farm, even a small one, can be a full-time job. Add to that a family and possibly a full or part-time off-farm job and you have a recipe for a schedule that may seem entirely booked and, at times, completely overwhelming. How then can you possibly squeeze in anything else and, more importantly, why should you?

Scheduling aside, even if you are inclined to become more involved in your farming community, it can be difficult to know where to start. Among many choices, deciding which farming organization is the best fit for you can seem like a daunting task. 

Stanton Gilliam, along with his grandfather, Dewey, and father, Randy, has a large farming operation in the Sweeten’s Cove community in Marion County, Tennessee. Even with an operation considered large for Marion County, 1,800 acres of primarily corn and soybeans requiring a 70-to-80-hour work week, Stanton and Dewey still manage to be involved in multiple farming organizations because they place a premium on what they put in as well as what they get out of the experience.

Bureau & Boards

Among other boards, Dewey has been involved with Farm Bureau at the local, district and state levels for decades. He initially got involved because the organization spoke up for farmers and that collectively, you can do a whole lot more than you can by yourself.

Before he retired from the local board, Dewey committed to monthly local meetings and multiple meetings per year at the district and state levels. He helped represent his constituents from the local farming community and shape agricultural policy for all farmers at the state level and beyond.

Also Read: 3 Organizations That Can Help Fund Your Farm Project

After eight years of service, Dewey is also now retired from the United Soybean Board. The farming organization oversees the U.S. commodity checkoff program for soybeans. The association meets annually, and Dewey sees his membership and leadership in this organization as being especially helpful. It allowed him to have a part in allocating funds for soybean research and development which has, among other things, helped to greatly increase the number of bushels per acre that soybeans produce. And, in turn, he helps to increase the profitability of his farm.

Young Farmers & Ranchers

Stanton has picked up where his grandfather left off. He is a current state committee member of the Tennessee Young Farmers and Ranchers, a part of the Tennessee Farm Bureau organization and one that is specifically dedicated to serving the 18-to-35-year-old age group of rural young people.

In addition to an educational component, the farming organization offers contests with an eye toward further engaging its membership, such as:

  • Young Farmer of the Year
  • Environmental Stewardship
  • Excellence in Agriculture
  • Discussion Meet

Stanton jokes that he first took part because local Farm Bureau board president, Chris Layne, pressured him into taking part in a YF&R competition. “At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says.

His uncertainty didn’t last, and it didn’t take long for him to discover the value of being part of a group of young people facing the same issues he was. Now, he finds he also enjoys the educational component of tours designed to provide exposure to all of agriculture’s various opportunities to those directly or indirectly connected to the industry. He found that he was good fit for the farming organization and was soon encouraged to take on a state-level leadership role that at times requires him to be away from his family and farm.

Nevertheless, he finds the connections he’s made and the lessons he’s learned are well worth the effort. He’s met, and gained insight from, farmers across the nation with operations that are vastly different from his own. He’s also met farmers with similar operations that, because of their distance apart, aren’t in competition with him.

Because of this, he can freely discuss strategy. 

While everyone in the farming community generally works to help one another, sometimes you’re marketing to the same people, making it desirable to look for assistance away of the local area.

“It helps to get outside of your county,” Stanton says. He describes the value of this experience as being difficult to measure. An issue will come up one day and, because of the connections you’ve made, you know exactly who you’ll call for ideas to solve it.

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been sacrifices. Stanton’s wife becomes a single mom of three kids when he’s away for multiple days attending a conference. In addition, on those occasions when his family can attend with him, it’s easy for the conference to substitute for a family vacation. This isn’t always ideal.

Also Read: Audra Owen Proves You’re Never Too Young To Be a Hobby Farmer!

Getting Involved

If you’re encouraged to get involved, Dewey and Stanton advise the following:

  • Attend local annual meetings open to all members or open meetings on more than the local level. In this case, some counties may be able to help you financially, at least in part, with your conference attendance.
  • Are you thinking you may want more? Later, if you have an interest in pursuing a leadership role, make it a point to talk to current board members at a time outside of the annual meetings, perhaps stopping by their county office when they are not busy hosting an event.
  • Participate as a nonleader. Even if you don’t have an interest in taking on a leadership role, you may find the opportunity to connect, especially if you are new to farming, to someone with decades of experience capable of offering you sound advice for your fledging operation. 
  • Don’t go in with the idea that your way of doing things is the only correct way to do it. Keep an open mind. It’s important to realize that you can reach the same goal in many ways. It’s also important to understand that everyone has a voice and, in the end, our overarching goal is the same regardless if how we go about achieving it looks different.

Something for Youth

Do you want to encourage your children to be involved too? Standing on a legacy that exceeds 100 years, the 4-H Club is just one example of an organization uniquely poised for youth to begin their lifelong journey into involvement in farming, their communities and more.

Administered at the local level through the Cooperative Extension Service, youth take part in educational hands-on programs and projects. 

Dannie Bradford, extension agent II and county director of the UT-TSU Extension Marion County, helps to oversee the local 4-H Club program. She encourages all youth, regardless of their area of interest, to take part. 

“Participating in 4-H is a great option for youth because we provide valuable life skills for students as well as opportunities to use those skills in real-life settings,” she says. “Youth can make new friends all while bettering their community!”

Involvement isn’t limited to youth, and parents are encouraged to become involved with their children. 

“Volunteers are beneficial to the 4-H organization because we can broaden our areas of expertise,” Bradford says. “This allows more opportunities for youth as well as freeing up the agent to plan, promote, and execute other programming.” 

In Marion County, volunteer leaders help with shooting sports practices, judging teams and other events as needed. Volunteers may also be asked to judge a competition or participate in an event to help local youth. In many instances, training is available to help you become more comfortable with your volunteer role.

Michael Hooper and his son, Ethan, of Whitwell, Tennessee, located in Marion County, exemplify this type of experience. Michael currently leads the Marion County 4-H Shotgun Team, while Ethan, having graduated, is a former member.

“I have always enjoyed being outdoors, hunting and shooting,” Michael says. “I was fortunate to have positive role models to take me hunting and shooting. I hope that I can have the same impact on our 4-H youth.”

Michael is the range master and chief instructor for the program, and that level of involvement does come with a greater time commitment. “We started our shooting club on a friend’s farm about seven years ago,” he says. “We typically shoot every other weekend, February through May, with each shoot lasting four to five hours. This culminates with the 4-H Shotgun Jamboree in Nashville where we take our top shooters from each age group.

“My goals are that we always have a safe shoot, the kids learn something new and we have a great time just being outside!”

Michael’s involvement encouraged Ethan to participate. “Being involved on the team was important to me because it allowed me the opportunity to learn new skills and interact with members of the local community that I had never met before,” Ethan says. “My dad told me about the team, and I decided to join shortly after. I always enjoyed shooting skeet and sporting clays recreationally, so I thought a trap team would be a fun way to participate in the sport competitively.”

After college, Ethan would love to give back to the team by becoming a volunteer.

On a side note, if your local high school has an agriculture education program, your student may also be eligible to enroll in these classes and join FFA, an intracurricular student organization for those interested in agriculture, farming and leadership. This organization offers programming at the local, state and national levels. Similar to the 4-H Club program, your local organization may also need adult volunteers.

Other Options

If you’re still not finding a good fit, many other local farming organizations benefit farmers and may seek volunteers. Check with the local offices of the following organizations or your county extension office to learn more:

In the end, whether you simply seek to make connections within your local farming community or to become involved on a larger scale, participation in an agricultural organization benefits everyone including yourself. 

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Categories
Animals Beginning Farmers Farm & Garden Large Animals

The Curious, Comical & Mischievous Goats Of Udder Chaos

Udder Chaos goats
Udder Chaos

When Bria Stambaugh tells people that her family’s hobby farm works with goats, she says the usual reaction is an enthusiastic “that is awesome!” … or a bewildered “why?”

Situated in central North Carolina, Stambaugh now shares her goat-centric adventures to the world through the pun-tastic Udder Chaos Instagram account.

“The farm and agricultural community is composed of some of the most dedicated and genuinely good-hearted people you could ever hope to meet,” she says.

In a rare moment of respite from the goats, we spoke to Stambaugh about watching a hobby farm vision grow and the realities of goat math. We also got into the personalities of some of the farm’s champion ruminants.

Doing the Goat Math

“We are somewhat limited at our property and starting from nothing, so goats—and Nigerian Dwarf Goats specifically—seemed to be the best fit for our family,” explains Stambaugh, whose own interest in farming was originally sparked by being ushered into the horse world as a child.

“We intended to just have two wethers for pets,” Stmbaugh continues. “However, goat math is a legitimate phenomenon, and we quickly grew to our current hobby herd of six. Our next step will be to breed and venture into the world of all things dairy goat products.”

Let Chaos Reign!

Asked about being around goats all day, Stambaugh says that it’s pretty much “chaos!” She likens goats to “perpetual toddlers—curious, persistent, demanding, comical, loud, mischievous and most notably very well natured.”

Stambaugh adds that while the list of daily goat chores might remain the same, in general “no two days navigating working with goats is!”

Read more: Miniature dairy goats are perfect for small farms!

Meet Turbo, Fiona & Diesel

“Goats are a lot more intelligent than most people give them credit for,” says Stambaugh. “They also each have very distinct personalities. Our largest, Diesel, desperately wants to be a lap goat and keeps everyone in line. His twin brother, Turbo, is constantly finding ways to torment the rest of the herd.

“Then our doe Fiona is always the first to greet us and is constantly talking—much to our neighbor’s delight!”

Watching the Vision Grow

Reflecting on the Udder Chaos experience, Stambaugh says that she takes joy from seeing how the venture “grew from our own vision” and “seeing your ideas not only take shape, but flourish.”

Additionally, Stambaugh says that adding goats to the hobby farm has increased the amount of quality time the family spends together, especially when it comes to conferring “invaluable life skills” to her children.

“It is truly a labor of love, but we have found a wonderful community by following this crazy little idea. There is no turning back for us now,” she vows. “We are excited about what the future holds and the adventures we will create.”

Follow Udder Chaos at Instagram.

Categories
Crops & Gardening Farm & Garden Foraging Homesteading

Basic Supplies For Tapping A Maple Tree

maple syrup sap tree tap tapping
Studio Light & Shade

The maple tapping season is among us here in the Twin Cities and for others in the northern zone 4b. The temperatures are currently perfect to get the trees flowing. The temperature high must be above freezing during the day and the low must dip below freezing overnight. Looking at the forecast for the week, it appears we’ll be in prime tapping zone for the next five days at least.  

Each year, my husband, daughter, chickens and I all gather ‘round the large silver maple tree in the back corner of our yard and watch as my husband drills holes and gently taps in the spiles. My daughter always must bend down and taste the fresh sap straight from the tree, letting it drip into her mouth, before the collection pails are hung.

It’s a special tradition that kicks off the beginning of a new season for us. This process means that spring is near. 

Also Read: How to Freez and Melt Maple Sap

Tapping A Maple Tree

Since we just tap the one large silver maple tree, our production is pretty small scale. We use a turkey fryer, reserved specifically for syrup making, to boil down the sap to a point where we can bring it inside to finish off into syrup. All in all, we normally end up with more than enough syrup for an entire year and even have enough to share some with friends and family.  

We lived in our home for seven years before we learned that we could tap just this one tree and have it provide us with enough sap to make the process worthwhile. We expected that people would need a forest of trees to be able to have enough sap.

Also Read: How To Make Maple Syrup?

But that’s not the case at all.  

I’ve put together a short list of supplies that you’ll need to get started tapping a maple tree. People do this process in many different ways—do what works for you—but these are the supplies that my family uses for our small production.  

maple syrup sap boiling in a tub
Maple tree supplies

Maple Tapping Supplies 

  • Drill and drill bit to drill a hole into your tree. You’ll need to reference the size of the spile that you are using but ours is a 5/16-inch drill bit. 
  • Spile(s) with hooks to insert into the hole in your tree. This will direct the flow of the sap into your collection pail/bag. A hammer would assist in gently tapping the spile into place as well. 
  • Collection pail/bag to collect your sap. When we began tapping our tree, we picked up starter kits from the nature center. They came with collection bags that hung on the spiles. As we committed to making syrup annually, we purchased some nice pails that we attach to the spiles. The pails come with lids to keep debris out.  
  • Food-grade 5-gallon buckets with lids to pour the collected sap from the bag/pails into. We collect the sap until we have enough to boil down, which is generally about 7 gallons. 
  • Turkey fryer with propane tank or other setup for sap processing. 
  • Cheesecloth or syrup straining bag. The sap and syrup will be strained a couple times throughout the process for clarity.  

While this article doesn’t explain the entire process of tapping trees for syrup making, it does give you an idea of what supplies are needed to get started with the process. 

For in depth instructions on how to make your own homemade maple syrup from start to finish, check out Stephanie Thurow and Michelle Bruhn’s new book, Small-Scale Homesteading, released March 14th, 2023.

Categories
Animals Beginning Farmers Chicken Coops & Housing Farm & Garden Health & Nutrition Poultry

What To Do When A New Chick Dies

chicks chick die dies sick
Lost_in_the_Midwest

Kara was absolutely thrilled that Chick Days had arrived at her local farm-supply store. She’d been eagerly anticipating the addition of three new baby chicks to her backyard flock, and her brooder was clean, properly heated and ready to receive its new residents. She’d reviewed how to feather-sex straight runs to avoid bringing home cockerels and, when the store opened the next morning, Kara was there, ready to search for her perfect newborn trio.

The farm supply store offered stock tanks of mixed bantams and straight-run Orpingtons, Barred Rocks and Easter Eggers. Kara carefully selected a few fluffs, inspected their wing feathers, and even messaged a couple of images to me for my confirmation of the chick’s gender (note: I’m AWFUL at feather sexing).

Content with her selection, Kara paid and hurried the chick trio to their new home, where warmth, good water and lots of life awaited.  

The next day, Kara messaged me, distraught. Despite her best efforts, one of the baby chicks had just passed away in her hands. Her heart was broken for the poor baby.

What had she done wrong? Had she done anything right? Would she be able to buy another chick to join the two survivors, or was it already too late? 

Overstress 

A crucial fact to keep in mind is that newborn hatchery chicks go through a veritable gauntlet in the first few hours of their lives. They hatch on incubator shelves, are sent to dry out and fluff up, then are sorted into bins teeming with other chicks to await packing into ventilated cardboard containers.

The chicks are then at the mercy of the US Postal Service as they travel—typically in unheated transport vehicles—until they arrive at their destination, where they are unpacked and plunked into stock tanks on sales floors. All this in the first 24 hours of a chick’s life.

These conditions would stress out the most stable of adults, let alone an infant bird. For some, sadly, the stress endured during this time frame—from carton crowding and improper handling to exposure to cold and accidental injury while in transit—can cause a downward spiral that a baby bird’s newly hatched systems simply cannot handle and the baby chick dies.

It spends its last few hours quietly under the heat lamp, where unsuspecting buyers assume its quiet gentleness indicate its temperament rather than its approaching death.   

Immature Digestive Tract 

Baby chicks hatch with the last drops of their egg sacs swelling their little tummies. This last pre-hatching meal usually sustains them for 24 hours, after which they will need to find their way to their new food source: a chick feeder filled with chick-starter crumbles. Peepers’ digestive tracts continue to mature in the first few days outside of the shell, gaining the ability to digest and absorb nutrients and secrete waste.

In some baby chicks, unfortunately, the gastrointestinal tract does not mature swiftly enough to assist with the proper digestion of chick feed. These chicks either fail to thrive, due to an inability to absorb nutrients, or they may develop pasty butt. Pasty butt occurs when the first feces these infant poultry produce effectively cement their vents shut, preventing them from eliminating waste.

Left untreated, pasty butt is a swift killer.

Also Read: How to Start Hatching Chicks With An Egg Incubator

Shipping and Handling Injuries 

As noted earlier, hatchery baby chicks rarely experience a calm or peaceful first day of life. They get unceremoniously dumped from one tray to another, tumble from conveyor belts into holding bins, get plunked into shipping cartons, and experience all the jolts, bumps and temperature changes of transit.

And that’s assuming postal workers observe the “Fragile: Live Animals” stickers on the cartons’ exterior and don’t just toss the carton around (or toss other items on top).

I’ve been called in by my local post office on multiple occasions to assist in saving chicks that arrived in crushed shipping cartons or in cartons whose ventilation holes were covered by packing tape. I’ve also assisted with shipments arriving in the swelter of summer and the freeze of winter.

Despite my best efforts, the few chicks that survived any of these shipping and handling-related injuries quietly perished within a couple of days. They looked fine from the outside, but their little bodies had suffered too much. 

Also Read: Keep an eye on farm-store chicks by watching for these 6 common Chick Days issues.

Improper On-Site Handling 

In a recent column, I discussed several store-based issues that could adversely affect a baby chick’s wellbeing. Unfortunately, not all farm-supply store associates have a background in poultry rearing and may have no idea whatsoever how to care for baby chicks, much to the chicks’ detriment.

My friend Kara was absolutely outraged to find tubs of baby chicks with no food, water or heat source at one of her local farm-supply stores. The teen employees were bewildered by her anger and informed her that they didn’t see the point of feeding or watering the chicks or keeping them warm since they expected the chicks to sell out in a few hours.

Not all store employees will be this openly clueless. But take into account that bungling like this can push an already stressed baby over the edge.  

If Your New Baby Dies 

If your baby chick dies within 24 hours of purchase, contact your store immediately and ask to speak with the manager. Inform them that a baby chick you’d purchased just that morning or just yesterday had not survived the day. Make it clear that you purchased your chicks from them based on their store’s reputation for quality and that you are truly disappointed that they sold you such a sickly baby.

More than likely, the store manager will take down your name and contact information, then have you come in to select a replacement chick at no cost. Occasionally, however, you may encounter a manager who fully understands what shipped chicks undergo and will firmly maintain a “let the buyer beware” attitude with no replacement or refund.

Refunded or not, if you plan to replace your deceased chick, do so swiftly to allow the newcomer to join your other babies while they are still young enough not to notice there’s a new kid in the flock.  

Categories
Podcast

Episode 49: Angela Kingsawan

Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good

Indigenous urban farmer and herbalist Angela Kingsawan talks about gardening in Milwaukee, translating ancient knowledge into modern reality, connecting health care with healthy foods, and more.

Learn about Angela’s early introduction to land stewardship and multicultural approach to herbalism and food production. She tells us about her long-term plan for Yenepa Herbals as a local tea company using vacant lots around her house. Also hear about all of the plants—wild and cultivated—that thrive in Milwaukee’s zone 5 growing climate.

Hear about Angela’s work as artist in residence at Lynden Sculpture Garden and her plant walks and education programs. Angela offers some tips for how to use the plants she finds on those walks, following her belief that a plant “is only invasive if you don’t know what to do with it.” She talks about her line of wearable art using natural dyeing and fabrics. You will want to hear Angela’s funny story about how she grew saffron kind of by accident!

Get excited about the work that Angela is doing with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to contract Hmong farmers to grow culturally significant produce for their clients who use Medicaid for their healthcare. Listen until the end to hear what Angela is most excited about related to food and farming in her area.

Categories
Crops & Gardening Farm & Garden Farm Management Homesteading Permaculture

Compost Like A Pro With This Simple Technique

compost composting composter bin
photos by Frank Hyman

Too often, composting advice in books sounds like a cross between a sweaty gym class and high-brow rocket science. Combining the strict ratios of carbon to nitrogen and the expectation that you’ll be turning damp, heavy compost twice a week, you must wonder if you’re going to get a headache or backache first. 

But composting can involve much less work and bother. Every spring and fall, my wife and I get a bin of 5-star compost without ever turning it. Plus, it never stinks and doesn’t draw vermin.

You can do this, too. 

You don’t have to be Julia Child to feed your family, and you don’t have to be Mr. Green Jeans to feed your garden. If you’ve ever made a salad, you have all the skills necessary to create a winning compost. Like any basic salad, all that a happening compost pile needs is:

  • the right container
  • leafy stuff
  • some chunky vegetable stuff
  • a splash of dressing

First Ingredient

I start with two compost bins, sturdy enough to deter urban wildlife. I recommend the Deluxe Pyramid bins from Gardener’s Supply. These have a hinged lid and slots to allow rain in, because a dry compost is an inactive compost. If you already have solid compost bins lids that don’t allow rain in, drill a couple dozen 1⁄4-inch holes in the lid.

During dry spells, hose down the compost well. 

Place the bins where they’ll be accessible from the kitchen door. If you have chickens, place the bins next to the coop, so you can sweep the old bedding directly into the compost bins (I recommend this in my backyard chicken-keeping book, Hentopia.)

Watch Video: Use Manure Compost To Improve Garden Soil

If you’re in zone 6 or colder, put the bins where they’ll get sun in winter to keep the composting bacteria warm enough to do their work. In zone 7 and warmer, they can be in the shade all year and will still finish composting on schedule. 

The bin bottoms are important, too. You don’t want rats using them as a crawl-through restaurant. Make sure the area under the bin is flat enough that a 3-by-3-foot layer of metal hardware cloth on the ground will keep vermin from tunneling into the bin. Make sure the bottom of the bin meets the hardware cloth all the way around on all four edges. 

If your bin doesn’t have doors that open near the bottom, don’t fret. Those doors are a dumb idea. That dumb idea being that you can drop raw kitchen scraps into the top, while shoveling finished compost out the bottom (wrong!). Ignore those doors.

When each bin has finished composting (see Timing section, below) shovel out what can be easily reached from the top. Then tilt the bin back and forth until you can lift it or tilt it on its side, exposing the pile of finished compost to be easily scooped up off the ground with the shovel. 

Also Read: Need compost material? Here are three ways to gather leaves.

Second Ingredient

Add lots of tree leaves. Some species, such as willow oak leaves, break down better if they’re shredded and bagged by a lawnmower first. But most leaves will compost fine, even when added whole.

If your yard is treeless, harvest the labor of the good folks who spend lots of time and money raking and bagging their leaves and putting them on the curb for you.

Also Read: Why You Should Compost & How To Start

Store the leaves next to your compost bins in a large, covered container(s) such as a garbage can to keep them dry. Start your composting adventure by spreading 6 inches of leaves on the bottom of the first bin. 

Compost and a coop in a bin
composter bin

Third Ingredient

On top of the leafy stuff, throw in your chunky kitchen scraps. Just as with a tossed salad, we don’t want to overwhelm the leafy part with too many chunks. A tossed salad with too many chunks looks like an uncooked casserole. And compost with too many chunks ends up too soggy and dense and could start smelling bad (yuck!).

Think basic salad, nothing fancy. Let only about half of what’s in the pile be chunky scraps. And compose your yard salad same as you would a tossed salad for a vegan friend: no meats, cheeses or grease.

Those items tend to gum up the works and attract four-legged vermin. 

We save our kitchen scraps in an airtight container that stays on the counter. I know people who also store their scraps in the fridge if they only generate small quantities that would sit around too long waiting for a trip to the compost. You can toss eggshells, paper towels, coffee grounds, coffee filters, vegetable scraps, stale bread and old flower bouquets in your compost. 

If you have chickens, keep two scrap containers on the counter. One is for chunky scraps suitable for chickens such as eggshells, peelings, stale bread, leftovers, etc. That still leaves plenty for the compost bins: spent coffee, tea bags, paper towels, banana peels, citrus (chickens don’t like it), avocado (can poison chickens), etc.

Sweeping the manure-infused, spent bedding from the coop twice a year into the compost bins will make up for a lot of the difference in volume. 

Scraps from the garden can also go into the compost. But unless you want problems, don’t include seed heads from weeds (feed those to the chickens!), diseased plants or anything recently exposed to herbicides or pesticides. The chemicals could kill the good microbes, and plant diseases could be spread.

The weed seeds would just get recycled unless you work hard enough that your compost pile gets hot enough to make steam. If that’s the case, take a piece of cardboard and cut yourself a personal “Real Hot Composter” badge and maybe you can write the next column.

compost composting composter bin

Fourth Ingredient

Sprinkle garden soil over the kitchen scraps. This is important. This garden soil “dressing” distributes composting bacteria throughout the pile, from bottom to top. These microbes are where the earthy aroma of compost comes from.

Composting bacteria will out-compete the rotting bacteria (that is on all food items) that cause kitchen scraps to stink when they aren’t properly composted. Different bacteria species means a different smell. 

In a salad, even a thin layer of dressing provides the punch that makes a salad either great or insipid. Without dressing, a salad is just so much health food that gets skipped over at the potluck. A compost pile without its metaphorical dressing will get passed over by the garden gods as well. And just as we have choices with salad dressings, we have choices with compost dressings.

Some of last year’s compost would be ideal. You could also use brown soil from a neighbor’s garden if you’re just getting started or soil from a woods or meadow. If the soil is brown, it’s because it has organic matter. And if it has organic matter, it also has composting bacteria. And you can get this for free. Anyone selling you “compost activator” doesn’t understand composting and is just separating you from your money. 

You won’t need much of this dressing. Fill a 1-gallon nursery pot with garden soil (or last year’s compost), and stick an old trowel in it.

A nursery pot won’t hold water when it’s in the rain. And the bacteria will survive whether it’s wet or dry. And the trowel we use is one that’s missing its handle. So, re-use! 

By doing the very light work of spreading this dressing on each dose of kitchen and garden scraps, you’re distributing the composting bacteria throughout the pile. So, everything will compost without needing the heavy work of being turned.

When people turn compost, the distribution of organic matter/bacteria that is at the very bottom of the pile is one of the main benefits. They just don’t realize that.

Also Read: How To Make An Affordable Composter

And to bring things full circle, cover the scraps and dressing with tree leaves. This is partly to keep bugs down and partly to balance the nitrogen in the scraps with the carbon in the leaves. But there is no need for precision at all. Just toss in enough to cover the chunky scraps. 

Timing

Hopefully, you put “compost bins” on your holiday wish list, and you can start right away with your best-in-the-nation compost station.

If so, start filling your first vermin-proofed bin over this winter and spring with leaves, chunks and dressing. Then before the beginning of summer leave it alone to decompose quietly.

Next, start filling the second one. By fall your first bin will contain finished or nearly finished compost. Feed this compost salad to your garden, then start filling that bin again. The second bin will have time to finish composting for spring planting.

Neither bin will stink, you won’t attract vermin and you’ll never have to turn compost again—ever! 

With a setup like this, we get lots of compost, keep lots of material out of the landfill, have a robust garden and don’t really spend a lot of time or energy fooling around with the compost. The only thing easier would be tossing a salad. 

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Categories
Equipment Farm & Garden Farm Management Homesteading

No Power? No Problem With Power Outage Preparedness

power outage farm
photos by Cary Rideout

“The power is out!” Few words have such impact or can spark a chain reaction of events that flares into a wildfire of worry. Blackouts these days seem to last longer and are more frequent, and rural areas are generally the last to have service restored. 

Aging infrastructure, winter ice storms and violent summer deluges all can darken the homestead for days or even weeks. But with country ingenuity, resource management and sensible planning, the prepared can comfortably wait until the switch gets flipped back on. 

Hello? Hello?

Cell service gets sketchy during a power outage, but you’re never alone with an old-fashioned landline. Despite no internet connection, the faithful landline with that reassuring dial tone hum sure settles the nerves. Just don’t try to text! If you don’t have one, one of your neighbors probably does. That’s a party line no one will begrudge you sandbagging.

Speaking of communicating, here’s a couple Stone Age tools to fall back on when everything else is silent. Two-way multichannel communicators can keep you in touch for miles depending on terrain. The classic Citizen Band (CB) radios reach even farther and can be powered by a car battery. 

power outage farm

Extended periods of silence work away at a person’s mind, making us moody or distressed. But a simple AM/FM radio playing can be reassuring. It means that somewhere the world is ticking along normally and soon yours will be, too. News updates and any music sure break the noiseless hold of silence in a candle-lit room.

Buy a battery-powered model, and get extras for the outbuildings, too. 

Salvation in the Smoky Past 

Keeping the table stocked with victuals is crucial when the power lines go dead. But our rural past is ready to help with today’s blackout problems. To prepare for an extended period of powerlessness, consider the underground pantry of yore, the reliable root cellar. 

Be it traditional wood with earth covering or a mad scientist’s nightmare of a buried school bus, a well-constructed root cellar can guarantee a stretch without groceries won’t seem so scary. Modern root cellars are much more than just vegetable and fruit repositories, instead offering home canning, dry goods or bottled liquids a place to slumber comfortably underground.

Design a model much bigger than needed. A spacious root cellar could also be a haven for the folks down the lane with produce and nowhere to keep it in a long-term power outage. 

Along with your underground grocery plans, consider a smoke house. A scant century ago, our grandparents put up a year’s worth of meat by salting and smoking. While a basic smoking device can be store-bought, it’s possible to design your own. This works well with root cellar storage, too.

Preserving meats by salting then smoking isn’t complex, but closely follow recommended health safety guideline. Getting some advice from experienced smokers helps as well. 

Read more: An emergency plan is essential when you keep chickens.

Hot-Plate Special 

During troubled times, a crackling wood fire satisfies spirit and stomach. Cold beans in a dark house can quickly wear anyone down. When under stress, we need hot chow!

Worse still, a cook forced to cope isn’t going to produce the fare they want, so no one is happy. Camp stoves or BBQs can help, but lack the familiarity cooks need. And outdoor campfires are fun but, after a week, can get difficult. Don’t even mention snow or rain.

The solution is the modern wood-fired range. Once considered quaint, the iron kitchen stove is roaring back into vogue. 

Quality modern wood ranges are nothing like the wood eaters of old and can heat water in a separate tank while offering a warming oven and accurate heat gauges. Wood-fired iron ranges can also throw welcome warmth as supper happily bubbles.

Today’s iron ranges can be expensive, might require a designated area and certainly take some practice to get comfortable cooking on. But like any power-outage tool, they’ll be appreciated when needed! 

Read more: Is it time to get a high-efficiency woodstove?

What about Water?

Regardless of the duration of the power outage, man and beast are going to need regular watering. My homestead is graced with a clean spring 219 steps from the kitchen table, and I’ve bucketed it before.

But what if you’re not so lucky? How do you get sip of H2O? Again, we look to the past and the reliable hand pump. 

Modern options are inexpensive, can fit beside your existing pipes and pull a strong 20 ounces per stroke. Do some prep work on your well depth and daily usage and follow the manufacturer’s recommendations. Shallow wells are easy fixes, but models capable of pulling up to 150 feet are manufactured. 

Speaking of plumbing, what about the washroom issues? You’d be surprised at how many homesteads have an outhouse and some awesome privy designs are gracing rural landscapes. In a long-term blackout situation, the maligned outhouse is a blessing (at least until the wires come back to life).

Just remember before building to consider that distance in the dark is different.

Glass Grub

Getting three squares is going to be rough on the cook once the electric range quits, so why not fall back on a glass from the past? I’m talking about the versatile home-canning jars that have been the salvation of kitchens for generations. 

If you’re serious about preparing for a power outage, this food-storage option is a must. Large-scale home canning is very labor intensive, but when the lights go out, you’ll be smiling as you spoon out supper. Just about everything you can grow or pick can be canned.

power outage farm

Even meat under glass is excellent, providing easy-to-heat feeding of the crew. 

Long storage-life foodstuffs such as cans or dry goods are a good option but will require an area that is cool and quiet and has enough space. Stack items off the floor a few inches and rotate regularly. Another option is the hiker or military meals now available. During any crisis, though, you will already be under pressure, and this might not be the time to have exotic fair.

Stick to a regular diet with plenty of hot liquids such as tea or soup, and your mood will be steadier. 

Deep freezers are easy to fill with garden produce and convenient, but once the dreaded 72 hours of food safety passes, what then? Use freezer food storage with an eye on what might happen, and consider generator power to keep the ice cream cold. 

Long-term power blackouts are unsettling and no time to be looking for lost batteries or a can opener. But with sensible preparations and a few tweaks to old ideas, loss of electrical power can be successfully weathered until you hear those sweet words: “The power’s back on!”. 

More Information

Stock Up, Store & Rotate 

Emergency supplies must be regularly rotated and replaced to insure they’re ready for service. I simply mark the calendar in spring and fall to do a check of all items. It’s a bit of work but the kind that pays. Any supplies close to best-before dates are replaced and used up. 

Rotation is also needed for batteries and petroleum supplies. Generator gasoline should be stored in the appropriate, clean, sealed container with stabilizer added. After six months, swap out for fresh and use up the old fuel.

Diesel can keep for a year, and sealed camp-stove fuel longer still. 

power outage farm

Generators 

We’re all hooked on easy electrical power and soon get grumpy when it doesn’t work during a power outage. Gasoline generators are the go-to electricity provider. But before you purchase one, consider the following. 

Carefully calculate your maximum electricity usage requirements along with lighting, then buy a model that exceeds this. Small camping generators are fine for light duties but shouldn’t be expected to run a busy farm.

Large industrial models crank out real electricity. For anyone serious about maintaining power, they’re the only choice. 

More power will cost you, and don’t forget fuel consumption when calculating your purchase. One important caveat about fully powering your plantation is you’ll need a separate breaker box—factor this in as well. Easy to operate and steady, a quality generator can sure take the pressure off in a dim barn or dark house.

Another possible alternative power option worth considering is a stationary engine. These simple engines offer countless power options and, for anyone with mechanical ability, are easy to operate. Stationary engines produce steady, efficient power to run lights, charge devices, keep cold sources frozen or even pump water.

Original models are common. But modern power plants can be purchased for a reasonable price. 

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Categories
Equipment Farm & Garden

4 Attachments & Accessories Your Riding Mower Needs

lawn tractor attachment attachments
Daniel Johnson

A riding lawn mower is theoretically complete even without accessories. Provided it comes with its mowing deck, a riding lawn mower is perfectly capable of mowing grass and keeping your lawn neat and tidy. without additional attachments.

But accessories and attachments do much to expand the capabilities of a riding mower. To open your eyes to the possibilities, let’s explore four useful accessories you can add to your riding mower.

1. Bagger

If you let your grass grow too tall, the result when you finally do mow is bound to be something less than aesthetically pleasing. Thick rows of grass clippings wind up strewn across your yard, shading the grass underneath and making it difficult for the mower to cut cleanly next time.

Even mowing grass that’s not particularly tall can leave behind an unsightly volume of clippings.

That’s where a bagger comes to the rescue. A typical bagger uses a flexible tube to catch grass clippings as they’re discharged from the mower deck and deposit them in a storage container mounted at the back of the riding mower. By catching the clippings, a bagger leads to a tidier lawn.

You can use the accumulated grass clippings as fertilizer and/or mulch in a garden.

2. Mulching Blades

If you mow your lawn regularly (every few days) and avoid letting the grass grow too tall, you should consider replacing your mower’s standard blades with mulching blades. They chop up grass clippings into tiny pieces that disperse easily across your yard, returning nutrients to the soil.

It’s better for your lawn in the long term than bagging clippings and hauling them away, which removes nutrients from your lawn.

Read more: Does your lawn mower need new blades?

3. Leaf Sweeper

If your yard is adorned with stately deciduous trees (like maples or oaks), you know the volume of leaves that fall in autumn can be hard to handle. If you want to keep your yard clean and leaf-free, consider purchasing a tow-behind leaf sweeper for your riding mower. Simply driving around your yard is all that’s necessary for the leaf sweeper to sweep up dry leaves and uncover your lawn.

Grass clippings and fallen needles from coniferous trees can also be scooped up.

A leaf sweeper might not capture every leaf that falls. But it can reduce the effort required to clean up leaves in autumn. Even better, you can put the gathered leaves to use fertilizing garden beds. It’s a win-win situation.

Read more: When leaves fall in autumn, use these 3 ways to gather leaves for mulch and compost. 

4. Towable Cart

On a farm, no riding mower is complete without a towable cart. Oftentimes yard care involves cleaning up fallen tree branches and similar debris that you don’t want to hit while mowing. Drive the cart wherever there’s a mess and clean the problematic debris into the cart. Then tow the cart to a suitably out-of-the-way brush pile where the load can be dumped to decompose out of sight.

Of course, you’ll use a towable cart for much more than lawn work. You can haul supplies like hay bales, feed bags and water. You can move rocks, bricks, potted plants and more.

You won’t soon exhaust the possibilities.

None of the accessories we’ve outlined are absolute requirements for mowing grass. But acquiring one or more attachments can significantly expand the capabilities of your riding mower and help you take better care of your lawn.

Categories
Animals Farm & Garden Large Animals

Breeding Soundness Exams: A Primer

a black color bull is standing
breeding soundness exam

As spring rolls through, it’s time for birthing and breeding on some hobby farms. Breeding soundness examinations are objective assessments of male livestock fertility. They can be useful in evaluating an animal’s breeding value and therefore help you make breeding decisions. Let’s take a closer look at breeding soundness exams and how to utilize them.

Male breeding soundness exams (BSEs) are made up of four main components, regardless of what livestock species is being evaluated.

1. Physical Examination

Any male animal should be in decent physical overall health. One large factor for breeding is the structural soundness of the animal.

A minor lameness or conformation issue that may precede lameness can become a huge problem toward the end of the breeding season. If the bull, ram or boar is uncomfortable or physically has trouble mounting females, he’s less than adequate for a breeding operation.

Other parts of this examination may include diagnostic testing for transmittable diseases, depending on the age and source of the animal.

2. Scrotal Circumference

The size of the testicles is correlated to fertility in livestock species. It is an indication of the animal’s sperm-producing capacity.

A specialized tape measure is used to measure the circumference of the scrotum in centimeters. This measurement is then compared to species-specific charts. The animal should meet its minimum measurements based on age. For example, a bull should have a minimum circumference of 34 cm at the age of two years. A ram should measure over 30 cm if he is between six and eight months of age.

So far, the BSE has evaluated whether a male is physically capable of breeding. The second part of the exam evaluates whether the sperm he produces is of good quality. At this point, a semen sample is collected. First it is evaluated for volume, color and contamination (such as blood, pus or other debris)—clearly a negative sign.

After this, the sample is placed on a slide under a microscope and the following are evaluated.

Read more: This video outlines important steps when selecting a breeding ram for your flock.

3. Sperm Motility

Normal, healthy sperm cells are not just motile, but forwardly motile. The first thing that is evaluated is how well the sperm in the sample move. This is initially evaluated on low magnification.

The sample should appear to move in a wave-like manner under the microscope. Then, under higher magnification, individual sperm cells are observed for forward motility. For a sample to be deemed satisfactory, out of one hundred sperm cells, 30 (or 30 percent) should be motile.

In any sample, some cells will be immobile, twitch or move in circles.

Sperm Morphology

Lastly, the shape of individual sperm cells is evaluated. Once again, one hundred cells are counted and classified as normal or abnormal. There are several types of sperm cell abnormalities, such as double or twisted tails, missing heads and cytoplasmic droplets, to name a few.

All of these aspects are then put together in a scoring sheet for a complete overview of the animal’s reproductive fitness. Results are usually placed into one of three categories: satisfactory, questionable or unsatisfactory.

If you’re interested in species-specific guidelines, take a peek at these links for bulls, rams/bucks and boars to see if this evaluation is something that would be valuable for your farm this year.