Don't forget the H2O!

It's easy to remember to water the garden in the summer.  We can feel the scorching heat beating down on us and it's easy to imagine how it is affecting our tender veggies.

But if you are like most gardeners and you love to get an early jump on the garden in early spring, you still need to be mindful of watering.  It might even be more important this time of year because most of your plants in early spring are just trying to get started and can be very vulnerable to drying out.  Also, early spring cold fronts can usher in very dry air masses, unlike in summer when the air is always pretty humid.

Personally, I took a whirlwind watering tour of the onions, peas, and the new peach and apple trees that were planted on Sunday.  An easy way to gauge if garden plants need water at this time of year in your area is to keep your eye on the fire danger level.  Anything higher than "Low Danger", and you should probably get the hose running.

Time to wake up the garden!

Every year the arrival of St. Patrick’s Day reminds me of a few significant things, it’s my sister Patty’s birthday, I have to wear green to work, and it’s time to plant my first crop of peas for the season!

Depending on the nature of the winter season, I am usually in various states of preparedness for the beginning of the vegetable gardening season. Last year, of course we still had snow in the garden so the peas had to wait a while. This year though, I thought I might miss my chance to plant peas altogether, since the temps have been in the upper 70s and peas prefer cool weather. Don’t be fooled by the unseasonably warm weather though, because one cold snap like the one that is coming up this week and a lot of time and money can be wasted on plants that were put in the ground too early.

Many of the vegetables we grow in New England can’t be planted until what’s referred to as the “last frost date”. This is the average date, as determined by NOAA, of the last date the weather was cold enough to generate frost on plants for a series of past years. There is also a "first frost date" calculated for the fall, although that is less of an issue for most vegetable gardeners. These dates can be variable within a state like Connecticut, just like the daily high and low temperatures can vary.

For example, the last frost date for Hartford is May 12^th and the first frost date is September 23^rd. If you live closer to the shoreline, that gap widens a bit so that in Norwalk the dates are May 8^th and October 2^nd. Move further north of Hartford and the gap will narrow, for example to June 4^th and September 13^th in Thompson and other northern towns.  Remember that these dates are just averages, meaning that invariably we will get a late or early frost that will have you out there covering your more delicate plants.

This doesn’t mean you have to wait until May to get your hands dirty though. In addition to peas (both snow/snap and shell varieties), other things that can be planted right now are onions (I planted 45 onion sets over the weekend), cabbage, radishes, turnips, spinach, and kale. These are all cold-hardy plants, and most actually prefer growing in cooler temperatures. And remember, the sooner you plant them, the sooner you'll be eating them.  Now, get out there and plant some veggies!

Ban a banana?

As I am slowly trying to evolve into more of a "locavore", trying to eat more locally-produced foods to reduce the environmental and human costs of production pressures and transit, the simplest thing to do is to initially target fruits and vegetables. About 3 months ago, my main target became the banana.

Admittedly, the Sustainable Family used to consume a lot of bananas every week. I took one in my lunch bag to work every day, and occasionally our son would eat one cut up with breakfast or we’d make a smoothie or banana bread when they became over ripe. Targeting the unsuspecting banana was a no-brainer because no single raw fruit or vegetable in our house came from farther away and, considering what it takes to grow, pick, pack, ship, and sell a banana, there is no way 89¢ a pound is a fair-trade price (see “Banana Republic”).

There is a pretty good Op-Ed piece in the New York Times from 2008 that talks about some of the issues with mass production of the banana for worldwide consumption. Included in that is the fact that of the thousand or so varieties of banana that exist, only one variety is currently mass produced. That variety, the Cavendish, is the second iteration of the mass produced banana because the variety that was originally produced up until the early 1900s, the Gros Michel, was wiped out by a fungus called Panama disease. That fungus quickly spread due to the unnatural concentration of bananas that are grown on plantations. By all accounts, the Cavendish lacks flavor and hardiness compared to the Gros Michel, but the one thing it does have is resistance to Panama disease. That too is changing though, because a similar fungus is currently spreading that affects the Cavendish banana as well.

It is no mystery that most of the fruits and vegetables you buy in the grocery store are single or very limited varieties that are selected, or often genetically-modified, for disease resistance, uniform ripening, or ease of mechanical harvesting. The biggest trade off, as anyone who has ever eaten a real garden tomato knows, is flavor. You don’t need to become a complete "locavore" overnight, but you can make small changes to try to consume more local foods, by visiting farmers markets, shopping for some things at food co-ops, or joining a CSA. The direct cost might be a bit more than what you’ll find on sale at the supermarket, but if you consider all the indirect human and environmental costs as well (which you eventually pay for with your tax dollars), it’s probably a wash. And if flavor is something you savor, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

When is a small farm too big?

The Sustainable Family has been doing a lot of planning over the last month or so about how we are going to lay out our little 5 acre farm, given all the new additions that are coming this year.  Basically, if there is anything online or in print that talks about how to most efficiently utilize your acreage for food production, we have read it.

There is a lot of information out there to be had, and it is a very interesting mix of advances in agricultural technology and "old timey" farmer wisdom.  Here is something that I ran across the other day that I thought I would pass along.  It is part of a paper presented at a small farm conference back in 2002 by John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri.

How do you know if your farm is too big? Your farm may be too big if…

· If the fence rows are either gone or so clean you no longer hear the birds singing.

· If gullies appear on slopes and road ditches are filled with muddy water after a rain.
· If the soil feels like pavement under your feet, or you don’t like walking across it anymore.
· If the farm begins to look more like a sea or desert, rather than a patch work quilt.
· If your cows no longer have names and your children wouldn’t know them if they did.
· If your animals never feel the sun, don’t have room to walk, or never touch the dirt.
· If your farm no longer smells like a farm but stinks like a sewer or a factory.
· If it’s no longer safe for anyone but an adult to work with your machinery or chemicals.
· If you work harder and harder, but it always seems there is more work to be done.
· If a bigger tractor, combine, or new pickup truck seems like it might solve your problems.
· If your banker or contractor owns more of your farm than you will ever own.
· If the farm is keeping the family apart, or tearing it apart, rather than bringing it together.
· If your children begin to dislike farm life and vow not to return to the farm.
· If you no longer feel good about asking your family to live on a farm.
· If you’re too busy to bother with community affairs, and rarely go into town anymore.
· If you drive right through “your” town to buy things in the city, just to save a few dollars.
· If neighbors complain about dust, noise, or odors from your farm, and you don’t care.
· If caring for the land no longer gives purpose and meaning to your life.
· If continuing the farming tradition feels more like a burden rather than a privilege.
· If you’re too busy to notice changing seasons, to watch the sunset, or to feel the wind blow.
· If farming is no longer exciting, no longer fun, if it’s hard to face a new season.
· If you have forgotten why you wanted to be a farmer in the first place.

If very many of these things ring true, odds are your farm is too big.

New life for old sneakers...

Since I issued a challenge for everyone to try to repurpose something rather than throw it away during the month of March, I figured I should try to get started this first weekend.  This is an idea I first tried about 10 years ago, when I read it in a home improvement magazine.

One big problem I have with my cordless drill is that I tend to store it in random places, usually somewhere in the vicinity of the last place I used it.  This drives my wife crazy because she is constantly finding it and imploring me to put it where it belongs so it's not cluttering up the house.  The problem is, since I got my new one last year, I really haven't had a place that it "belongs".  Here is the storage solution I've been using since I got it.

As luck would have it, I also have about a half-dozen pairs of old sneakers, boots, etc. that my wife is also imploring me to throw away so it doesn't clutter up the shoe area.  Here's an example of a pair of classic Nike Air Pegasus cross-trainers that have seen better days.

Time to use some repurposing power to make these old sneakers disappear and solve my drill storage problem!

And voila!  My old sneakers have found new life as a storage system for the drill and the spare battery.

Of course, the bigger your feet the better this will work.  But you could use this idea to store all kinds of loose stuff around the garage or workshop.  And, this can also serve as a great conversation starter if you are hosting a fancy dinner party!

Chicken radio

Just a quick note today before the UConn game starts. Yesterday's Colin McEnroe radio show on WNPR was all about backyard chickens! You can listen to the podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheColinMcenroeShow-Podcast .

Maybe this will encourage some of you to join me in the wonderful world of raising chickens? Enjoy!

The forgotten 'R'...

You know the 3 'R's... Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!  I think most of us though tend to focus on the first and last 'R', and kind of ignore 'Reuse'.  Oh sure, maybe we save a plastic bag that we had some pretzels in and use it again the next day, or we use a stainless steel water bottle instead of buying bottled water, but how many of us really give a good effort to repurpose our "stuff" before we bury it in the recycle bin.

For example, on my way outside to do my chicken chores yesterday my wife asked me to throw out an old purse she had lying around.  Rather than just send it to its final resting place in the trash, I took an opportunity to scavenge it for reusable parts.  As a result, I managed to remove two nice split-ring stainless steel hoops that were holding the shoulder strap as well as the leather strap itself, which has a pretty nice stainless steel buckle on it.  Undoubtedly, these will find a nice new home holding something together in the chicken coop or somewhere around the yard.  (My wife also pointed out that we repurpose our fruit and veggie scraps all the time for chicken treats!)

I thought this might be a good opportunity for another Sustainable Family challenge for my countless readers around the globe!  (Ha ha)  During the month of March (when I assume a lot of spring cleaning will be underway), before you throw out your old junk, see if you can repurpose some or all of it to reduce what goes into the waste stream.  I will do the same and when I happen upon anything particularly inventive, I'll pass it along.  I'd love to hear about your successes as well, so let me know!