Lazy Composting

Gardening should neither be difficult nor expensive. If it is then you're doing it wrong (or maybe it's too big).

However, there are lots of companies and websites that will try to convince you that you need stuff that will make gardening both expensive and difficult.

For instance, the big plastic barrel supposedly for composting pictured below.

This thing is useless. It's actually standing where you should be composting, directly into the soil below it. If I had bought one of these I suspect that it would be sitting, unused and decaying, taking up valuable real estate.

For awhile, before I moved to really lazy composting, I did the routine where you have to turn the pile and monitor your compost, add this or that, move this or that. Yeesh--what a waste of time.

I suspect many people have stopped composting simply because the 'experts' have chimed in on how difficult and important it is. Meh. Don't listen.

Here's how we do it:

Just bury your organic material directly in the ground. The worms will eat everything. Your soil will become rich and awesome over the course of a few years.

The hardest part of my composting style is the very first time you do it because it will require digging two holes, one to put the compost from your kitchen into today and the other to put tomorrow's compost into tomorrow. Each time you compost after that you use the dirt from the hole you're digging for the next day to cover the compost you're currently burying.

Dig the holes in succession, in a line, in your garden and over time you will directly compost your entire garden. I have dug holes where I previously composted only months earlier and found nothing but the usual suspects, egg shells (no I don't grind them or do anything to them but bury them), onions and rinds. A year later even all of these are completely gone.

For years I have composted everything organic, and i mean everything--paper napkins, meat, onions, citrus rinds--directly into the garden. I have nothing to show for it but lots of worm poop. And, you know, we love worm poop.

As far as varmints digging up your compost. I use an electric fence and it is one of the best investments in technology I've ever made. But a dog would work, too, as long as you can keep it from the garden.

There is no debate, vaccinate

I'll discuss pretty much anything, with some measure of decorum, with anybody.

Abortion? Let's talk. 

Nuclear Energy? There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

Vaccines? This is where my blood boils. I flip my lid. Here's a response I wrote to someone who wanted to have a 'reasonable' discussion with me on the issue:

"You're a perpetrator who should be prosecuted for endangering the lives of the most vulnerable children in our society."

Dear Sir,

Thanks for admitting you're a freerider, more than willing to 'reevaluate' if things get worse. I suspect every anti-vaxxer will 'reevaluate' once diseases might infect their own lives.

Thanks for the discussion. I'm sure your arguments mean a lot to parents of children with cancer who cannot get their vulnerable children vaccinated.

I have zero desire to get along with you or any of your type. What I want is for you to take up your most basic social responsibility, to have the most rudimentary courtesy, it takes to have your children vaccinated.

Barring that, I'd like you to keep your children out of public. And, if you leave the country, then you should stay out of the country.

But, 'yah freedom to vector vanquished diseases back into the society you're taking advantage of (until maybe it threatens your kids)' right?

Every time my children get their shots I remind myself how lucky I am that I'll never have to watch one of them suffer some deadly disease. But it also really pisses me off that I live with a group of people so rude that they're willing to let other people keep the defenses up while they lolly-gag around in illogical, self-serving narcissism.

No, we can't have a reasonable discussion--it would be akin to having a discussion with a climate change denier where all of the facts, all of the history, every available observation, 99.99 percent of the science, and every statistic is on my side and yet I have to pretend like you have a real argument to make.

Nah, dude. You want to see nature in action? How about not vaccinating your kids and then taking 'em on a tour of the Central African Republic or India. We'd see how you felt about vaccines real quick, I suspect.

Got smallpox? Nope. Why? worldwide effort to vaccinate.

Still got polio? Yep. Why? A bunch of morons got scared of vaccines literally months before polio was wiped off the face of the earth. Thank ignorance, self-righteousness and unreasonable fear for vaccines.

Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available. Why? Because of people like you. Nope, I'm not your buddy.

You're a perpetrator who should be prosecuted for endangering the lives of the most vulnerable children in our society. No, we can't have a reasonable discussion and I refuse to even pretend that you have valid points for fear of falsely giving them any legitimacy.

Take this from a kale eating, no-chemical-gardening, vegetarian: Go back to nature, dude, nature will eat you alive.

Green fencing

The image below of a portion of our farm, from google maps, shows fencing helps regenerate soil fertility.

The three light colored spots directly to the left and
below the hexagon are fruit trees, and two brown spots
near the lower right edge of the photo are Japanese Maples.

In the photo the small hexagon in the upper left corner, 750 square feet in area, is markedly greener than the rest of the field. It was fenced off. The rest of the acreage is open to any critter. This photo was taken in the late, dry, summer of 2014.

We watered the trees, but we also watered trees in other areas that do not show similar increases in greenness. It appears that the fencing ended grazing pressure from rabbits, turkey, and deer. The longer grass, bushes and trees shade the soil, keeping it cooler and more moist, setting up a soil creation feedback system--more protection more green, more green more protection, etc...

We have since added considerably to this fenced area, now up to over 10,000 sf. This photo makes me want to fence my entire five acres.

Troops arrive for basic training

I found five little cockerels at Wilco for half price. They are lucky little birds. Normally they would have been tossed into a grinder as soon as they were sexed, but somebody must have thought they were pullets (hens) and sent them to the store where their true nature was discovered. Not sure what the store would have done with them if I hadn't come along looking for troops to chicken the Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone Garden Perimeter Fortified Area of Defense (RPBKZGPFAD).

As the man at the store said, very absolutely, 'nobody wants cockerels!'

I replied, 'shouldn't they be free?'

No luck, but at $1.50, close.

My Janissaries in training: Two White Leghorns, two Blue Andalusians, One Gold Laced Wyandotte, and two Rhode Island Reds, the latter are pullets to replace my lost Buff Orpington and my Unexpected and Very Expensive Speckled Sussex Rooster.

They're heritage breeds. Without a marketable skill like laying eggs or growing genetically engineered giant breasts, they get, well, decapitalized.

That the boys get immediately killed was one of the ethical dilemmas I faced at the beginning of the chicken head scratching. We can't keep roosters as they're too loud for the neighborhood, plus I need good foragers that are pretty cold hardy--good forager plus cold hardy leaves me with only heritage breeds to choose from.

But for every heritage female I buy a heritage male is going to die. Oofdah, my bruised
conscience.

Cheap Cheeps

The white leghorns massage my ego/conscience the most. White Leghorn hens lay white eggs. White eggs are not sought after by the particular sort of hairless ape that keeps heritage breeds. So, the white-egg-laying White Leghorn cockerel is a lucky bird if he sees day two. Nobody wants cockerels, especially White Leghorn cockerels.

Poor Henry the Unexpected and Very Expensive Rooster, he's going stir crazy. But I can't put him outside. He is LOUD. I take him to the land and let him roam when I have the time or I'm working on the fence. Soon, he'll be in chicken wonderland, though, scratching, eating bugs, and generally Roostering.

We're keeping Henry Rooster in the garage until we get the fencing ready on the farm. Tonight he kicked his stall door open (actually a dog kennel) and raided the place. He hopped up on the top of the chick incubator and broke the heat lamp. We're lucky he didn't kill the chicks.

Work on the RPBKZGPFAD in progress. Electric wires soon.

Everybody's welcome on the farm

I'm not upset when I see mole hills or mice or rabbits. Generally, the more life the better. Mole hills are a sign that  the soil is regaining health. Moles need to eat over half their weight in earthworms each day so they're always looking for rich, abundant soil that is full of worms.

If you've got moles then you've got worms. If you've got worms then you've got worm poop. Yay, worm poop.

Strange fact: A moles saliva is toxic to earthworms. It will paralyze but not kill. The still alive worms are often stored in what is essentially a mole pantry. Sometimes, a mole will store a thousand worms for later meals.

Voles follow in the mole holes, as do mice. The real damage to crops is done by these two. But, as I said, these creatures, usually annoyances or worse, are not hated by me. I see rabbits but I also see Hawks, so nature balances the equation, leaving food for everyone, including my family.

Coast Garter

This little Coast Garter Snake, above, was roaming around. I picked him up. I'd never 'own' a snake because I like my animals to have multiple jobs, but I like seeing them on the farm. They eat mice, moles, voles, bugs.

I can't help grabbing the poor fellows. Reptiles are really cool. Garter snakes are generally not harmful to humans. But, they will emit a smelly musk when threatened, and they do have teeth. If they manage to puncture your skin and then gum you for a bit you might even suffer a small swelling or irritation because they do produce a neurotoxin. If you're a frog and you let the snake gum you then you'll have the unimaginable experience of being swallowed whole while still alive. I guess if the snake was big enough, and you let him gum on you until he released all of his venom, then you might have the same displeasure.