With spring on the way it is time to start thinking about gardening and growing food. So if you want to grow food naturally (you do), it is also time to start thinking about composting as early as possible. I want to help everyone try to start composting no matter what their situation. As the title says, yes you can compost, it doesn't matter where you live, what area, or whether you are in an apartment or on a farm.
I want to start a little ongoing series to delve into composting, unpack the techniques and science, and work on a few recipes to make home composting available to everyone. Over the next few weeks we will look at various methods of composting and how to make them fit into our everyday lives.
Compost is defined as decayed plant matter: a mixture of decayed plants and other organic matter used by gardeners for enriching soil. This is kind of the most basic description. If you have space, time, and a bunch of things that used to be alive, you can pile them up and wait. After 1-2 years you will have compost which you can use to amend soil and feed your plants. This is the easiest method and slowest. I highly recommend this method, if, as I said, you have time and space.
In all forms of composting the ingredients matter. In the "pile it up and wait" method, what you put in the pile matters least. Literally if it used to be alive, it will compost. Dead plants from the garden, grass clippings, fall leaves, kitchen scraps, neighbors pets that bark all night, manure, wood mulch, coffee grounds etc. It will all decay and make the best fertilizer for your garden. Certain things like wood mulch will take a long time, 2-3 years, to break down, as opposed to shredded leaves which should be done within a year. The bottom layer of the pile where it contacts the soil will always be the first part to finish. This is because nature has a sick sense of humor and wants to watch you dig through a pile of smelly rotting manure to get a small bucket of finished compost which will only be enough to put around one tomato plant. However, there are other methods which are in effect like walking up behind nature and dropping a piece of ice in her shorts. (I warned you about the jokes.)
If you choose to use this method I recommend doing it intelligently and using a proven process. First take the time to accumulate ingredients in the proper amounts. You want a 30 to 1 carbon to nitrogen ratio (C:N) by weight. Carbon, or brown, ingredients include wood mulch, leaves, straw, dry brown grass clippings, sawdust. These would be considered almost pure carbon. Nitrogen ingredients include but are not limited to, fresh grass, coffee grounds, blood (seriously), veggie scraps, and manure. In the absence of the ability to weigh large amounts of these things I use a rough estimate by volume. Try to avoid large pieces of anything. The smaller the pieces the faster and more thoroughly they will break down. For this slow method the best mix is shredded fall leaves and coffee grounds. The next best is shredded leaves and grass clippings. This is the easiest to collect by mowing your (untreated) lawn in the fall and collecting the mix with a grass catcher. But again, if you just pile everything up, regardless of the ratio and ingredients, time, bacteria, and fungus will give you compost. This is the best method for really large amounts that you can't efficiently work with. Unless of course you happen to have a tractor with a bucket loader. In which case I want to be your friend.
This is also the very basic composting method that we will build on in the future.
Until then,
Keep on keepin on!
JB
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Rocket Fire 2!
As promised, here is a more detailed description/tutorial for how to
put together a rocket stove.
Arrange the base layer like so.
This is the second layer. You need to have a gap in front to allow for feeding the fire.
I like to leave the brick sticking out the back of the chimney for two reasons.
1- I don't want to break my brick since I will dismantle the
rocket stove and reuse the bricks for other purposes.
As we say in permaculture, we stack functions.
Or bricks as it were.
2- It leaves a good place to set a beer.
Begin by creating a base for the stove to sit on. The base can be as
simple as just the level ground, but I found that having the gap
comes in handy later on for allowing good airflow to the fire.
This is the second layer. You need to have a gap in front to allow for feeding the fire.
I like to leave the brick sticking out the back of the chimney for two reasons.
1- I don't want to break my brick since I will dismantle the
rocket stove and reuse the bricks for other purposes.
As we say in permaculture, we stack functions.
Or bricks as it were.
2- It leaves a good place to set a beer.
Set a brick on top of the extra brick in back to hold it in place.
View from the back.
Continue to stack bricks in an interlocking pattern.
Be sure to fit them snug, to create as much of a seal as possible.
A tight seal will make for a hotter burn.
I played around with the height. I found Five levels to be just right to get the
hottest burn and keep the pot closest to the fire for cooking.
In the absence of a trivet, bricks make for a much
sturdier cooking surface than rocks.
To get the fire started load first from the top with small twigs,
then with slightly thicker sticks.
This is my colorful assistant.
To start the fire I stuffed the front with dry pine needles
and lit it, then sticks to feed the fire. I blocked the gap in the base
with a brick to keep embers from falling out of the front. Not completely
necessary, but helpful.
It was really windy so I built up a collar around the top of the
chimney to keep it from blowing the fire out of the front burn chamber.
Because of the wind, it took about 23 minuets to boil water.
The day before when there was no wind, it took four minuets to get water boiling for coffee.
It shows how important it is to get a good seal between the bricks.
For dinner we made BBQ chili.
3 cans of baked beans
2 lbs. of ground beef
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 medium onion
3 garlic cloves
Chili powder, salt, pepper to taste
Brown the beef with the peppers, onion and garlic and drain.
Add the beans, chili powder, salt and pepper and cook till heated through.
Eat.
Enjoy!
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Rocket stove!
In my opinion, one of the best, most fun parts of permaculture is how it stresses the use of appropriate technology.
Built our first rocket stove today and baked a loaf of beer bread! Worked great, just took a bit of time and a minor rebuild to get it "rockety". I also thought of a design change to make it better.
This is the second incarnation, which happened about 3 minutes after the first.
At first the sticks were right down on the grey bricks. This didn't allow air to flow to the fire. Which is also where I will make an adjustment on the rebuild. I'll open it up a bit underneath and add a small grate to allow ashes to fall, which should help it to burn hotter.
It was pretty windy today. I'll add a collar around the top of the chimney to keep the wind from blowing down and putting the fire out. The wheelbarrow worked well enough today.
I put a small crack between the grey bricks in front and that seemed to help a bit with air intake. The air was able to actually flow up under the fire.
It was starting to sound really rockety!
Almost finished loaf of beer bread. Would have baked better had I let the dutch oven
heat up more thoroughly.
The great thing about these rocket stoves is how simple they are to set up, how hot they burn, and how little fuel they use. I baked a loaf of bread using a small pile of damp twigs, and 20 paving bricks. On my first try. If I went out to buy bricks to make this, I would have spent $10 by using these (expensive) pavers at fifty cents each. If you want to cook on a camp stove you'll spend between $20 and $200 and have to buy the gas to power it. How much wood does it take to cook over a camp fire?
These stoves come in many different forms and are mostly used in third world countries because of how clean they burn, how small they are and how little fuel they use. In some villages people can cook an entire meal over only dry grass which is great in a place with no wood or propane! They can be made from many different materials from bricks to cement to old food cans or cinder blocks. The tin can versions are extremely light and are great for travel and camping or survivalism.
All in all I have to say that this was a success and I will be refining the design on a small scale in order to build a larger more permanent installation. I'll keep updating as I go with more detailed instructions and better plans.
Keep on keepin on!
J.B.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Clean Living
So in the interest of helping others live a better more abundant life, I want to share a one of my experiences.
I have been plagued by migraine headaches most of my life. If you are not aware, the migraine is considered one of the most painful medical conditions known to man. They are characterized by intense pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light and sound. For me, migraines could get so bad that they would cause me to vomit. Any movement, odor or temperature change could make it worse. I have never found a medication that could make it go away. The only option was to sleep it off in a cold, dark, silent room.
A migraine would come on fairly suddenly most of the time. I would usually be fine for most of the day, and then around early afternoon it would hit and I would have to leave work, try to make it home safely and just crash. Occasionally I might feel it coming on and take a double dose of ibuprofen and that would head it off. (Ha! Head it off!) Of course other times it would actually make it worse and add to the nausea. I would also go through spells of having them more frequently. I would have only one a month for two or three months followed by several weeks of two to five migraines each week. These times were very oppressive and depressing. The whole thing began sometime around when I was 12 years old, and they increased in intensity and frequency as I got into my mid 20's. At the time I'm writing this I'm 33.
I never could figure out what the trigger was. Some people find relief by cutting out any food that contains MSG. Others by cutting out anything fermented like wine, beer, cheese, pickles, even peperoni. I've read that weather patterns can be a trigger, lack of sleep, too long without eating, not enough B vitamins and on and on... I tracked all these things over the years, with no real clues at all. Until one day just after Christmas 2012.
My wife and kids were out of town for a few weeks visiting family so I was home alone enjoying my last few days of vacation and reveling in the total silence, when a migraine hit. Not a particularly bad one, but still not fun. This was one that medicine wasn't helping so I started with the tricks that had helped in the past. Drinking water, soaking my feet in hot water, eating salt, cup of coffee, cold washcloth over my eyes, cayenne pepper (believe me you would try it too). I got a small amount of relief and began to try to distract myself by doing some more research on triggers. I think I searched for something like "environmental migraine triggers." I ran across all the same things I had found before, then I saw something a bit different. I wish I could find it again. It was a post on a medical forum from a woman who had found her trigger. Antiperspirant.
"Yeah right" you're thinking. "That couldn't possibly have any merit." That's what I thought too, but after 20 years of this I was willing to try anything. I got up, took a shower, washed my pits really good and put nothing back on them. 15 minuets later the migraine subsided to a headache, and within less than an hour was completely gone. I tested it the next day by putting on antiperspirant, and guess what? Migraine began to come back. Took another shower, migraine went away.
Now it has been just over a year since I have worn any type of deodorant, and I have had only one, count em', one migraine, and that one wasn't very bad. I don't know why this has worked for me, besides the speculation that consistently rubbing a bunch of chemicals and laboratory created fragrance on an area of my body where the skin is thin, close to major arteries and lymph nodes/glands is probably not the best idea.
Now you may be asking the question "Have you lost all your friends?" and I would answer, "only those with a sense of smell." (Bad joke there. Get used to them, they will be frequent and rarely that good.)
The fact is, I don't stink. Not even through summer, and I work outside for a living, have a garden and live in Georgia if that means anything to you. I stay clean, I wash my pits well every day. After I shower I clean my underarms with a bit of rubbing alcohol to kill any stink producing bacteria, and I have no issues. And most importantly, I HAVE NO MIGRAINS!
I'm sharing this with you to kind of make a point. Hopefully I can help someone out there to improve their quality of life by doing what Paul Wheaton over at permies.com calls a "toxin-ectomy."
We as a family have begun to work on this in small ways. First antiperspirant then commercially produced toothpaste. We make our own toothpaste out of peroxide and baking soda. We use only organic soap for our bodies, and make our own cleaning products and laundry detergent. And you know what? We are just as clean as everyone else around us. We don't stick out or come off as hippies. Our home is clean. We save money. Mine and my families skin and hair is healthier, softer and clearer than it used to be. We seem to not get sick as often. We certainly don't do it all perfectly, sometimes we still buy a few more conventional type cleaning products, but we try to get the "cleaner" cleaning products. Not only is this better for us, but also for the environment.
I hope this helps someone out there to make their life better, and if it does please let me know. If you need any advice, help or support let me know that as well. Check out the forums at permies, there is a whole section called toxin-ectomy to help get you started on the path to clean living.
J.B.
I have been plagued by migraine headaches most of my life. If you are not aware, the migraine is considered one of the most painful medical conditions known to man. They are characterized by intense pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light and sound. For me, migraines could get so bad that they would cause me to vomit. Any movement, odor or temperature change could make it worse. I have never found a medication that could make it go away. The only option was to sleep it off in a cold, dark, silent room.
A migraine would come on fairly suddenly most of the time. I would usually be fine for most of the day, and then around early afternoon it would hit and I would have to leave work, try to make it home safely and just crash. Occasionally I might feel it coming on and take a double dose of ibuprofen and that would head it off. (Ha! Head it off!) Of course other times it would actually make it worse and add to the nausea. I would also go through spells of having them more frequently. I would have only one a month for two or three months followed by several weeks of two to five migraines each week. These times were very oppressive and depressing. The whole thing began sometime around when I was 12 years old, and they increased in intensity and frequency as I got into my mid 20's. At the time I'm writing this I'm 33.
I never could figure out what the trigger was. Some people find relief by cutting out any food that contains MSG. Others by cutting out anything fermented like wine, beer, cheese, pickles, even peperoni. I've read that weather patterns can be a trigger, lack of sleep, too long without eating, not enough B vitamins and on and on... I tracked all these things over the years, with no real clues at all. Until one day just after Christmas 2012.
My wife and kids were out of town for a few weeks visiting family so I was home alone enjoying my last few days of vacation and reveling in the total silence, when a migraine hit. Not a particularly bad one, but still not fun. This was one that medicine wasn't helping so I started with the tricks that had helped in the past. Drinking water, soaking my feet in hot water, eating salt, cup of coffee, cold washcloth over my eyes, cayenne pepper (believe me you would try it too). I got a small amount of relief and began to try to distract myself by doing some more research on triggers. I think I searched for something like "environmental migraine triggers." I ran across all the same things I had found before, then I saw something a bit different. I wish I could find it again. It was a post on a medical forum from a woman who had found her trigger. Antiperspirant.
"Yeah right" you're thinking. "That couldn't possibly have any merit." That's what I thought too, but after 20 years of this I was willing to try anything. I got up, took a shower, washed my pits really good and put nothing back on them. 15 minuets later the migraine subsided to a headache, and within less than an hour was completely gone. I tested it the next day by putting on antiperspirant, and guess what? Migraine began to come back. Took another shower, migraine went away.
Now it has been just over a year since I have worn any type of deodorant, and I have had only one, count em', one migraine, and that one wasn't very bad. I don't know why this has worked for me, besides the speculation that consistently rubbing a bunch of chemicals and laboratory created fragrance on an area of my body where the skin is thin, close to major arteries and lymph nodes/glands is probably not the best idea.
Now you may be asking the question "Have you lost all your friends?" and I would answer, "only those with a sense of smell." (Bad joke there. Get used to them, they will be frequent and rarely that good.)
The fact is, I don't stink. Not even through summer, and I work outside for a living, have a garden and live in Georgia if that means anything to you. I stay clean, I wash my pits well every day. After I shower I clean my underarms with a bit of rubbing alcohol to kill any stink producing bacteria, and I have no issues. And most importantly, I HAVE NO MIGRAINS!
I'm sharing this with you to kind of make a point. Hopefully I can help someone out there to improve their quality of life by doing what Paul Wheaton over at permies.com calls a "toxin-ectomy."
We as a family have begun to work on this in small ways. First antiperspirant then commercially produced toothpaste. We make our own toothpaste out of peroxide and baking soda. We use only organic soap for our bodies, and make our own cleaning products and laundry detergent. And you know what? We are just as clean as everyone else around us. We don't stick out or come off as hippies. Our home is clean. We save money. Mine and my families skin and hair is healthier, softer and clearer than it used to be. We seem to not get sick as often. We certainly don't do it all perfectly, sometimes we still buy a few more conventional type cleaning products, but we try to get the "cleaner" cleaning products. Not only is this better for us, but also for the environment.
I hope this helps someone out there to make their life better, and if it does please let me know. If you need any advice, help or support let me know that as well. Check out the forums at permies, there is a whole section called toxin-ectomy to help get you started on the path to clean living.
J.B.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Lets Infect Some Brains
Permaculture.
permanent + agriculture
Merriam-Webster-
: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems.
"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system."
Bill Mollison
Permaculture is an ecological design science guided by a set of ethics. It is utilizing natural eco-systems to design sustainable/regenerative food production systems. It is also a set of guiding principles that can be incorporated into our daily lives.
There are three primary ethics that are fundamental to permaculture, which I will address only briefly due to the fact that they can be a bit contentious, and debating them is not something I want to be a part of. They are : Care of the Earth, Care of People, Return of Surplus. There are some who word the ethics as : Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share. You may already be able to see how the third ethic can cause a bit of strife within the permaculture community.
I prescribe to the third ethic being "return of surplus." This can be interpreted to allow the use of that surplus for your own benefit. It allows you the option to do with it what you will. You can sell your surplus, you can store it, you can redirect it back to your production, you can give it away or donate it. The only thing that return of surplus does not allow you to do is to waste it. This is because the surplus is yours. It belongs to you. If you interpret the third ethic as "fair share," this implies that the excess of what is produced does not belong to you and should therefore be given away to those who would take it. That is neither sustainable nor fair. There. I've addressed that, and now I'm done.
So we have addressed a little bit of what permaculture is (and a bit of what it isn't). Lets begin to explore what you can expect from this blog. As time goes on we'll get really in depth and begin to unpack a lot of various topics, some of which will be very simple, others really complex, and a few of them controversial depending on your worldview. I like to start with basics like the 12 permaculture design principles, energy flow through natural systems, integrated systems, practical application and the multitude of ways to incorporate permaculture concepts into our daily lives to create abundance.
I hope to help and encourage everyone to design abundance into their lives. To create resiliency and redundant systems by stacking functions, observing and interacting with their environments and valuing and utilizing the marginal. To turn waste into wealth, and generally make life easier by valuing diversity and allowing small scale changes to make large scale impacts.
J.B.
permanent + agriculture
Merriam-Webster-
: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems.
"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system."
Bill Mollison
Permaculture is an ecological design science guided by a set of ethics. It is utilizing natural eco-systems to design sustainable/regenerative food production systems. It is also a set of guiding principles that can be incorporated into our daily lives.
There are three primary ethics that are fundamental to permaculture, which I will address only briefly due to the fact that they can be a bit contentious, and debating them is not something I want to be a part of. They are : Care of the Earth, Care of People, Return of Surplus. There are some who word the ethics as : Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share. You may already be able to see how the third ethic can cause a bit of strife within the permaculture community.
I prescribe to the third ethic being "return of surplus." This can be interpreted to allow the use of that surplus for your own benefit. It allows you the option to do with it what you will. You can sell your surplus, you can store it, you can redirect it back to your production, you can give it away or donate it. The only thing that return of surplus does not allow you to do is to waste it. This is because the surplus is yours. It belongs to you. If you interpret the third ethic as "fair share," this implies that the excess of what is produced does not belong to you and should therefore be given away to those who would take it. That is neither sustainable nor fair. There. I've addressed that, and now I'm done.
So we have addressed a little bit of what permaculture is (and a bit of what it isn't). Lets begin to explore what you can expect from this blog. As time goes on we'll get really in depth and begin to unpack a lot of various topics, some of which will be very simple, others really complex, and a few of them controversial depending on your worldview. I like to start with basics like the 12 permaculture design principles, energy flow through natural systems, integrated systems, practical application and the multitude of ways to incorporate permaculture concepts into our daily lives to create abundance.
I hope to help and encourage everyone to design abundance into their lives. To create resiliency and redundant systems by stacking functions, observing and interacting with their environments and valuing and utilizing the marginal. To turn waste into wealth, and generally make life easier by valuing diversity and allowing small scale changes to make large scale impacts.
J.B.
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