To The Surbiton Manor Born

Next weekend the first plants (peppers) will be going into the greenhouse. This was difficult to believe last week, because we had a cold snap that was below zero for most of it. We burned through almost an entire face cord of wood. But yesterday it snapped, and today it was up over 40. I was able to work outside. So there was some urgency today to getting the greenhouse into shape to receive them.  These little cheap greenhouses are readily available. We have two of them. But they disappointed in their utility.  The biggest problem is that they go together easily, but come apart just as easily. This makes them really, really difficult to move.  Yesterday I used an epoxy that will bind plastic and metal to lock the greenhouse together, making it markedly less flimsy. Today I locked it down to a roller cart that I built. The T-5 fluorescents are fired up and wired in Last year was especially bad. I started plants on time, but I had them in my guitar room on the north side ...

  Olive T'Pring Sparklequeen - Early Warning System While we are getting more sun, our days are getting darker all the time. The plane has crashed into the mountainside, and, in the end, in spite of playing at prepping, we are not ready. And we need to throw preparedness into high gear, because things a year from now are beyond unpredictable. The current presidential administration squatting in the White House is a white supremacist Christian nationalist terror organization, and, as promised in their Evil Plot 2025, they are doing their level best to destroy everything that is good or decent in the world. I think the most obscene thing these vile criminals have inflicted thus far on the world is shutting the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by fiat and the introduction of  a morality- free white supremacist tech bro who actually throws Hitler salutes in public. By abruptly cutting aid around the world to sick and starving people, he has let loose mass...

Zipper It's a cold sunny day today, but dark clouds are looming. It's more than the usual dread of living in the Anthropocene that darkens every joy. It seems that the imbeciles with all the guns and money are intent on making everyone's lives worse with moronic trade policies that are going to drive up food prices. This is not the right blog for trying to solve the world's problems. It's focused on the garden and self-sufficiency, which is always a good policy.  Rumor has it, today, that Colombia is about to have a 25% tariff inflicted on it. Of course, the people paying for it will be people who drink coffee. The cost will just be passed on to consumers here. This is what happens when idiots vote to put buffoons in charge.  But you can't fix stupid. Whinging won't change it.  So it is time to be practical and stock up on coffee. We've been doing this for a couple of months already, but we will be stepping it up. There are about 20 lbs. in the basement,...

  Princess Poppyseed Watson and her Magnificent Tail It is never too early to start planning. This is the indoor part of it. You can do it with your cats. In fact, I think that planning is half the fun. It is part of the process. It might be argued that too much planning removes one from the moment. As Allen Saunders put it in the January 1957 issue of Reader's Digest , and later John Lennon put it, "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." But the answer to this half-baked argument is that the making of plans is in fact part of the process of life, and it is worthwhile in itself, because it is more than just a mental exercise, it has practical repercussions on your future. My future involves a summer of gardening. Here are some of the things that we're going to be growing: Fresno peppers (Tasty! Just had one. We've tasted blood, and we want more !) Snow peas Pole beans Bush beans Hubbard squash Pumpkins (They can share the trellis with the bea...

  Helko Werk Nordic Splitting Axe Over the last couple of weeks, I've acquired more than one axe, based on new information. While readers who know about cutting wood may find this a bit dull, like my old fiberglass-handled felling axe from a big box hardware store, if you haven't cut a lot of wood, it may be new to you. I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across one of the folks I follow, Rowdy Claude, the cross-dressing homesteader who gave a wood splitting 101 class. Aha! This was why my axe continually jams in the wood. The "cheeks" of the axe head are the wrong shape. Great for cutting a tree down. Lousy for splitting.  This should not have been news to me. My dad used to heat with wood. This is our third year heating with wood at Steepmeadow. And yet... So I purchased a really good splitting axe. It turns out that there's a whole world of axes. There is the brand with the big recognition, the Gransfors Bruk. There's Helko Werk from Germany. There...

Good night, raised beds.  A good chunk of this afternoon was spent out in the howling winds - gusts reaching a 7 on the Beaufort Scale - prepping the raised beds for winter & spring. Fortunately, it was a pretty mild day, by November standards. 53 degrees. This involves: 1) Removing the detritus of last summer's crops.  2) Loosening the soil. Note that this is NOT turning it as some poor gardening advice columns suggest. When you stick a fork in it and shake it, the soil gets loosened, but it doesn't upset the balance of the bacteria and microorganisms down there. 3) Add about 20 lbs. of our home-made compost. Food scraps, leaves & grass clippings from two years ago 4) Add a sack of commercial raised bed soil. Sack of commercial raised bed soil 5) Rake it smooth. 6) Dump leaves that have been chopped up in the lawnmower on top. Nutrients will leach down into the soil over the winter, and the leaves will act as mulch next spring when we scrape them away from the seeds a...