his thoughts | KW Homestead

Category: his thoughts (page 12 of 13)

Planning an Edible Fedge, or Food Hedge

What is the best way to delineate and divide your property? With the cost of fencing so high, and the move back toward the traditional practices and wisdom of our ancestors, more and more homesteaders and small farmers are once again looking at hedges and hedgerows as a sustainable and productive solution.

A hedgerow can last forever, just look at the countryside in England or Ireland where some hedges are centuries old, and can provide food, fodder, fuel, and medicine, as well as protection from wind and nosy neighbors. The type of hedge I want to to talk about is an edible food hedge, or a fedge.

European Countryside, divided by hedgerows C. Kurt Thomas Hunt

Traditional hedges in Europe consisted of hazelnut, chestnut, willow, holly, and other small trees and bushes including roses. These hedges divided property, mainly grazing paddocks, and were coppiced for fuel wood on 5-20 year rotations. They also were a source of browse for livestock, and helped to stabilize the landscape by acting as both windbreaks and organic matter traps.

Hedges and fedges should be a part of any homestead, and are a valuable technique in any permaculture design. The key to a good edible hedgerow is plant selection. Shrubs work well here, especially those that spread from the roots, like hazelnut, and those that can be easily propagated by layering, like figs and cane fruit. Some examples include:

elderberry
currants and gooseberries
blackberries, raspberries, and other cane fruits
Siberian pea shrub
high bush cranberry
Russian olive
goji berry
yaupon holly
blueberry
aronia
sea buckthorn

Sea Buckthorn, or Sea Berry, makes a nice edible hedge with nutritious orange fruits. C. ednl

Some trees work well in a hedge too, but they should be small trees, with a low branching habitat. Species that coppice, or grow back from the stump after cutting, are very well suited to hedges as well. Some worthy examples are:

black locust
chestnut
black alder
honey locust
and some pines

The herb layer in a fedge can’t be forgotten, and is easily filled with herbaceous support species and dynamic accumulators like comfrey, yarrow, and dandelion, and ground covers like clover and wintergreen. The addition of a hedge creates two micro-climates depending on its orientation, one on each side, that should be utilized with perennial or annual herbs, flowers, and vegetables.

When planning a hedge, make sure to space your plants properly to ensure a good thickness with no gaps between planting. One option is to plant species that can be easily propagated further apart than desired in the future, and then propagating them outwards season by season until the fedge is filled in and impenetrable.

When filling in gaps of fedges, look to smaller, more shade tolerant plants like yaupon holly, and currants to finish off any holes in the vegetation. The finished product should last forever with very little maintenance except some pruning, harvesting, and propagating when one or another plant dies.

Because of its diversity, an edible hedge of many species shouldn’t succumb to fungal or disease outbreaks and be completely wiped out. This diversity also provides habitat for an immense number of beneficial insects, which not only patrol the hedge, but the surrounding gardens, orchards and food forests as well.

So take look at your property. Can a fedge run parallel to that fence? Can one enclose your vegetable garden, or divide your pasture into paddocks for cell grazing? A diverse food hedge can bring many benefits to you and your property, and should be considered in any edible landscaping project.

Working on the Garden Swales

February 11, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

The snow and rain held off today so after researching a few options on chicken feed, I suited up and headed out to our main garden to work on some things that have been on my winter homestead chores list.

I’ll start with a brief bit on our garden design. We have our raised beds laid out on contour. This means that they follow the pattern of the ground and are not arbitrarily straight. The purpose of this is to harvest the runoff of the upper yard into small garden swales that are in front of each bed.

Bolt trapped between our small garden swales after a heavy rain.

Swales are a tried and true permaculture technique, and are basically level ditches on contour that stop runoff in place, and hold that water instead of letting it erode away our soil. Because the bottoms of the swales are not compacted, they allow water to infiltrate into the ground and slowly spread downhill. This water is then available to the surrounding plants and can greatly reduce irrigation needs, and increase soil fertility.

Our small hand dug garden swales were put in last spring, and have performed well. After big rains, they fill up and slowly release their catch, just as planned. However, some of the swales are not working perfectly, and I set out today to do some maintenance.

One of the problems is that water is not spreading uniformly across the swale, and that certain areas are holding water for longer periods than other. These swales are not level.

Garden swale maintenance.

So today I grabbed a shovel, a hand hoe, and a 4 foot level and leveled the bottom of one of the uphill swales meticulously. It was quite a bit off level, maybe 6 inches to a foot over the entire length of the swale. Now it should fill as expected, and let water seep in evenly across the bed.

I also have noticed that the uphill side of some of the swales, or backcut, have eroded somewhat this winter with mini landslides. This happened because when we installed them, we left a steep backcut that was almost vertical, instead of a gentle sloping one. Not a huge deal, but I worked on that some, trying to allow the water a gentle path into the swale. I think the newly exposed soil would be a great place for some clover, plantain, and chicory though.

One of the benefits of the swales that we have experienced that I hadn’t thought of, is their mulch catching ability. I knew that swales can act as deposition features, catching organic matter and eventually filling in to ground level over time, but I didn’t realize that our swales would gather such an enormous amount of leaves from our huge oak tree at the top of the hill. This made for an easy time of mulching the winter garden, as I just scooped them out of the ditch, and up onto the beds.

Level swale, gentle backcut, and mulched bed. Nice.

That is one thing I want to be better at this year: mulch. Mulch keeps moisture in the soil, regulates temperature, and eventually breaks down to feed both plants and microbes. Mulch also hinders weed growth, and protects soil from heavy rains and other erosive forces.

Lastly, I scooped out the last of a batch of manure tea we had fermenting. Only the dregs remain, and I’ll need to add some more water soon to get it brewing again. Nothing like the smell of month old manure tea. We smelt it every time we went outside after I disturbed it. MMMmmnnn. Smells like healthy soil!

Chicken Tractors: How Many, How Big, and How Often to Move

February 7, 2014 / jason / 1 Comment

The more I watch our 2 flocks of chickens, the more I feel like we should give them each their own space. Right now we have a flock of bantams, and a flock of standards. Each flock has a rooster, and contrary to everything we’d heard, they don’t try to murder each other. True, Rex will chase Roosty around, but he’s way too quick to catch. That goes for Roosty’s hens as well, who find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order, and often are chased off from food and water by the bigger Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks.

That’s really the main reason we want to separate them. Maybe if the bantams don’t have to constantly watch their little backs, and have better opportunities at the food dish, we may get some more tiny eggs (not wind eggs!) and maybe hatch out some banty chicks too.

Our mobile chicken coop, right after being moved to fresh pasture.

In order to separate the flocks, we’ll need another chicken coop. Right now our mobile coop and cattle panel paddock system is working great. It measures 32 by 16 feet, has an old camper top on wheels as the coop, and is covered by bird netting to discourage hawks and aerial assaults. We haven’t had any predation issues yet, and we move the birds every two weeks to fresher pasture.

This is great, but does take some time to take down and move (about an hour), and I think the best fit for our bantys would be a lighter, more mobile chicken tractor. Chicken tractors are meant to be moved every day or multiple times a day, and are becoming more popular as people begin to rediscover the importance of pasture raised meat and eggs.

Roosty and his girls cautiously at the food dish.

The tractor is both coop and paddock at the same time, and is either dragged or rolled to the next spot by a farmer or mechanical tractor, depending on the size.

Which brings me to our design considerations for our banty tractor. We have 12 bantams, and according to the internet, 1 acre of land can support anywhere from 50 to 400 chickens. Not too helpful, but it’s a place to start.

Taking the low number of 50 birds, which seems more reasonable for pasture raised chickens, that’s about 1000 sq. ft per bird. Moved every day for a year, that’s 2.75 sq ft. per bird per day.

So a 4′ by 8′ chicken tractor, 32 sq. ft, should be able to handle 10-12 chickens or banty’s, if it’s moved every day. At that size, it should be possible to build a fairly light and predator proof structure, so daily movement shouldn’t be a problem.

Now we just need to think a little more about shape, materials, roosting, egg boxes, and some more functional aspects, and we’ll be on our way towards more pasture raised bantam eggs on the homestead.

Winter Homestead Chores: Spring Garden Planning

February 3, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

In my other posts on winter homestead chores, I talked about taking the time to enjoy the season and recuperate from a busy year of homesteading and adding to the farm’s energy security by splitting wood for the woodstove. In this post, I’d like to talk about a more forward looking aspect of winter on the homestead. Planning next year’s garden.

Emma Picking Puppies from the Garden Last Summer

This is a great time to start pouring over seed catalogs, looking for both the tried and true garden favorites and some new varieties, species, and heirlooms to experiment with. Many companies offer free paper catalogs, as well as online versions to help you sort through the massive number of vegetable and fruit seeds for the garden. Some of the ones on my desk are High Mowing Organic Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Bountiful Gardens. These all specialize in heirloom vegetable seed, and always have something new and interesting to really get you salivating for that first planting and harvest.

Some of our favorite places to find new seeds

In addition to vegetable seeds, it’s also a good time to look at different fruiting trees, bushes, and shrubs. Some are best grown from 1-3 year old plants, and others do well as seed. Some of these plants, like hazelnut and elderberry, require a period of cold stratification if started from seed, so these are best ordered in late fall or early winter. Others, like Paulownia, readily germinate in spring conditions without a stratification period. Some plants have very specific and difficult stratification requirements and are best grown from cuttings or plants, like Yaupon Holly, which needs up to a year of warm conditions, followed 3 months of cold before it will germinate.

Once you have your have seeds, you want to check your weather conditions and average last frost date to determine when you can start transplanting your veggies into the garden. Working back from these numbers, and taking into account the frost hardiness of the veggies in question, you can figure out the best time to start your seeds indoors so that you’ll have the healthiest plants possible.

Start your seeds now to grow gigantic pumpkins like this!

Certain species are very frost and cold tolerant, such as many brassicas like cabbage and broccoli, and can be started and transplanted out very early in the year. Again, this depends on your climate.

Winter is also a good time to figure out where certain crops will be grown in the garden. For instance, tomatoes, potatoes, and other veggies in the nightshade family should not be grown in the same spot year after year. By practicing crop rotation, certain diseases and pest cycles are broken, and the result is healthier plants and better yields. Any good garden guide or encyclopedia–a great one on our shelf is Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening–will have all the information on rotating crops, and how long between plantings certain plants require before being planted in the same spot.

We planted our potatoes late, but they still did well. We definitely won’t plant them in the same spot, though.

Finally, winter is great time to go over your garden notes–everyone should have a garden notebook–and remember what did well and what didn’t. What vegetables stored longest? Which varieties tasted best? What do you need to plant more of? Less of? Were certain things planted too late? All of these tidbits and recollections allow the organic gardener to finetune their garden into exactly what they want it to be, because gardening is a never ending lesson, and winter is a great time to study.

Astragalus: A Perennial Herb for Perennial Health

January 28, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

Astragalus is a perennial and medicinal herb that has been used in both gardens and medicine cabinets for centuries. It is a very valuable and useful plant for a homestead, filling many roles, and providing many benefits.

A leguminous plant (related to beans and peas), astragalus, or milkvetch as it is commonly known, fixes nitrogen from the air with the help of colonies of bacteria that live in its root system. This allows it to feed itself and other nearby plants. Hardy to Zone 5, astragalus prefers full sun and good drainage, and would guild well on the southern side of fruit trees, or the edges of garden paths in a permaculture system.

Astragalus, a great permaculture pant. Courtesy Jason Hollinger

Medicinally, astragalus root has been touted as an immune boosting herb that stimulates and promotes general health and immune system strength. In 20,000 Secrets of Tea, Victoria Zak says that a tea made from astragalus root is traditionally thought by Chinese medicine to strengthen a body’s “protective energy” and acts as a catalyst for other herbal remedies by tonifying the immune system and enhancing the properties of other herbs.

A warm cup of Astragalus and spearmint tea, sweetened with raw honey

I try to have a cup of astragalus root tea anytime I know I’ll be around sickness or sick people, especially during flu season or if someone I know is sick. I’m enjoying some right now, actually. I combined it with a pinch of our dried spearmint, and a touch of raw honey. Its flavor is good on its own, slightly spicy and nutty I think, maybe a little too earthy to be a delicacy, but not at all unpleasant. It blends really well with other herbs, and this mint combo is pretty tasty.

We will definitely be planting some astragalus this spring; its medicinal properties are more than enough reason to, but the added benefit of fixing nitrogen makes it a great addition to our food forest. From what I’ve read, it takes a few years before the roots are harvestable, so for now I’ll stick with the astragalus root powder we got this year. Like many herbs, it is available for purchase in many forms (capsules, extracts, etc.) but I prefer the powder for making delicious tea.

As always, this isn’t intended as medical advice, and you should always do your own research when looking into herbal remedies and alternative medicine. But in the meantime, I’ll have another sip of my astragalus and mint tea.

Permaculture Plants for the Homestead: Paulownia

January 23, 2014 / jason / 1 Comment

Paulownia is a genus of fast growing deciduous trees native to the forests of China. Also known as the Royal Empress Tree, Paulownia tormentosa is often called the fastest growing hardwood tree in the world. Capable of growing 10-20 ft. in 1 year, and of being harvested for timber in 5-7 years, Paulownia trees are a useful tree for permaculturists who are seeking sustainable designs for their gardens, homesteads, and communities.

Paulownia tree blooming in early spring. Courtesy anja

Paulownia trees provide more than wood, though. In early spring, they are covered in numerous, beautiful bundles of purple flowers. These flowers provide nectar and pollen for honey bees and produce a marketable monofloral honey as well.

Paulownia can be coppiced as well as pollarded, and would make a great pioneer support species to use in food forest development. Their quick growth and large nitrogen rich leaves can enrich the surrounding area by building hummus and deepening soils.

Large Paulownia leaves make excellent mulch, compost, and animal forage

These large leaves, up to 20% protein, also make good animal forage for cattle, goats, and other livestock as well.

Paulownia lumber is resistant to rot, though not as much as locust. It is very strong, and also very light. Its quick growth and high insulative value make it an ideal wood for a log cabin or roundwood timber building.

Royal Empress wood is sought after by woodworkers because of its strength, weight, and ease of carving. Guitar makers are especially fond of Paulownia wood.

Because of these attributes and the resulting demand, Paulownia trees demand a high price at timber markets, and offer an opportunity for small farmers to diversify their income streams by using marginable land to produce high quality, quick growing timber.

In a permaculture setting or food forest, Paulownia would guild well with other coppice grove species such as chestnut, hazelnut, and black locust. Its rapid growth and quick rotting leaves make it an excellent choice as a support species to other fruit and nut trees. It would also make fine hugelkulture wood. I envision using Pawlonia trees as both a pioneer species for soil growth, and in a coppice grove area along with smaller fruiting bushes, herbs, and long lived standard trees.

Paulownia tormentosa growing in NY. Courtesy Goosefriend

All of these attributes: rapid growth, high quality timber, prolific flowers, ability to coppice and regrow, along with being able to grow in depleted soils, and a natural resistance to insect and disease pressures, make Paulownia trees (tormentosa, elongata etc.) an extremely useful and valuable plant in the permaculture toolbox.

Snow and a Food Forest in Puerto Rico

January 21, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

Let it snow!

We got our second snow of the winter, and it stuck. It stuck to the chickens, the bird netting, and basically everywhere on the homestead other than the driveway. It looks great to me (as I’m sure Sean Law’s messy lawn looked great to him), but we’ll see about travel conditions tomorrow.

The chickens are Snow excited!

Today we pretty much lazed about, waiting on the snow to start. Emma whipped up some sweet potato ginger soup (Yum.) and I mulled over some seed catalogs that recently came in the mail.

I focused on perennial plants today, and the lists and descriptions of exotic edibles and unusual varieties guided my thoughts to our backyard, and our plans for next year.

I’d like to put in a food forest.

A food forest is basically what it sounds like, a forest of food, and can take many shapes and sizes. Cultures all over the world, and throughout history, have tended forest gardens. Some of these gardens are obvious and some are so embedded in the landscape that they are hardly noticed.

For example, I spent many days wandering my great grandparents’ small lot in Moca, Puerto Rico, walking in the shade of a huge bread fruit tree while picking the sweetest grapefruit, oranges, and bananas I’ve ever tasted. An avocado tree nestled on the sunnier side of the tall tree, and in its shadow was a chicken coop with a small flock of hens and the first rooster to start crowing in the valley.

Bananas in the understory

Also in the shady understory, as almost an afterthought, were a couple dozen coffee plants and a few herbaceous “weeds.” Pigeon peas flowered along the driveway, fixing nitrogen and waiting their turn in the next pot of arroz con gandules, and a tall annatto tree soaked up the sun behind the house while ripening the red colored seeds used in almost every dish Mamá prepared.

Pigeon Pea or Gandules

That’s a food forest. Plants occupying every layer and interacting with each other by providing shade or nutrients, chickens foraging beneath and cleaning up fallen fruit, stopping the pest cycle, and fertilizing the entire system all while providing eggs and meat.

Instead of focusing on annual production, row cropping, or cash crops, food forests are small, diverse ecosystems that are greater than the sum of their parts. As self replicating systems, they are the epitome of sustainability, soil building, wealth, and resiliency as they age. There are some food forests that are over 2,000 years old.

So you can see why one would want a food forest on their homestead.

Most of the undergrowth at the forest edge has been cleared in preparation for a food forest planting next spring.

I’d like to put the beginnings of one in next year in our backyard. The spot I’m most excited about is the edge of the woodland that surrounds our yard and makes a small southeastern facing glade. I’ve begun clearing the underbrush of small oaks and pines, and would like to integrate our edible forest with the maple and oak regrowth forest surrounding us.

It will probably look nothing like the forest garden in Moca, but it will be built on the same principles and interactions between species, and will hopefully be a place where our great grandchildren will walk through, reach up, and take a bite out of whatever piece of abundance is at peak ripeness that day.

Permaculture Plants for the Homestead: Yaupon Holly

January 16, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) deserves a place on any homestead or permaculture farm. As the only native plant in the United States that contains caffeine, this valuable plant brings a lot to the table. A small to large evergreen shrub, yaupon holly is popular among landscapers as a foundation plant, and is commonly seen in both residential and commercial settings.

This is a good thing for homesteaders, because it means that yaupons are not only available to purchase at nurseries, but are relatively hardy and drought tolerant enough to survive these settings.

Hardy to zone 7, yaupon holly, and many other hollies, are commonly found as an understory shrub in hardwood forests and swamps in the southeastern United States. In the Gulf states, yaupons can make dense thickets in cleared areas acting as a pioneer species.

In the garden, yaupon holly is best situated in similar settings. Partial shade is best, but full sun to heavier shade can also be tolerated depending on variety and other factors. These small shrubs make great understory plants in a food forest or guild setting. Female plants produce small, inedible berries that provide winter forage for many native birds.

The leaves and small stems of yaupons contain caffeine, and can be toasted to make yaupon holly tea, a substitute for coffee similiar to yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) of South American fame.

The Native Americans of the southeastern United States used yaupon holly as both a tea, and a ritual beverage named black drink. This is where the vomitoria portion of Ilex vomitoria comes in, as after drinking profuse amounts of super concentrated black drink, which often included the inedible berries, many drinkers ended up vomiting and purging their systems.

But don’t worry, normal yaupon tea of just the leaves won’t make you throw up. In fact, I’m going to try a recipe of roasted dandelion root, chicory, and yaupon one day, which I imagine will make a pretty decent tea–very reminiscent of coffee. Not that I’ll ever be able to give up my morning ritual, but you never know. It would be nice to obtain some measure of self sufficiency as far as caffeinated beverages go–just ask the British.

Yaupon holly is easily pruned or encouraged into a hedge, and there are many cultivars available, from weeping yaupon to dwarf yaupon. For maximum caffeine production it needs plenty of nitrogen, so grow it near a nitrogen fixing species or two. An underplanting of clover (trifolium spp.) or vetch (vicia spp.) or an overstory of mimosa (albizia spp.) black locust (robinia psuedoacacia), or elaeagnus would work nicely.

Yaupon holly is a great plant. It is easy to care for, fits in nicely in a food forest, comes in many shapes and sizes, and produces one of the most valuable substances on earth. Caffeine. It definitely deserves a place on any homestead or forest garden, and its trimmings will pay great dividends of yaupon holly tea for years.

Hugelkulture: Which Wood is Best?

January 14, 2014 / jason / 1 Comment

What kind of wood should I use for my hugelkulture or wood-core bed? Whichever you have access to. With a few exceptions of course.

This question seems to come up all the time after someone discovers the benefits of rotting wood in a hugelkulture bed and permaculture garden. Is pine okay? Oak? Softwood vs. Hardwood, alleopathic woods, fresh or dead? The list goes on, and I’ll try and answer some of the most common ones today.

Maple filled hugel bed by of Paul Wheaton at permies.com

First, a general rule.

Use whatever wood you have easy access to.

Now, an exception to that rule.

Don’t use alleopathic or rot resistant woods like cedar, black walnut, and black locust.

Okay, that makes it easy. Pine is okay for hugel beds, so is oak, maple, sweetgum, apple and most any other species of tree around.

That includes softwood species as well. These trees, like pine, will typically rot faster than hardwood trees in a hugelkulture mound. This can be good or bad depending on your garden design, and your wants and needs. Sepp Holzer, the father of Hugelkulture, uses primarily softwoods on Krameterhof in the Alps because those are the trees most readily available.

For example, a hugelkulture bed that is used to support and establish a perennial system of trees, shrubs, and bushes, can be made of quicker rotting wood. This is because once the wood is completely decomposed into rich hummus, the deep roots of the plants are so well established that the benefits of the hugel mound are less needed and appreciated by the system at large.

But what about acidity? Isn’t pine acidic?

Yes and no. Pine trees, especially in the Eastern United States, are often found in old fields and clearings as a pioneer species. Their needles are full of ascorbic acid (vitamin c) and can acidify soils. This is useful in some circumstances, around acid lovers like blueberries and azaleas, but can be detrimental in other areas if allowed to swing the pH too far to the acid side.

So, you should avoid pine trees in your hugelkulture raised bed, right? No, while pine needles are acidifying, the wood is not, and neither are the brown needles. Pine is fine, just don’t fill your bed with bales of green needles.

Black walnut and hugelkulture do not mix
Photo courtesy of Jim Linwood

Okay, what about these alleopathic trees that should be avoided in the garden? These are plants that for one reason or another (usually to provide an ecological advantage) inhibit the growth of nearby plants with chemical warfare. The most famous of these is black walnut, which secretes juglone, a chemical only a select number of species can tolerate. Pecans also secrete juglone, though not as much as black walnut.

Some other plants to avoid are the cedars, and black locust which is highly rot resistant and composed of high levels of fungicidal components, not the best combo for a hugelkulture or woody bed. These woods are also generally higher value woods and have many other uses, such as firewood (black locust firewood may be the best firewood available), cooking and smoking, furniture making, wood carving, and fence posts.

So, what is best material for a hugelkulture bed? Whatever you have lying around–it will all rot–some just at a different pace than others. The most important thing is to not over analyze it and start digging, because regardless of the wood chosen, it takes time to start to decompose and harvest nitrogen before you can see the effects of the wood core in your garden or permaculture system.

What woods have you used in your hugel beds? Let us know in the comments if some worked better than others in certain applications.

Front Yard Garden Madness: Sean Law and the $130,000 Messy Lawn Fine

January 10, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

They are at it again. Code enforcers, city council, and neighbors with nothing to do and less sense.

Sean Law of Longwood, FL is on the hook for $130,000 because his front yard has been deemed messy, unsightly, and different.

Ridiculous.

It is a sad day when growing food without toxic pesticides, reducing irrigation and runoff problems, and not conforming to the aesthetics of a 1950’s sitcom lead to legal action and steep fines.

Sean Law's messy lawn and front yard garden

Sean Law’s “messy” front yard garden in Longwood, FL

Whats worse, is that it appears that Sean Law’s “natural method of gardening,” which is modeled off of the wisdom of the great Masanobu Fukuoka, follows (actually excels at) all of the guidelines recommended by the State of Florida’s Florida Friendly Landscaping program. The program calls for reducing irrigation by mulching, recycling yard clippings on site, and choosing the right plant for the right place.

Sean’s strategy of sowing many varieties of seed via clay seed balls and seeing what grows best where is the epitome of “right plant, right place.” When he mows down his lawn of weeds and tall grasses and applies them around his vegetables, he protects the soil from the intense FL sun, and locks in moisture to reduce irrigation.

Yet these are the very acts he is being fined for.

Some might argue that his front yard garden is messy, and to some it is, but America needs to learn that you can’t shove your ideals down everyone else’s throats just because you have a brief moment of power. Not only is it morally and ethically wrong, but it sets the precedent for the next batch of ~~tyrants~~ bureaucrats to enforce whatever farcical whims of their own upon society, and the result is a slow, yet constant erosion of liberty.

The rights of those we disagree with are the ones most necessary to protect. Hopefully the citizens of Longwood believe this, and will support this man’s liberty and pursuit of happiness in his own front yard.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013