his thoughts | KW Homestead

Category: his thoughts (page 3 of 13)

Mi Papa

My great grandfather, Juan Aviles, mi papa, passed away yesterday. He lived a long and fulfilling life and left his mark on the world in more than a thousand ways.

Every member of my family was loved by, and in return loved him dearly. His life shaped all of ours, not just as the patriarch of our family, but with his loving smile, tender heart, and funny stories.

Relaxing and Talking on the Porch

Mama and Papa

I have so many wonderful memories of papa. From “marching” on his shoulders around the house when I was a toddler, to chopping down coconuts in Moca. I know that his spirit has guided me to where I am today.

I still cannot walk out in the garden and inhale the smell of tomato vines without thinking of Papa. He planted the seed that eventually sprouted and led to my homesteading and forest-gardening endeavors that make up my life’s passion today.

You had to watch out when Papa started swinging his machete

Memories of feeding the chickens in Puerto Rico, shaking down some grapefruits, and eating ice creams after a huge lunch prepared by Mama are ones I will never forget. Because of these events, these memories, I am who I am today, and I do what I do today,

Me and Papa taking an after lunch nap on the porch in Moca PR

I believe Papa will always be with me, in everything I do, every tree I plant, every tomato I harvest, every chicken that graduates into pollo guisado. Every time I bury my hands in the earth, I will feel and remember him. My children will learn about him and he will never be forgotten.

Maple Sap Ideas

January 21, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

Sap season is here, at least for those of us in the Piedmont of North Carolina. The maples trees in our area have begun the yearly ritual of the sap flow. While we don’t have a lot of sugar maples in NC, and none grow on our land, we do have plenty of red maples. Red maple doesn’t produce as sweet a sap as sugar maple and therefore is a less economical choice for tapping and maple syrup production.

However, syrup production is a time and energy intensive operation that I don’t really have a desire to get into just yet. Something I am interested in is maple water, aka straight maple sap. Maple water is an old concept that has recently been rediscovered by health food companies. It’s essentially the same sap that would be boiled down into maple syrup left unaltered and bottled. The result is a slightly sweet and clear drink with a dose of antioxidants and minerals. Different cultures have used maple sap as a cleansing tonic for a very long time, and it is well known to wildcrafters and foragers as a source of clean water.

a delicious maple icicle, formed at the end of a trimmed twig

My interest in tapping a few of our red maples is part science experiment (especially considering Emma’s discovery last year of sugarcicles), partly a pursuit of fresh maple water to drink, and part fermentation experimentation. I want to make some maple wine and some maple beer.

I’ve read a few different recipes that use maple sap as a brewing/vinting ingredient and it seems that straight maple sap would yield a fermented beverage clocking in at around 1-3% abv. Now, if you were to either add some sugar or boil this down a bit to concentrate it, you could raise these to more traditional beer and wine levels (FYI: Don’t forget to check out our craft beer review show , Beauty and the Beerd).

Now, in order to get this sap, i’ll have to tap some trees. The standard rule of thumb is not to tap a tree less than 10″ in diameter. We have a few of those on our property, and i’ll probably tap them in the traditional way by drilling a hole in the tree and inserting a tube/tap that drips into a bucket or some other container. But what i’m really excited about is some recent research out of Vermont about tapping smaller trees.They coppiced young maple trees and used vacuum tubing to yield over 10 times the amount of syrup per acre.

I don’t have any vacuum tubes, but this is still interesting because it shows that even smaller trees can yield sap without harming their growth. My idea, and it’s not an original idea, is to try and harvest the sap from twigs and smaller branches on our maple trees. You simply prune off the end of a twig and either attach a tube or plastic bag to the branch to collect the sap. According to gardengrapevine.com, some twig taps can equal the sap production of a trunk tap, and you can do many per tree.

a maple twig tap is less invasive and easy to use

This action is less invasive and harmful to the young trees, and actually stimulates growth due to pruning. I’m pretty excited to experiment with it and see how it goes.

Of course, not just maple trees can be tapped, but also birch, walnut, linden, sycamore, and many others. You can see how tree saps, and tree sap beverages can fit nicely into a permaculture system as a late winter activity. By utilizing these saps in for items other than syrup production, which can be costly both in energy and time, even marginal sap producing regions can harvest appreciable yields form their trees, and stack another function into their designs and homesteads.

Cheers!

Thoughts on Splitting Wood

January 20, 2015 / jason / 3 Comments

Splitting wood! There may not be another homestead chore that lets you really get in the zone. That focused, thought provoking and rhythmic zone that can only come from the combination of manual labor, pattern recognition and strategic planning.

chestnut oak; a few perfect splits

There’s just something about the realization of accomplishment after you split a tough, knotty piece of oak in 1 swing, or hit the exact spot where a piece of wood starts to check and it flies apart like cheese that makes you feel good. I don’t know if it’s endorphins or something like that, but it feels damn good.

you can also split longer pieces of wood into rails before sawing to length

That’s not to say that I don’t get tired, frustrated and mad at the odd piece of wood that won’t budge even after it has an axe, maul, and 2 wedges lodged in it, but it balances out in the positive in the end.

Instinctively, splitting firewood leaves you with a reassuring feeling in your heart as you face winter and its potentially icy storms. A stacked pile of split wood is a physical manifestation of security and preparedness. Something you can depend on when the power goes out to keep the family warm.

The last few days have been great splitting wood, clear, sunny not too warm or cold. Wood splitting is a good cold weather chore because all of the activity warms you up nicely and has you shedding layers in less than no time. I finished splitting the chestnut oak that we felled and bucked last year, and even got started on some windblown pine.

No matter what you are splitting though, always remember to stay safe. One careless swing can do some serious damage to yourself or any innocent bystanders. Keep your feet clear, and take enough breaks to keep yourself focused and not helplessly tired, and in no time you’ll be on your way to a nice stack of security!

Sunchokes! A Tasty and Reliable Homestead Crop

January 15, 2015 / jason / 1 Comment

This year, in addition to growing vegetables in the garden, raising chickens in tractors and mobile coops, and planting a backyard food forest, we also experimented with some unusual crops. One of these in particular, the sunchoke or Jerusalem Artichoke, was a huge success.

Sunchokes are both pretty and productive!

Sunchokes are related to sunflowers, but instead of delicious seeds, they form crisp and tasty tubers. These can be dug anytime after frost, and have a slightly nutty and pleasant potatoey flavor. One great thing about them is their lack of starch, and high proportion of inulin. This makes them a great food to help regulate blood sugar issues, and possibly one for diabetics to consider trying. Sunchokes are often found growing along side roads and at the edges of fields and forests. They spread readily from their roots and are a perennial staple crop that requires little care. I think we watered them about 6 times this summer, and they never once looked stressed.

Freshly dug sunchokes!

I dug the first batch of tubers the other day and was pleasantly surprised to harvest about 1 pound of tubers from 1 plant. That’s about an 8 to 1 return.

The tubers are somewhat knobby, which can make cleaning difficult.

Once I cleaned up the knobby tubers in warm water, I chopped them into bite sized pieces and added onions, peppers, basil, garlic, oregano, a healthy amount of olive oil, and to top it all off, some hot Italian sausage. I roasted this at 375 until everything was cooked, and then served it with a runny egg on top. Kind of like a homestead hash. Yum. We usually make this dish with potatoes, but the sunchokes were great in it.

You can use sunchokes in any recipe that calls for potatoes.

Another interesting fact about sunchokes is that you can eat them raw. They are crunchy, and less digestible, but have a refreshing and crisp taste. Other ways to prepare them include frying, boiling, mashing and any other way you cook a potato. You can often find them at health food stores (I know I’ve seen them at Whole Foods) or ethnic markets. They are also fairly prevalent throughout much of the US and if you’re quick, brave, and good with a spade-fork, you can harvest an unlimited amount from wild “roadside stands.”

For us though, we plan on expanding this easy and productive crop to many areas of our homestead. I did notice that it prefers to be planted earlier rather than later in the season, and likes a little bit of shade at some point in the day to keep its roots cool. Our original planting stock was purchased from ebay, but I have seen them for sale at many mail order and online nurseries. We plan on eating all of the larger tubers and using the smaller ones to replant in other areas!

The First Signs of Spring… Seed Catalogs!

January 12, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

As Christmas and New Year’s pass and the days start to get longer as we get further and further away from the winter solstice, slowly, Spring is coming.

One of the things that particularly reminds me of this is the sudden, and almost incessant arrival of seed, plant, and gardening supply catalogs.Starting around Mid December, seed companies large and small start to send out their beautiful and eloquent descriptions of cultivars and varieties.

Some of our favorite places to find new seeds

From vegetables to fruit trees, the catalogs pour in with old heirloom favorites like Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, to newly rediscovered varieties from across the ocean like anchote. Anchote, or Coccinia abyssinica, caught my eye the other day as I perused J.l. Hudson’s new availability. Its an ancient tuber crop from Ethiopia related to cucumbers. Pretty cool, and supposedly tasty too.

These catalogs are full of interesting varieties like that, and make for great winter reading by the fire as we contemplate Spring, a new Year, and the taste of those first vegetables from the garden. There’s a lot that still needs to be done before then, but for me at least, these catalogs are the first sign that Spring is coming.

Chicken Nipple Waterer for Chicks with a Soda Bottle

January 8, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

Our chicks are growing fast, and as they get more and more energetic and active they end up messing up their water more frequently. They kick up their pine shavings and poop in their mason jar waterers which necessitates constant dumping, cleaning and changing on our part to ensure that they have access to clean water.

Chicken nipples (get your head out of the gutter!), use gravity and simple mechanics to keep their water clean and their bedding dry. We eventually want to transition our entire chicken operation to nipple waterers, but we decided to start first with the chicks.

Installing chicken nipples is simple. We got a pack of 25 that screws into a pre-drilled hole in your container. Easy.

We hope to use 5 gallon buckets outside, but decided to first try a 2 liter soda bottle or the chicks. 1 hole with a 5/16 bit in the cap, a quick tightening with a pair of pliers, and a few loops on a piece of rope and our soda bottle nipple Waterer was ready for action.

The nipples are red, which apparently attracts the eye of chickens, and within seconds of adjusting the Waterer to eye level the first few brave chicks were pecking at the nipple and drinking water. Success!

One quick note, it’s important to make sure that you avoid creating a vacuum inside of the waterer. With a bucket, just leave the lid a little bit cracked to break the vaccuum. Our solution with the soda bottles is to just poke a tiny hole in the base by where it hangs. This is enough to break the vacuum and ensure that the water flows freely out of the nipple when the birds peck it.

Right now we have just the one nipple Waterer, in addition to the two mason jar waterers but I want to build at least two more. It seems that most people use 1 nipple for anywhere from 5-10 birds, so 2 or 3 should be fine for us.

I’ve seen some creative designs using pvc, barrels, and hoses, and I’m sure we’ll set up something pretty cool for our Banty tractor, the standards, and any other fowl we add next spring!

Using Hardwood Bark As Mulch

January 5, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

What do you do with all of that bark, wood chips, and woody debri that accumulate when you split wood? While all of this material could be burned in you fireplace or woodstove, I find that after I sort out the smaller pieces of wood for kindling, I’m left with chunks and larger pieces of bark. For me, this bark doesn’t burn as well as dried wood. I think it holds more moisture, is less dense, and isn’t great kindling.

a fresh layer of bark under a Methley Plum tree in our food forest

So I prefer to use it as mulch. Now these pieces of bark are pretty big, anywhere from 2 – 12 inches long, so I don’t put them on our vegetable gardens. Instead, I dump these larger pieces of leftover bark in our backyard food forest at the base of fruit trees. Here they can break down slowly and won’t get in the way of any planting or harvesting.

Mulch helps to conserve water, block weeds, and protect the soil

This also mimics a forest environment where dead and dying trees litter the forest floor and aid in the nutrient cycle feeding all sorts of microorganisms in the soil. Right now, in the middle of winter, most of the leaves have fallen off of the trees, and by adding a fresh layer of mulch over top of them, we create the perfect environment for decomposition and lock all of the new fertility in place with a protective layer of bark.

4 Items in our Herbal Health and First Aid Kit

December 23, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

What do we turn to when dealing with minor, everyday cuts, scratches, injuries and ailments? Our herbal first aid kit!

We don’t really have a “kit”, but we do have collection of things in our bathroom that are tried and true when it comes to homestead first aid. I’m not talking about wild plants like plantain or comfrey, which are a huge art of of our life, but rather packaged and shelf stable items that can be stored and relied upon at a moments notice.

1. Tea Tree Oil

Tea Tree Oil is probably our catchall for cuts, scratches and anything involving open wounds. We try to harness tea tree oil’s anti microbial powers to prevent infections whenever we find ourselves bleeding, which happens a lot. Whether its from a loose piece of fence, a rooster’s spurs, or an insect bite, if we see blood, it gets a dab of tea tree oil.

When tick season comes around, every tick removal “surgery” is finished up with a bit of tea tree oil, just in case.

2. Vitamin C Powder

Vitamin C is antioxidant essential to a healthy life. Our bodies don’t store it, so we constantly need to get more of it as we live our lives. While I prefer real nutrient dense foods vs. supplements, vitamin c powder is just too easy, and too effective not to have on hand.

We add powdered vitamin c to our water almost everyday during the winter to strengthen our immune systems. It’s also nice to know that vitamin c can help with mild allergic reactions and swellings as it acts as both an anti histimine and anti inflammatory. You can take some before and after particulalry strenous activities to make sure your bodies repairitvie and restorative functions are opperating at there best. I’ve even heard of old, arthritic dogs getting some relief from a sprinkling of vitamin c on their food.

There are a ton of other uses and benefits for vitamin c, and it is a well used item in our lives.

3. Aloe

Aloe vera, a succulent plant with a long history of medicinal uses is another essential herbal remedy.

Whether you have a plant growing in a sunny window or a container of gel in the bathroom, if you work outside in the sun, you need some aloe. As a pain reliever and burn soother, nothing can compete. Fromm sunburns from hours of garden work, or real burns from cooking, a nice glob of aloe gel is the first thing I think of to in any situation where I want a “cooling” effect.

4. Raw Honey

Raw honey is not only an anti-microbial powerhouse, but it tastes good too. Raw Honey, as opposed to the heat pasteurized “dead” honey often found on shelves has a whole host of enzymes, antioxidants and minerals. Something in it helps to heal wounds and prevent infections, but make sure it’s raw or it won’t do the job.

It can also be used to soothe sore throats and as a natural cough syrup. It makes a great sweetener for tea too, how fitting. I’m sure there are more reasons to love raw honey (like making mead from it) but these few are enough to ensure it’s place in our pantry.

Some Thoughts on Fencing and Homestead Design

December 18, 2014 / jason / 1 Comment

Fencing is an integral part of farming, homesteading and permaculture. But there is more to a fence than just a boundary or barrier.

By laying out fencing, you create an element on the landscape that you can now design off of. Instead of having a blank canvas (sometimes the hardest thing) you have a structure that can be used and integrated into your homestead or permaculture design.

Fences create, define and reinforce zones and actvity centers. They can be also be used as trellises or in creative ways like chicken moats.

Once these sort of elements appear on your property, it becomes easier to build out around them and add other elements that coalesce into your design. An example would be: this fence divides the garden and the chickens, we need gates here, we could have 2 dwarf trees on either side of the gate, comfrey at the base, and vegetables trellised up the fence.

The next iteration of elements seems to spill out form the edges of the first, just like a forest with an advancing front of blackberries and other woody plants. I’m so excited about our new cattle panel fence, and the future of our homestead design, that I recorded this quick video today.

Also, be sure to check out Episode 2 of our his and her craft beer review series where we do an Ommegang’s Three Philosophers Review. Also, don’t forget to use our Amazon link before you do your last minute holiday shopping! Thanks!

Beauty and the Beerd: A His and Her Perspective on Craft Beer

December 16, 2014 / jason / 1 Comment

Today we are officially launching our new project, Beauty and the Beerd!

Beauty and the Beerd (with 2 e’s) is a video series where we review and talk about craft beer and boy are we are excited to bring a couples perspective to the world of craft beer!

We noticed that most of the internet activity about craft beer tends to be from men, and we thought that the time was ripe for a change. On our new video series, Emma and I will talk about topics ranging from introducing your spouse or significant other to good beer, the prettiest beer labels, which types of beers are best for beginning beer enthusiasts, and many more.

We want to bring both a male and female perspective to the table and are excited to see where we agree and disagree.

So, if you’re into craft beer reviews, beer or Kuska Wiñasun Homestead, be sure to check out beautyandthebeerd.com. You can subscribe to our Youtube channel where the latest episodes will be published twice a week and follow us on Facebook.

Be sure to check out episode 1, our review of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome Ale!

Cheers!

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013