KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Category: his thoughts (page 7 of 13)

Steripen Water Purification: Field Testing and Review

Do you ever go camping or hiking? What do you for water when your miles from civilization and the comforts of tap and bottled water? What if you need to drink questionable water after a storm, like a hurricane that damages the water lines or knocks out power to pump your well? How would you ensure that you have access to clean water, one of the most important items for day to day survival and prepardness?

Enter the steripen, a lightweight, portable device that uses UV light to kill bacteria, viruses, and other potential contaminates in your water. It zaps these pesky buggers, and keeps them from proliferating to dangerous levels, and allows you to safely consume water from streams, springs, lakes, and water tanks.

steripen review

the steripen is a great way to quickly and easily make water safe to drink

I recently tested the steripen on a week long Appalachian trail hike and was more than satisfied with it. Compared to chemical treatments it’s safer, and let’s you taste the freshness of the water.I think it’s easier than a filter, all you have to do is insert the lamp into your water bottle, and then shake until the light goes off. There are 2 settings, .5 l or less and .5 – 1 liters. The whole system is perfect for a bpa free Nalgene bottle and fits easily in your pocket.

Check out the video we shot of the steripen in action, and you’ll see just how easy it is to guarantee yourself safe and delicious water, whether you’re thru-hiking the trail or without water after a natural disaster.

Check out the steripen classic on amazon, or the whole line of steripen products.

Greening the Desert with Geoff Lawton

In 2003, in the dead sea valley of Jordan, one of the world’s hottest, driest and most inhospitable pieces of land, permaculture practitioner Geoff Lawton and his crew implemented a design to regreen, reforest and bring life back to the desert. Their goal was to create an oasis in the most difficult location on Earth, a showcase to the world that the ethical design science of permaculture can solve some of the big problems.

They installed swales, water catching ditches on contour, to rehydrate the overgrazed land and store the few inches of rain they receive in the soil where it nurtured the dates, figs, pomegranates and other fruit trees that were planted in addition to fast growing, hardy nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs.

Unfortunately, funding ran out for the project, and it was completely abandoned for 6 years. In perhaps the harshest environment on earth, the young trees and plants where left on their own, with no irrigation, fertilization or care at all.

Yet when Geoff returned, instead of withering up dying, the trees thrived and produced an abundance not seen in the “fertile crescent” for hundreds if not thousands of years. The swales stored 100% of the runoff and rain, and supplied enough water to bring the system into maturity and abundance in 122 degree weather. A patch of life in a sea of brown.

It’s truly an amazing sight and story, and proof that the techniques and concepts of permaculture can produce abundance, fertility and life in any environment. Check out the video, which shows both the original design after implementation, and what the site looked like 6 years later.

Homemade Homestead Pizza!

In my post about some of the differences between living in the country vs the city (which include thinking that anywhere other than rural Stokes county = the city), I mentioned that it took us a whole year before we  found a pizza place that would deliver to our house. While delivery pizza is great for nights you just don’t feel like cooking, nothing beats a homemade pie crisp and fresh from the oven.While we haven’t yet made our own pizza dough, we do use either frozen pizza doughs from the store, or more often, tortillas.

homemade pizza garden

a fresh tortilla, with sliced cherokee purple tomatoes and california wonder peppers is a great base for garden pizza

But the best part about homemade pizza is that you get complete control over your toppings. No having to split, or compromise with friends or significant others about meat lovers vs. veggie supreme. This especially holds true with tortilla, “personal pan” pizzas, where each person gets their own pizza to create and eat.

garden pizza

add some jalepenos…

garden pizza homemade

and some onions and chorizo…

Some of our favorite toppings are the ones we pick fresh from the garden. Tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and jalepenos all make great pizza toppings. Add some sausage, or chorizo, and some garlic olive oil, and your in for a fun night.

homemade pizza from the garden

add some olive oil, cheese, and salt and pepper to taste, than bake until golden brown at 375

We use thick slices of homegrown cherokee purple tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, and a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. A little salt, and a drizzle of oil really brings it all together, and makes it all but impossible for any leftovers to survive.

garden pizza

yum!

Garden pizza! A delicious way to save some some money and get a full helping of nutrient dense veggies form the garden! No, the chickens won’t be eating any of this pizza!

 

Understanding Nutrient Density

The modern western diet, a diet high in carbohydrates, grains, sugar, processed foods and low in saturated fat, vegetables and fruits has many flaws, chief among them is a complete disregard for micronutirents, minerals, and vitamins. Sure, the USDA and FDA pay lip service to a select number of vitamins and minerals, but as the quality of our food has decreased, it is all but impossible for modern agriculture to supply us with even these limited nutrients. The recommendation then becomes to take supplements. The problem is, many of these supplements are completely useless, or worse, potentially harmful to your health.

Take for example calcium supplements, the standard recommendation for decades to fight bone density problems, which have been linked to increases in heart disease, breast cancer and may actually worsen bone strength.  Bones are made up of more than calcium, and if you overload your body with calcium it displaces the other essential minerals in your bones, and the rest ends up in places in your body that it shouldn’t be, like your arteries. (Check out Dr. Mercola’s article on Calcium supplements and The Calcium Lie by Dr. Robert Thompson for more information.)

nutrient dense foods

freshly picked garden carrots,  a nutrient dense and delicious vegetable treat

So how do you ensure that you and your family get the nutrients you need to be healthy? By eating whole, nutrient dense foods prepared in traditionally ways. Let’s look at calcium again. Instead of a pill, you can make bone broth. Bone broth is a rich broth made from bones that have been simmered for anywhere from 4-36 hours. This extracts all of the minerals in the bone, the very minerals that make up your bones, not just calcium. Other good sources of calcium are dark leafy greens and raw milk and cheese from grass fed cows, as well as unprocessed sea salt.

The key here is to eat foods that are nutrient dense. Foods that are bursting with the nutrients and minerals necessary for health and life. Raw milk for example contains anywhere from 100-400 % more of certain vitamins and minerals than pasteurized milk. This means that for every glass of raw milk, you would need to drink 2-4 glasses of pasteurized milk to get the same amount of nutrition. If we add to that the fact that animals raised on pasture have better fatty acid, and nutrient profiles in their meat, eggs, and milk than those fed only grains, it’s easy to see that a glass of pastuerized milk from corn fed cows is not a nutrient dense food.

Grains are particularly empty foods, with very little nutrient content. When you add to this agricultural processes that have killed soil life and require the dumping of petroleum based fertilizers in order to get a yield, and a policy that a grain based diet is healthier than one based on high quality animal fats and vegetables, it’s not hard to see why America is full of overweight people suffering from nutrient deficiencies and disease.  You are what you eat.

nutrient dense foods

pastured animal products are more nutrient dense than those fed a diet mainly of corn and soy

We can change this by growing food in ways that restore the biology of the soil and allowing the nutrient cycles between plants, bacteria, fungi and animals to recover. This can’t be solved with more sprays, synthetic fertilizers, and tilling all of which destroy the soil structure and lead to food that is devoid of any nutrition. Compost, and compost teas in addition to tree crops and support species whose roots are able to mine nutrients from deep in the subsoil and bring them up for other crops to use. Our farms need livestock to reminaralize the soil. We need to chose foods rich in nutrition like nuts, seafood, lard, and fresh vegetables. We need to take these nutrient rich foods and eat them whole, or processed in traditional ways like fermentation and drying.

You are what you eat, and we need to eat food that was grown in healthy soil. We need to eat animal products that ate healthy plants that were grown on healthy soil. We need to start as soon as possible, and do as much as we can, even if it’s only 10% of our diet at first. Head to the farmers market and ask them how they grow their food. Are they part of agritrue, a transparency program that helps everyone know how their food was grown? Join a CSA, or start growing some of your own food, even if it’s just some herbs in a pot. It’s addictive, and soon enough you’ll be looking for other ways to garden, or even contemplating a fruit tree investment. whatever you do, keep trying to find the most nutrient dense food available, whether it’s organic produce, vegetables from your backyard, pastured eggs from your neighbor up the street, or lard from pigs rotationally grazed in a permaculture or restoration agriculture system.

 

Resources

The Weston A. Price Foundation – Great information on eating nutrient dense foods and how to prepare and find them

Nourishing Traditions – A great book from Sally Fallon, the co-founder of the Weston A. Price foundation, that goes into what, and how to eat, with recipes and facts that will keep you reading for hours.

Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care – Similar to the above, but shorter, sweeter, and tailored to providing a healthy and nutritious life for children that begins before pregnancy.

Dr. Mercola – A brilliant doctor who looks past the propaganda and marketing of industry and government to find the truth about health

Agritrue – Focused on letting consumers find the best food in their area, and letting them see exactly how it’s grown.

Duckweed!

We finally got some duckweed! What’s duckweed, you ask? Duckweed is a tiny ,floating aquatic plant often found in lakes and ponds. It is considered invasive by some, and it will spread if left unchecked. In fact, under ideal conditions duckweed can double in size every 24-36 hours. It is extremely efficient at pulling nutrients out of water, so it is often found in small ponds with large catchment areas and runoff.

duckweed kiddie pool

duckweed growing in a kiddie pool

Duckweed can be used as both a fertilizer high in nitrogen, or as livestock feed high in protein. Chickens, rabbits, goats, horses, pigs and of course ducks will all nibble on duckweed. Fish, especially tilapia, will completely annihilate it, so it’s best to keep it away from them if you want any left to regrow. Duckweed is also used in greywater systems where it thrives on the high nutrient water, and is then composted to safely cycle the waste water.

duckweed homestead

duckweed can double in weight every 24-36 hours under ideal conditions

For now, we have our duckweed in a kiddie pool while we figure out a way to best utilize it. The goldfish in our hand dug pond have gotten a few snacks, and they love it so we need to figure out a way to keep it from being completely decimated. But we plan on using it as a supplemental source of protein for our laying birds, and as another way to cycle nutrients on our homestead. Duckweed!

Plant Propagation: Principles, Practices, and Planning

As summer starts to think about turning to fall, the season for propagating woody perennials, trees, bushes, and shrubs gets closer. This spring we planted a bunch of fruit trees and berry bushes as part of our backyard food forest. Some of these plants, especially the ones we planted later in the year, did not appreciate the dry summer we had and will need to be replaced. This can add up when you are buying plants form a nursery, and while the value of a fruit tree investment is immense, it’s nice to be able to keep costs down by propagating new plants from trees and bushes you already own.

Propagation Book

So, I pulled out an old book that we bought at an estate sale a while back called Plant Propagation: Principles and Practices. It’s a textbook for the nursery industry but also has many uses for the home orchard or permaculturalist. My copy is the 3rd edition from 1975 and I think it was 50 cents. Compared to the $132 for a new edition, I think we did pretty good, and if you are interested in this publication I would suggest buying a used copy of an older edition.

Grafting Book

try and find an older edition to save a few bucks

The book covers everything from building greenhouses and cold frames, to starting root-stocks for fruit trees from seed and grafting scion wood onto them to clone specific cultivars. It’s very easy to search the book for specific information on how best to propagate certain plants. I was able to quickly find out that layering is the best method for blackberries, softwood cuttings for blueberries, root cuttings for elderberries, and hard wood cuttings for currants. There are entire sections on how to each technique, with pictures, charts and more detail than you would ever really need to know. Each chapter has a list of less than useful scientific resources and references as well.

budding book proapgation

Easy to understand text and diagrams for every propagation technique

I definitely recommend Plant Propagation: Principles and Practices to anyone interested in propagating any sort of plant material, from fruit trees to house plants. I’d also suggest searching amazon for a used older edition to save some money on it. While it is written for a college level course, it reads easy, and is full of useful information for home gardeners and laymen. For anyone who finds themselves wanting to propagate multiple types of plants, having this book as a reference can save a lot of grief and effort.

Easy Ping-Pong Table Base

A while back we were given an awesome ping-pong table top. It’s a full regulation size table measuring 9 feet long and 5 feet wide, and is a great quality table. The only thing we needed to do was construct a base for it to sit on. We threw around a few different ideas; using sawhorses, building a frame out of lumber, screwing it to 4 or 6 legs, but never really came up with anything great. So we forgot about it for almost a year.

ping pong base

But the other day, for some reason, Emma decided that we should finally build that base for our ping pong table. We started brainstorming again, and were about to run to Lowe’s for some building materials when we figured we should check out how stable the table was. We realized that it was very stable just sitting on something, and after a few measurements, we settled on a 6 foot long plastic folding table. The folding table is 29 inches tall, and with the ping-pong table on top, it is just shy of the regulation height of 30 inches.

IMG_2186

This simple solution saved us from having to build a complex base, and allowed us to start playing way sooner than expected. It’s also portable, and able to be broken down completely and put away. But not that we’ll want to put it away because playing ping pong is so much fun!

German Egg Pancakes with Fresh Picked Apples

I first came across German Egg Pancakes (Eierkuchen) while searching for a recipe for pancakes with lots of eggs. You see, with a homestead flock of almost 30 chickens we have a surplus of eggs, and sometimes it’s nice to whip something up that can use a dozen or more . So, when I found a recipe for German egg pancakes that called for 6 eggs per 1/2 cup of flour I was pretty excited, and after tinkering around a bit with it, it has become our go to for pancakes.

german egg pancakes with apples

German egg pancakes are thinner and denser than traditional pancakes, but full of flavor and are very filling.

The basic recipe we’ve settled on is:

  • 6-7 eggs
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup liquid (milk, coconut milk, water, I’ve even used beer in a pinch)
  • 1/2 cup melted butter or coconut oil
  • a pinch of salt

These are all whisked together, and then poured, thinly, into a well greased cast iron pan. A quick fry on each side, and that’s it.

Now, these pancakes are not IHOP style pancakes. They are denser, and way more substantial. 1 or 2 thin pancakes are enough to fill you up, and considering their nutrient profile (high fat, high protein, and low carb) you stay full.  Another great thing about these paleo pancakes are that they are not just for breakfast.

german egg pancakes

A cast iron pan with a little coconut oil is perfect for these thin pancakes.

We’ve had savory pancakes for dinner more than a few times. We’ve made basil pancakes with a golden ale as the liquid and used the base recipe as a tortilla-esque wrap for sausages. Because this recipe calls for such a small amount of flour, it’s easy to substitute alternative flours like almond flour, acorn flour, or cattail pollen for a unique and tasty treat.

For breakfast, milk works best, and about a 1/2 tsp. of sugar. We’ve added cinnamon, vanilla extract, and raspberry yogurt. These can be eaten plain, with maple syrup, honey, or wrapped around bacon.

Today, as we just picked over 30 pounds of an apples from an old apple tree on our homestead, we decided to try some apple pancakes and they turned out great.  I doubled the base recipe and used 14 eggs and 1 cup of flour. After mixing, we shook in some cinnamon and fired up the outdoor stove. After the pancakes are poured in, it’s easy to place thin slices of apple into the batter before flipping.

german apple pancakes

These are great with fresh coffee, raw honey, and real maple syrup. Next time you make pancakes, consider trying these German pancakes, whether it’s for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Trellising Cucumbers in the Garden

Our garden is in full production right now, potatoes, tomatoes, and jalapenos are coming in, while the sweet potatoes, oca, and greenbeans are thriving. But one of our most exciting crops this year has been the cucumber. This year we planted three different varieties of cucumbers, Arkansas Little Leaf, Suyo Long, and White Wonder, and they are all doing great in our raised beds on trellises.

cucumber trellis

Growing cucumbers on trellises, or tomato cages, is an efficient and attractive way to garden.

We grow cucumbers on trellises for a few reasons. First, cucumbers are vining plants that love to sprawl and wrap their tendrils around anything they can reach. If left to wander the ground, they take up a lot of space, but by training them vertically, up a trellis, they take up less of a footprint in the garden.

We plant 4 or 5 seeds in a circular depression about 18 inches in diameter. This depression catches rain and irrigation, ensuring that our cukes are always deeply watered. We use the same technique that we use for tomatoes, a cage made of woven wire fencing staked into the ground. We then train the young cucumber plants up onto the cage where they twine and vine their way to the top.

This has a few distinct advantages in addition to being able to fit more plants in less space. By keeping the plants off of the ground, airflow around the leaves is improved and the mildews and diseases that often plaque cucumbers are kept at bay.

cucumbers on trellis

These Arkansas Little Leaf cucumbers have a tendency to stay low and spiral on the trellis, whereas the Suyo Longs grow straight up.

Training the vines upwards also leaves room around the base of the cages to plant herbs, flowers or other vegetables. These interplantings can act as companions to the cucumbers and help to confuse pests. We have sweet potatoes, clover, basil and sage growing under our cucumbers.

By growing cucumbers upwards, on a trellis, we can achieve higher yields, with less pests and diseases, and even grow other crops at their feet. So, next time you’re planting some cucumbers, consider growing them vertically, up a trellis or tomato cage, and make you’re garden more efficient and productive.

Mobile Chicken Paddock Update

Emma wrote the other day about our new mobile chicken run design, and after moving this system twice I figured I would give an update on its functionality. The chickens have been in this new setup for about 1 week. In our old system, we would typically wait 2 weeks before moving them to a new piece of pasture, but in the past week I have moved them twice. As Emma mentioned, even though the fenced area is half of what it used to be, because the coop is no longer inside, the chickens actually have around 75% of the space they used to have.

mobile chicken coop

the new mobile coop and paddock system is easier to move, which means we move it more often

However, thanks to the redesign, moving the chickens is now a much easier proposition. It can be done at any time of day, and is now a 1 man job. Compare this to the old system where we had to wait until dusk, take down the entire thing, pull up posts, roll up the bird netting, put up the posts and panels, zip tie everything, by this point it was dark, we were frustrated, and we still had to untangle the bird netting and fix any rips that had happened. Not fun, and not a chore we looked forward to. This meant that we often put off moving the chickens, and the would end up staying in the same spot for longer than two weeks. This lead to overgrazing, compaction, and further frustration.

Our new system easily slides to a new spot, and because it is smaller (16 ft. by 16 ft.), it fits easier into tight spaces around garden beds and fruit trees. The hawk netting does not need to come off, there are no posts, and this can all be done at any time of the day. I have already done it twice, and at this rate the chickens will have access to 300% more pasture in 2 weeks than before. This allows us to more easily monitor their behavior and impact on the land, and more efficiently harness their energy toward improving our land, and avoid the harm that comes from overgrazing, all while they enjoy more grass, weeds, and bugs than ever before.

mobile chicken paddock system

bridey watching the chickens in their new paddock

I think we learned a valuable lesson; that if you design an aspect of your life to be difficult, you will dread and avoid it, and when it doesn’t get done, it becomes harder and harder to catch up. This starts a cycle of stress and frustration that is hard to beat. However, if we design these things so that are easily accomplished, we are more likely to do them. This fits in with the permaculture concept of zones, where you design the elements of your property that need attention everyday (vegetable gardens, livestock, etc.) to be closer to your house where you constantly see and interact with them. For example, if you have to milk goats everyday, don’t put the milking area half a mile away, down a steep gully and then up a rocky hill. If you wan’t to remember to take a multivitamin everyday, don’t put the vitamins in that cabinet that you can’t reach unless you get that stool that’s in the garage.

It’s a simple concept, but we all have things that for one reason or another we have made harder for ourselves, whether it’s on a homestead or not. Some of things we can’t change, but the other ones should be designed to fit into our life in a way that enhances it, not make it harder. With thoughtful design, things tend to fit together easier and our life systems function more efficiently, giving us more time to focus on whatever it is we want to focus on, be it writing, working, gardening, or eating delicious eggs from pasture raised chickens.

 

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