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Some Livestock Options for the Upcoming Year

February 19, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the coming year. With the nice rise in temperature we’ve been experiencing, it’s hard not to think about spring and I find myself contemplating next year’s garden and livestock plans. On the garden front, we have some thoughts on expanding our vegetable garden and putting in more raised beds. We’re starting our mushroom crop this year but I’d also like to put in hundreds of trees, bushes, and vines in a more perennial system, a food forest that follows permaculture principles and techniques.

On the animal front, we already have a couple dozen chickens, mostly standards but some bantams as well, and I think we’ll try splitting them up and running the bantys in a chicken tractor setup. I’m hoping this will give them better access to food and forage, and a chance to lay more eggs and possibly go broody and hatch some chicks.

I’ve also thought a good bit about expanding our livestock operations. I don’t think we need or want any more chickens, other than the young bantam chicks if that should occur, but there is a type of bird that I would like to raise and that I think will work well on our homestead. Geese.

Jack’s geese, photo courtesy Josiah Wallingford

After hearing about Jack Spirko’s successful goose pursuit, I am sold on geese. He’s had excellent weight gains on almost nothing but grass, and we have a good bit of grass. Predator issues aren’t as big of a concern with geese, whose size and group behavior is more intimidating to raccoon, possums, etc. When they are young this probably won’t hold true, so we’d have to deal with that. I can see us running a few geese through our upper yard, maybe with portable fencing, or maybe more “free range” if we somehow seal off the garden from them.

Another species I’m interested in is the good ole pig. But not any good ole pig, pot bellied pigs. I like their small size, good foraging ability, and the fact that they are a lard pig. MMMMnnn… bacon… bacon grease… and lard. Awesome. Topping out at around 70-150 lbs., butchering one of these succulent hogs wouldn’t be the chore most standard sized hogs are. Their small size should also mean that they’ll do less damage on the land, and on fencing as well. Though I hope it doesn’t mean that they turn into some sort of psuedo-goat-pig that can simultaneously climb and plow through fences.

I don’t yet know how to tackle the fencing issues for pigs, but I’d like to raise them at least partially in the woods and on the forest edge where they scrounge up all kinds of goodies like mast drop and black berry. An idea Emma had was to use some of the abundant medium sized pine trees as living fence poles for welded or woven wire fencing. Pigs would provide both a yield of meat and high quality fat, while at the same time being able to clear and prepare land for future planting. This function stacking makes them a great choice for a permaculture homestead, and is why I’m so excited about potentially raising them on ours.

The last livestock animal that may find itself on our farm next year is another great function stacker. Compost worms. I’m getting really excited about vermicomposting and its wonderful benefits and outputs. As livestock, worms can be used to compost vegetative material, as a protein source for other animals and for their nutrient and microbe rich “worm juice/tea”. Organic material is never hard to come by on a homestead, so passing some of our excess through the worms and turning it into some of the best organic fertilizer available seems to make sense.

As worm populations can double every 90 days, and compost worms can eat their own weight every day, with about 60% conversion to harvest-able vermicompost (not including worm juice runoffs), a small worm farm or bin can be a huge asset to the small farm or permaculture homestead, both in terms of fertility and potentially as a sideline business.

We are not yet sure which of these livestock we may add to our homestead this year, if any, but I do plan on pursuing them in the future. Pot bellied pigs, geese, and compost worms are in our future. We just need to think a little more about execution and where exactly they fit into our system. We’ll see, and we’ll be sure to tell you about it!

our first mushroom adventure: which mushrooms will be magic for us?

February 17, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we will begin our first homestead mushroom adventure next week, when my father comes to help me cut 30 to 40 red oak mushroom logs for our spring mushroom inoculation!

my father has raised mushrooms before and he is going to be a great resource when we start this mushroom adventure.

on the eve of cutting our mushroom logs–in 3 and 4 foot lengths–i’ve been doing some research on which mushrooms we want to begin raising this year.

here is a summary of what i’ve found on the 4 mushroom types we’re interested in raising, including the health benefits, flavor profile, and the meaning of the mushroom names (how i love to learn about the meaning of names!).

drying shiitake mushrooms, photo courtesy jmurawski

shiitake (lentinula edores)

shii is the name of the tree, related to beech and oak, that these mushrooms naturally grow on in japan, and take simply means “mushroom.”
this mushroom is the species that my father has experience raising and we plan to inoculate most of our logs with these spores.
shiitake, like all of the mushrooms mentioned here, are anti-tumor, help to detoxify the body, boost immune function, and regulate blood pressure.
to me they taste like calamari when sauteed and are excellent cooked in mass quantities with nothing more than soy sauce!
their fruiting temperature is 50-80 degrees F.
their favorite wood is oak.

red reishi mushrooms, photo courtesy Wendell Smith

reishi, ling chi, or ling zhi (ganoderma lucidum)

this mushroom’s scientific name means “shining skin, shining,” named for its glossy sheen.
reishi mushrooms contain ganoderic acids which alleviate allergies by inhibiting histamine release. they also improve liver function, and thus help with detoxification.
eating this mushroom is said to provoke feelings of peace and relaxation.
their fruiting temperature is 70-80 degrees F.
their preferred wood is oak.

a delicious maitake mushroom, photo courtesy Janet Hudson

maitake (grifola frondosa)

grifola refers to the mythological griffin. it is also called “hen of the woods.”
it is very popular among mushroom lovers!
this mushroom stabilizes blood sugar, blood pressure, and may have an effect on free radicals.
their fruiting temperature is 50-65 degrees F.
their preferred wood is oak.
click here for a great article on maitake mushrooms.

lion’s mane mushrooms, photo courtesy Wendell Smith

lion’s mane (hericium erinaceus)

in korean it is called “deertail mushroom,” and you can see why. how cool!
this mushroom helps with memory and can even ward off dementia by stopping neurological breakdown. it also relieves digestive tract issues such as ulcers, and can aid is fighting digestive tract cancers.
their fruiting temperature is 60-75 degrees F.
their preferred wood is oak, but they also like maple.
click here for a great article on lion’s mane mushrooms.

for more information or for placing your own mushroom spore order, check out fungi perfecti and mushroom people.

.:.

Planning an Edible Fedge, or Food Hedge

February 13, 2014 / jason / 8 Comments

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.

children’s homestead books: it’s never too early or too late to start collecting

February 4, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

jason and i are still a few years off from having children but we started collecting children’s books 2 years ago when we worked, for a short time, organizing thousands of books for an old book store.

both of us have always loved books, and i especially have always cherished children’s books. when he and i combined our libraries, we ended up with a double serving of every harry potter book and various other folk tales, fairy tales, myths, and legends for children.

courtesy of abee5

after viewing many kid’s books at the old book store, we realized that a lot of them were in alignment with the life lessons and science/nature topics that we really hoped our child would have in their children’s books. so, we decided to buy a lot of them for our future child(ren)!

among the ones that drew our eye the most were those that were set on a farm, homestead, or in and among nature. some of the titles that i was most excited to see and read were:

henrietta and the hat, written by mabel watts and illustrated by joan miller–in this tale, henrietta the horse desires a farmer’s hat. but, once the farmer is done with it, he uses it for other things and does not give it to her. over time, the hat gets worn out, all the while becoming more and more perfect for henrietta. in the end, perhaps she gets the hat after all…
the great race, written and illustrated by paul goble–based on cheyenne and sioux mythologies, this beautifully illustrated tale tells how humans gained control over the mighty buffalo, with the help of a certain magpie ally.
stopping by woods on a snowy evening,written by robert frost and illustrated by susan jeffers–this beautifully illustrated version of robert frost’s classic poem is illustrated in simple, black-and-white with splashes of color throughout. a treat!

although we chose many fiction books (oh, how i love fiction–especially fantasy and/or magical realism), i noticed that we trended toward choosing books that were based around the animal world (as many kid’s books are) where the main characters prove to be very brave and/or kind and unfailing loving.

the non-fiction that we chose were very science and fact based, usually also about animals or nature. some of my favorites of these are:

bats, written by celia brand–this book is one of many of the eyes on nature series, which features many species of animals and includes dozens and dozens of fantastic bat close-up photos and interesting facts.
desert discoveries, written by ginger wadsworth and illustrated by john carrozza–this book hosts beautiful drawings of desert animals with accompanying factoids. kids are also asked to find certain animals in a picture, and the book thus becomes a where’s waldo? of the desert!
water dance, written and illustrated by thomas locker–this peaceful text talks about the water cycle in a rare, poetic form. this book certainly inspires awe in me.

also, we selected some books from the early 1900s which amazed us! one of these is called trees every child should know by julia e. rogers (copyright 1909) and it is a full length, 250+ page guide to identifying trees native to the united states. i was immediately excited about the potential for this book to educate me about trees just as much as my children. and, what a concept that needs renewing… the fact that there are trees that every kid should know!

i’ve realized through the process of creating a children’s library in our home, how selective i actually am about the kinds of books that my children will read–at least at first. of course our library will grow once these children actually exist, and the shelves will undoubtedly be lined with ballerina and/or zombie tales, but for their early years i would like them to start off by connecting to reading in a different way. i want their reading to be linked with learning, awe, and the true nature of the world–that’s why i am drawn to books about nature, science, “magic,” and relationships.

the way i see it, there will be plenty of time for them to identify other exciting themes and topics that they want to read about (and i by no means plan to limit their interests in any way), but in the beginning of their understanding of reading, i want to be able to read them books into which i can graft my own awe and joy, so that my excitement about nature, animals, loving, and living will be palpable for them.

later, when they can read the words themselves, i fully expect to see them reading some books that i would not have been caught dead opening in my own childhood (really? the power rangers?).

it would seem that the books we’ve chosen supplement very well what we have chosen to do here on our homestead: work towards self-reliance, build relationships that last with each other and our land and animals, value nature and all that comes with that, and find awe and joy in the little (but very big!) things in life.

this is my sense of peace and happiness and i hope to instill that in my children, in a small part through the books that they hear me read to them as babies and as little, young, monkey kids.

.:.

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.

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.

sweet potatoes: jewels of the soil

January 20, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we have been eating so many of our sweet potatoes this winter, both baked as warm, delicious snacks, or made into my delicious sweet potato ginger soup.

this fall, we had a sweet potato yield of about 12o pounds. this is more than we expected since, frankly, we didn’t really know what to expect because this was our first time growing them.

the recommended planting dates for sweet potatoes in our region are may 15-june 15 and our plants went in the ground on june 11, 2013. the 100+ plants were given to us by my father, and jason planted them 3-6″ deep in two of our raised beds. each plant was 12″ apart within rows, and 36-42″ apart between rows.

the first harvest day: halfway harvested and halfway to go

within a few months, the vines went crazy and flourished. we had a small issue with a groundhog who was trying to munch on the vines, but jason dealt with that effectively.

since the average number of days until maturity for sweet potatoes is 105-135 days, we decided to wait until the later end of that spectrum, hoping for larger potatoes. i harvested the first half of the sweet potatoes in mid-october and jason and i harvested the other half together at the very end of october.

jason, placing freshly dug sweet potatoes in a box

since the first frost of fall was on october 22, we cut all of the sweet potato vines off at the ground the night before to make sure that the frost wouldn’t run into the ground and damage the potatoes. this meant that the potatoes sat in the ground for about a week without their vines, which is not a cause for alarm. still, the sooner you harvest the potatoes after cutting off their vines, the better.

i harvested the first half on a harvest day, according to blum’s farmer’s and planter’s almanac. i also encountered a black widow while i dug up the vines, and learned later that black widows love sweet potato vines more than many other hiding spots. be aware while digging up your potatoes of all kinds!

the first harvest: a bushel of potatoes waiting to be cleaned and sorted

the first harvest: potatoes waiting to be cleaned and sorted

neither day that we harvested was sunny, so we did not leave them outside in the sun to cure. instead, we wiped as much dirt off of them as possible, sorted them by size (keeping the tiny potatoes for bolt to eat as treats), and stored them in our guest bedroom/farm room.

sweet potatoes sorted into crates

our harvest, stored in the farm room

we’ve stacked them in multi-tiered, open-air crates to help with the curing and drying process. currently, 3 months later, most of the potatoes continue to store well and we intentionally choose the iffy ones to use first when cooking and baking.

we are proud of our first sweet potato crop and in 2014 we plan to plant even more sweet potato plants than last year! this year, when may comes, we’ll be ready to get those plants in the ground even earlier!

.:.

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.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013