Been back about a week now from road trip. Much as I love getting out there, it always takes a while to get back into the flow of work and homestead. We have about a half acre, and it’s pretty intense with structures and garden. I was showing someone around here the other day and he said it reminded him of Scott Nearing. (Scott and Helen Nearing were real rural homesteaders in Maine and wrote the by-now classic Living the Good Life)in the ’60s. All of us back-to-landers in the 60s and 70s read it.
Not really, I explained. We’re doing as much gardening, building, and food production as we can, but trying to balance it with the digital world, arts and crafts, having fun, staying in shape, and other aspects of the 21st century that don’t involve homesteading. It’s like a tightrope act.
I shot a few pics around here yesterday.
All this is oak from the side of the road. It’s a win-win: cleaning up roads, heating house, not using propane or coal/oil to generate electricity for heat. I’ve gotten good at avoiding the rangers, who don’t seem to get the concept. If they happen to nab me, I just came back under the cover of darkness and pick up the wood. In a few months I’ll rent my neighbor’s splitter and Marco and I will split it.Another of Lesley’s raised beds under construction. Quarter-inch mesh placed on ground as gopher protection, blocks stacked on top. Bed filled with soil, blocks also filled & planted with strawberries.
Those raised beds are great! What a clever way to deter the gophers…they're demolishing our garlic and onions at the moment..
I find it strange that the local fuzz don't let people take felled wood. Hereabouts its a law that if there's bucked-up logs on the side of the road, civilians can take as much as they can carry (I asked once). Hydro guys come around chopping down trees, and there's at least one guy with a pickup truck waiting for them to leave!
This sub-irrigation raised bed design is more productive, conserves water and obviates problems with contaminated soil:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Wicking-Beds/