Winter is Coming

"Governments go broke slowly at first, then all at once." - Earnest Hemingway

I'm a lucky man. I have a wife who loves me, my health, a job I enjoy that pays the bills, and better friends than I could have ever imagined as a young man.

I'm blessed, but I can't stop thinking, as I speed towards 40 and the second and final half of my life of the troubles that await those who come behind me.

The Baby Boomers, and to a much lesser extent Gen X, have left the Millennial Generation, and those behind them a pretty rotten balance sheet. $18 trillion in federal debt, $4 trillion in debt at the Federal Reserve, +/-$100 trillion in unfunded liabilities in the form of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The numbers are even more frightening when you look at the promises made to retirees by the States, Counties, and Cities that are several trillion dollars more in monies that simply can't be paid. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

I was lucky enough to have lived during the time of leveraged prosperity. Though I can say that I have voted against every single tax hike since my mid-twenties, that's not going to provide the lifestyle that these retirees are going to demand in the next 15-25 years. I fear it's going to get ugly, especially after looking at Greece and realizing we're going to make them look Switzerland by comparison.

This realization of unsustainable debt is a big reason I've headed down the homesteading path. My family and I are striving to live sustainably. Not in the Hipster/Hippie way that's come to define the word, but in the sense of feeding ourselves healthy food, not being in debt, and not oppressing others by voting to allow any additional taxes (tax is just another word for taking someone else's earnings/property at the barrel of a loaded gun).

There will be no voting our way out of this, there aren't enough people who care more about their children or grandchildren to make hard decisions. Instead we'll go the way of Greece, simply on a more violent, more austerity (rhymes much with misery) dominated path.

I don't see a Mad Max future. Americans, outside of DC and major metropolitan areas at least, are still decent people at their core. I think we'll see more multigenerational family living arrangements, which isn't a bad thing, as Granma/Grandpa looking after the children isn't a bad thing.

Without the money flowing from Uncle Sugar to local Police Departments and Sheriff's Offices the availability of locking up/ticketing everyone is going to go down, though it's going to be interesting to see how retired law enforcement officers are going to react when they realize there is no pension like they've been promised. I think we'll see more and more private sector law enforcement as time goes by, as the public money dries up.

Technology really is the wild card in all of this. Solar power gets cheaper everyday, we're ten years away from it being on par with utility companies prices at which point the whole country may start to look at the way Texas has deregulated it's power grid.

Robotics will continue to affect manufacturing, which may very well push manufacturing back to the states, as you don't have to pay a robot any more in South Carolina than you do in China. Then there's 3-D printing which very soon will allow manufacturers to outsource parts making to anyone with a 3-D machine. Imagine any part on any machine ever made available in the most remote small towns in America on a machine that costs $25,000. Amazon couldn't compete with a business model where you order the part from your neighborhood Maker Shop in the morning and it is ready for pick up or delivery next day if not just a few hours later.

Ride Sharing, imagine Uber for a set price per year for unlimited rides to and from wherever you want to go. Willing to ride in a small van with random strangers? Super cheap. Want to make it just folks who share common interests, or income levels, that's a step up in price. Want to ride alone with no one to bother you, just a few dollars more. As someone who drives 30,000 miles a year my vehicles still sit idle 90% of the time, I could buy a new vehicle every couple of years if there was software that made ride sharing easy, safe, and worth my time financially.

Winter Is Coming my friends, but as we always have, we'll find a way to survive it and thrive.

Refrigerator Pickles

Cucumbers are in full production right now and there's nothing better tasting and easier to take advantage of that bounty than refrigerator pickles.

I used wide mouth Bell quart jars. I quartered the cucumbers lengthways, put them in helter skelter until the jar is more or less filled. 1/3 cup of vinergar, 3 teaspoons of kosher salt, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1/4 cup of dill. I put a ripe jalapeno in each one for a little heat and color. After the ingredients are in fill to the top with water. If you don't like super hot pickles, you may want to pull that jalepeno out after a week or so.

Let it rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours. They're good for about 3 weeks, but usually they won't last that long.

For what it's worth, one of the ladies I work with shed a tear saying they were the best pickles she'd ever had... :-)

Bee Friendly

 Who knew that turnips could set a bee's heart a flutter? The turnips self seeded, we'll see how many generations they can produce on their own. Building a top bar bee hive is on the list for this fall. I'll post pictures as the Snow Farm adds to it's bee habitat.

The Prescott Fond Blanc Melon - It's Not Your Pappy's Cantalope

I picked the Prescott Fond Blanc Melon seeds up from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company early 2015. I put them in the ground late in mid-April, due to being away at yet another tech school, but thought I'd try them anyway... The one pictured here was first to begin to ripen. Sadly it was struck down in it's prime by a gnawing rodent of some sort. All was not lost though. The dirty rodent didn't manage to penetrate the rind into the flesh.

 

Upon opening it up the scent was amazing. Delicate is the first word to come to mind. Sweet, mild, and it's flesh exquisitely firm. Though not completely ripe, it was still a lovely tasting melon. I'm excited to see the other's ripen. (By the way, I've gave the cat a stern talking to about being lax in his duties.) 

 

Every time I open up an heirloom seed catalog, I'm amazed at how many varieties of fruits and vegetables there are that I've never seen. Baker Creek is an amazingly beautiful catalog. I keep mine as a coffee table book, it's that well done. Order a catalog and plant some of their recommendations that you've never seen before! Happy planting! 

Brewing your own… Laundry Detergent

So, the last time Andrea made laundry detergent I was in Kuwait. She did pass along to me that it was a miserable experience, especially grating the soap. That stayed in the back of my mind, but the 5 gallon bucket of liquid laundry detergent seemed to last forever. ..

Last week, I had a close friend and his family drop in to visit, and because I know how to show a buddy a good time I set off to make some powdered laundry detergent using my food processor instead of hand grating the soap. I read in multiple places on-line that the best way to do it was to first microwave the bar soap. Sounded crazy, but it worked like a champ. The picture below is of me about to knosh on the Fels-Naptha bar of soap after it’s been nuked for almost 3 minutes. The entire process from start to finish took less than 10 minutes. In the months to come I’ll report on how the homemade concoction is holding up.

Here’s the ingredient list:
Fels-Naptha Bar Soap (to be nuked 2-3 minutes)                $0.99
2 cups 20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Soap                         $3.97
2 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda                        $3.97
½ cup Oxi-Clean powder                                                     $8.00

Wal-Mart has all of these ingredients on the shelf at their “Neighborhood Market” stores. I wanted to see how I like the Fel-Naptha bar before I went buck wild and made a huge batch. I will admit that the microwaving of the soap made me a tad nervous but it was painless, no explosion, and the microwave has never smelt better!

After nuking the soap I cut it into eighths, just to make it easier to fit into the food processor. I pulsed it until the soap looked to be just a smidge bigger than normal looking laundry detergent crystals, then added in the 2 cups of borax, 2 cups of washing soda, and ½ cup of Oxi-Clean. I turned the food processor back on for about 30 seconds to mix the ingredients, dumped the new invention into a Rubbermaid container, and that was that.

I am using 1-2 tablespoons per load. This should get me somewhere in the 75 load range. In breaking down costs, it cost me $4.08 before tax. The Fels-Naptha bar does add a distinctive “laundry soap” fragrance that I liked more than I thought I would. We’ll see how it works and I’ll write more later on performance.

The next batch will be made with Ivory Soap bars, stay tuned for that.

Thoughts on the Desert

Anytime you have a three hour layover you find yourself either bored or complentative...

It's so easy to forget how hard a place the intermountain West is. A foot of rain a year, highs well above 100, lows routinely well below 0. It's a hard place, full of good hearted, hard people and vast places a man can be alone with his thoughts.

The West for much of the year is a study in hues of brown. Coyote brown, earth brown, sand brown, and 60 more I recognize but may not be able to put a Crayola Crayon name to. I appreciate the relentlessness of Nature. This time  of year the hues of green battle bravely the harshness of the world they've been born into to not go quietly into the night of those shades of brown.

Mountain sides lush with growth, fighting the growing heat rising from the valley and the snow filled valleys above to complete the cirlce that is life.

Swale Results

Just wanted to show the differences between the orchard with swales, and my neighbor's land without. I've grazed the cows through a half dozen times or so for 6-8 hours each time. The difference is pretty great.

Now only 9 more acres to dig in... :-)

Getting Ready for 100 Trees

So today I dug 35 holes as the weather looks to be breaking this week. These trees (black locust, honey locust, seedlings from a local thorny locust, and mimosas) will serve as a windscreen, privacy screen, nitrogen fixers, bee fodder, and future fence posts.

The rest of the seedlings will go in as nitrogen fixers in the orchard. Within a couple of years they'll be coppiced and supporting the fruit trees.

Snowpacolypse 2015

So we had several peach trees, nectarine trees, and one cherry tree in bloom when Mother Nature decided to break my heart and freeze those early blossoms. I was planning on heavily thinning each tree this first year to encourage maximum growth, but it still just killed me. The trees will be fine, and thankfully there's always next year.

On the positive side, all the mint, thyme, and rosemary seemed to make it through covered just fine. The Swiss Chard and strawberries though uncovered seemed none the worse for wear. Only time will tell. :-)

Belted Galloways for the Small Homestead

After reading, and reading, and reading about what breed of cattle would work best for our little farm we honed in on the Belted Galloway. They're highly adaptable from their original Scottish wet and cold to Texas heat. They're very efficient (just behind the Longhorn) in converting marginal pasture into weight gain. The final thing they had going for them was that their meat, even when fully finished on grass is highly marbled.                                                          
From the Joel Salatin school of farming we'll be paddock shifting the ladies and doing our best to repair the pasture and ultimately improve the soil itself. Full grown they'll tip the scales around 1000 pounds, roughly half of most modern beef cattle. As time progresses we should have about 1.5 beeves to sell, hopefully by early 2018.

Onion sets

I dug in a shallow trench for asparagus, put them in, and then covered them in 3 bags of soil and 2 bags of Miracle-Gro. 40 sweet onion sets and 40 red onion sets went in around the asparagus along with 6 strawberry plants. The strawberries didn't survive first contact with the free range chicken, but as of 21 February a good number of the onions are starting to peek through. Hopefully the harvest wil be bountiful.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Getting ready for another cow to be added to the herd, and if things go well she'll be calving shortly after she gets here and we want to keep her and the calf safe. I'm planning to set up a paddock shift system after the calf is born to help manage the pasture (preven over grazing) and repair the damage that was done to the pasture in the past.

The Mighty Turnip

In the fall of 2014, after planting all the trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes there was quite a bit of bare soil to cover. I went to the Co-Op over in Mertens and noticed a big bag of turnip seed on the shelf, and if memory serves, it was about $8. Brought it home and handbroadcast the seeds onto the open dirt, no muss, no fuss, no raking, no watering, a couple of weeks later turnips popping up everywhere. Great ground cover, great soil penetration, and lots of bio-mass to pile up in the swales in the spring, or so I assumed. Fast foward a few months (and a mild winter) and the biennial nature of the turnip had other plans. 

When I think Turnips, I think Russian peasants, and finally growing Turnips made me better understand why the Turnip was so important to so many. The greens can be plucked and eaten early, though they do taste like turnips... :-) The root crop is winter hardy, the mild Texas winter never even touched the greens, they grew taller and fuller until beginning to bloom in early February. I had no idea what was to follow, bee heaven. Today was the 21st of February, and walking through the Turnip flowers today I was surrounded by 1000's of bees happily working and hopefully they'll remember where we're at when the fruit trees start blooming.