Fall 2016 Thoughts

It's early August, and time to make my best guess at life after the fall election.

First, barring a serious 9/11 style terrorist attack on American soil, God forbid, Hillary walks to an election. Weakest Democratic nominee since Mondale, only to be paired with quite possibly the least likable Republican ever. Those are the breaks.

The R's lose the Senate, keep the House. Her first nominee ensures a hard left turn to the Court, especially gun rights. My advice? Buy lowers, at least 2 per family member. They're cheap right now, and unless something drastic changes, you'll still be able to buy additional parts after the election, though I do expect a full blown run on all ARs, AKs, etc as the election picture becomes clearer. If I'm wrong, you're out less than $500, if I'm right there's a good chance that selling one of those will net you more than $500 at some point in the near future.

Whoever inherits this economy is probably going to inherit an instant recession that's going to take years to get out of. I hope we're still years away from a real reset, a la the Soviet Union 1991, but who knows.

I saw a line on Twitter that stuck with me.

"You can't govern a country you've never visited." Flyover America, the folks who shop at Wal-Mart, who go to Church because they believe deeply, coal miners, stay at home moms, rough men who have known violence are every bit as foreign to DC as trying to govern Martians.

I think you're going to see more states going the route of Irish Democracy, as they have with marijuana. You may still see some folks get caught up in the Federal gears if they get too big for their britches, but black markets will continue to increase in direct correlation to the corruption in D.C.

I think you're going to see more pressure put on local law enforcement. Failing pension plans are going to make any officer who can make comparable money elsewhere leave if they don't see a pension in their future. You're going to see less federal dollars to supplement the drug war. More communities, not just black, think poor, see LEOs as tax collectors instead of keepers of the peace.

As with the President Obama, I don't think you'll see martial law, or FEMA camps, rather a continuation of the pursuit of Utopia with borrowed money. Everything will remain more or less copacetic until the EBT cards do run dry, then my friend Venezuela may very well be the best case scenario.

Stay frosty.

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.

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. 

The Trees Go In

Well, the swales are in so the next step is to get the trees in the ground. I ran up to  B

The Snow Permaculture Farm

"There is no greater act of rebellion than growing a garden." -Unknown-

Hello Hill and Ellis County! Welcome to the Snow  Farm!

I had a small 1/3 acre suburban homestead before moving back to Texas. I found my passion in life is growing tasty, healthy, safe food free of pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers.

I bought this little 11 acre farm because I want my kids to know the joys and hard work that come from living on a farm. I want as much money as possible to stay in the local area with locally owned small businesses.

I know you're busy, but still want to give your family the best food you can. As we ramp up production here my hope is to find 5-10 families over the next 3-5 years that we can serve.

There's still a lot of work to do, but my goal is to help you feed your family the best food possible.

Whole chickens will be available in spring of 2016.

Heritage breed turkey orders for Thanksgiving 2016 will be taken in spring 2016.

Free range chicken and duck eggs will be available in the summer of 2016. 

Right now there are 36 trees in the ground that will start producing an excess in 2016. The grapes and blackberries we planted should be coming on-line by then as well.

The two Belted Galloway heifers will be producing there first grass fed beef in 2017. As the herd grows so will our offerings of paddock shifted, grass fed beef.

There are so many other things that we hope to do, and I'm sure as the farm matures we'll find products that we've never dreamt of. Honey, fruit trees for sale, garden starts, lavender, hogs, and rabbits are on our radar right now, but who knows what the future holds.

As the site grows I'll be posting recipes involving the food we grow. My thoughts on gardening, and as much as I can what I've learned from all the mistakes I've made with my prior gardening attempts.

I can't wait to meet you, answer your food and gardening questions, and share our humble homestead's progress with you.

Your friend,

Russ Snow

Bob Wells Nursery

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

Swales - Just a Ditch on Contour

For those of you who've owned a house already, you understand the time/money pit they can be. Setting up a homestead adds another level to that, in addition to the electric bill etc, you have the additional costs of trees, bushes, animals, feeding troughs, feed, tools et cetra.

Some of these are simply sunk costs, like renting the excavator to dig the swales, while others like the fruit trees themselves will give me at least 100% ROI per year for 10 years (if I can keep them alive, 50/50 that.) I get that ROI number based on assuming $25 paid for tree, and getting at least 25 pounds of fruit valued at $1 per pound for at least 10 years of the trees life.

The first big project that I had to get out of the way was getting the swales dug in. I dug in three, the first one ended up being in really poor soil. The next two swales were in beautiful black clay/loam and that's where I ended up planting a majority of my trees/bushes/vines. In the row that was poor soil, I only planted three trees, two Advacados and a plum. We'll see how they do.

Bob Wells Nursery

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.