Tag Archives: permaculture

Keyhole Garden

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After six months of discussion (the “we should build a keyhole garden” phase) and three more of procrastination (one of my better developed skills) we eventually entered the final phase of pre-building – the “do a few hours and then stop” phase. We’ve had a circle of bricks and roughly chopped earth waiting for us for a bout a month now, but with trees and lambs and such we haven’t had time to get on with it.

At the weekend we decided we needed to start work again. There’s frost forecast for next weekend, and that’s just what we need to break up some of the lumpier bits. If that isn’t enough there’s a whole list of other reasosn to get on with it – planting time coming up, the need to focus and the upcoming “Kenya Day” we’re having.

You will search in vail for any Kenyan National Holiday on 9th May, we just seem to have chosen 9th May as a convenient day. I’m not sure what is being organised because I’m trying to avoid adding to my workload, but it’s pretty certainly going to involve a reduction in the goat population round here. What? You didn’t think we were rearing goats for fun did you? Farmers, as we always tell the kids coming round, don’t keep pets.

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From the top left – The Start,. The next phase with drainage layer, keyhole and wood chippings applied and the compost cage in place. The compost cage lined with straw. My hard working staff starting to put soil on the layer of well-rotted pig manure. Close up of hard working staff, who by that time were starting to abuse the photographer and talk of tea. Final shot – most of the soil is in place – probably six to eight barrow loads for me and Julia to apply tomorrow and then we just have to let it settle for a while.

The theory is that you put compost in the central cage and water it, thus getting best value out of the water and the nutrients. Some beds are much more like raised beds but the bricks we had earmarked for the job ended up in a path so we’re having to make do with a lower wall. Despite this we will be getting an increase in surface area because of the slope. There are all sorts of keyhole beds, as you can see if you follow this link.

Tree Day!

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At last it’s arrived, the day we’ve been looking forward to for over a month. The Woodland Trust people arrived and it was down to work. We now know about crowns and stems, clinometers and ranging poles. We also have the equipment for the Javelin event in our next Improvised Olympics. (I know everyone else was thinking the same, but we all decided not to mention it until the Woodland Trust people left).

We’re now qualified to measure heights and girths and crowns (both north to south and east to west) and I have a pen mark on my shirt to tell me where the 1.3 metre mark is for measuring girths. As long as I don’t wash the shirt I’m pretty well set up for that.

I still think that it will be easier to measure small trees by making Tim climb them with a tape measure instead of using a clinometer and percentages. Despite this, it’s a lot easier doing it with a clinometer than the way I was taught at school. I can’t remember exactly how we did it but it involved sticks and plywood triangles and much more maths. It also involved a lot more answers because it’s a mathematical rule that the more steps you have in a process involving ten-year-olds the more answers you get. We were all pretty good, and the answers hardly varied at all, a triumph for the instructors considering the mixed abilities of the group. In fact the only person who got the girth wrong was me, but after standing straighter and trying again I got it right. It’s likely that drawing an ink mark on the front of my shirt isn’t the best way of finding the height for a girth measurement.

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It hasn’t suited everyone as an activity, and the temperature hasn’t helped, particularly the icy north wind that’s been getting up since mid-morning, but several of the group have definitely enjoyed it and that’s what it’s about.

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You never know where these things will lead. For an example look no further than lambing. Three years ago most of the group didn’t care for farm animals and were only interested in things like rabbits and guineapigs. Now they are volunteering to come in at the weekend and help with lambing. It’s strange how one thing leads to another, and when you look back over the years it’s amazing how some people change.

Apart from me that is. In 1966 I seem to remember being in trouble for throwing the sticks and for getting some pretty outlandish answers. In 2015 I can only grin and point out that we all have to grow older, but we don’t have to grow up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where the smart money goes…

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The guineafowl are living on borrowed time. They’ve been accused of scratching up garden plants and making too much noise so, it seems, they have to go. No more biodiversity, no more permaculture, just an empty, lifeless farm.

There is a bright spot of course. In a battle of wits between birds and farm staff all is not as it may seem. Having observed the staff in action or the years (or should that be staff inaction?) I’m not anticipating an early close to the matter.

Having discussed this with several people the smart money is on the birds.

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Having said that, after a week of skirmishing, I turned up this morning to find the farm was winning, with most of the birds penned in the barn. There was just one still at liberty, and it was on top of the barn crowing for all it was worth. It’s a numerical advantage to the farm but the noise and propaganda victory goes to the birds.

Seeing as the pigs and chickens escape on a regular basis I’m waiting to see if this is the final act or not…

Compost short cut

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I used 10 eggs for the Honey and Treacle tart on Saturday. While I was cooking the tarts I dried the egg shells too. That way you can store them and deal with them later without them smelling. I learnt that the hard way one summer.

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After that all you need to do is crush them with a rolling pin and you can throw them in the compost, use them as a barrier to stop slugs or put them in the wormery.

Awards time

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The farm won two awards in the Nottingham Post Environmental awards last night – winner in the Land Use and runner-up in the Coping with Climate Change categories.

After a brief break to bask in self-satisfaction I’d better get back to work. That environmentally friendly compost isn’t going to turn itself.

 

Compost and Mondays

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It’s always nice when a plan comes together, and for that reason alone this Monday was a good day. I’m not really sure why I’m prejudiced against the day – we tend to work through the weekend anyway so it isn’t as if it’s actually the start of our week. It’s probably a hangover from my school days, when Sunday evening was such a poignant time. It seems like I spent all my Sunday evenings thinking back to our Sunday seaside trip and dreading a return to the village school where the spirit of Wackford Squeers lived on well into the 1960s.

In truth I actually liked some of the schools I went to and didn’t go to the coast too often so I’m really only thinking of an eighteen month period when I was eight-years old, but it seems to have ruined Mondays for me for life. Fortunately it’s just a mild dislike – if I had an irrational fear of Mondays I would have to learn to spell lunaediesophobia just to describe how I felt.

Anyway, back to the real subject. Having access to a large amount of greenery and several cardboard boxes it seemed a good time to dig the bean trench we’d been threatening for two years. There are various sorts of bean trench, ranging from ones filled with good compost to those filled with cardboard and newspaper. The benefit of the first sort are obvious, the benefit of the second sort is that it keeps moisture under the beans. We’ve gone for the third type, also known as a composting trench, where you fill it with waste and let it rot down over winter. The idea is that it will not only rot down to produce compost, but will heat the soil (according to one blog I read). I’m not convinced about the soil heating bit – I think you will need a lot more in the trench to produce heat, but let’s see.

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That’s cardboard, cape gooseberry and various garden clippings in the trench. We ended up with a lot more by the time we’d finished and had to stamp it down. Now we just wait and see.

As for the rest of the compost – the three bay pallet bin is nearly full (as you can see from the picture above), the plastic and wooden bins and rotating drums are full and the pigs are producing plenty of raw materials. Despite this I just know that when we come to spreading time we will be disappointed when we see how little it actually covers. There are several rules of composting:

(1) It always contains plastic, no matter how careful you are

(2) It never looks as good as it does on Gardeners’ World

(3) It never goes far enough

 

Worm community hit by hurricane!

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Looks like I might have been a bit hasty in my assessment of the hurricane damage. This morning I found the lid of the wormery had blown off. I only check them every few days as they don’t need a lot of looking after. They are in a sheltered place and it didn’t occur to me that anything could have happened, but it looks like a swirling gust had got under the lid.

Fortunately there was a good layer of damp paper on top of them to keep things dark and they don’t seem to have been inconvenienced too much. Things seemed a bit wet so I suspect they have been rained on but I have arranged some more paper to help them dry out. I’ll add some bread crumbs tonight to help them along.

It looks like they have been breeding well as there are hundreds of small worms on the surface. However, I will check this out just to be sure they aren’t something horrible.It would be just my luck to be boasting about the fecundity of my worms just as they were being eaten by parasites. I’ve kept various livestock over the years and worms, though they don’t need daily attention, are still proving hard to get the hang of. No matter what the books tell me about them being easy I just can’t bring myself to believe it.

On the farm the guinea fowl are refusing to cooperate and move back to the vegetable garden. They are well and truly back with the rest of the poultry and refusing to move from the food. Can’t say I blame them. Even with a coat of waterproof feathers the weather is pretty bad at the moment. (Please note that I could have done the foul/fowl weather joke there but I chose not to. I am better than that.)

There is still a bit of jostling going on with the group of guinea fowl that live with the chickens full time but they seem to be settling down. Even when the weather improves I have a feeling that the poultry field will be a regular stop on the farm circuit for the free range group – bugs are fine but you can’t beat a hopper full of grain.

 

Porridge

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World Porridge day has been and gone. We ate Likuni Phala to get into the swing of things. That’s Malawian porridge – four cups of maize kernels and a cup of soya beans with 15 cups of water. TESCO provided maize meal, which was a useful short-cut, and textured soya protein, also known as soya mince. I had intended reducing the soya to a more meal-like consistency in a blender, but I forgot to pack it . First I tried a rolling pin but still ended up with some recognisable pieces of mince. That was when the stick blender came into play.

Next time I’m going to seal the top of the jug with cling film. It wasn’t as bad as when the courgette soup went wrong, but having said that we’re still finding crumbs of soya twenty four hours later.

The day was supposed to be about comparing ourselves with other countries, so I also made oatmeal porridge to compare with the Likuni Phala. Unfortunately, given a choice kids always go for the familiar. Eight out of twelve refused to try the foreign porridge and even the ones who did try it covered it in sugar. From the point of view of comparison, and nutrition, I have delivered better education sessions.

On the other hand we did make sure everyone had plenty of porridge. As many of the group had free school lunches (which always seems to feature a plain grated cheese sandwich in white bread) this was probably a good thing.

After looking at the animals and learning more about how we grow and use wheat (what we refer to as our Seed to Sandwich presentation) it as time for the kitchen session. I’ve been working on a simple scone recipe because it gives us something to spread our home-made jam on. It also, being Hedgerow Jam, allows us to talk about foraging and alternative foods. People who wouldn’t think of trying something new when offered porridge seem happy to eat anything if it’s in the form of jam. The amount of sugar probably helps.

The first time we tried the recipe the mix turned out a bit dry. This time it was a little too soft. A bit of extra flour soon cleared that up. Next time I may get it right.

Next time, I will get something else wrong.

I’ve been thinking of what to write as a first post about Green Care for several months now, Finally I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter what I do it isn’t going to be as good as I want it to be, but at least I managed a key word in the first sentence, which is what I’m supposed to do.

That may be the last time I do anything because I’m supposed to do it. In a life characterised by drifting it might be asking too much of a blog if I expect it to correct my character flaws as well as publicise Quercus Community.

It’s also slightly misleading because I probably won’t be writing much about Green Care, just about a series of events that occur as I drift through life supposedly assisting my wife. She’s the one who set the Quercus project up with a friend and she’s the one with the sense of purpose and the crusading spirit. Today, for instance, I have been baking quiche (using ready-made pastry cases), looking at the World Porridge Day website, thinking about writing press releases and sorting out paperwork. Pleasant as they may be, I can’t see porridge or quiche changing the world. Nor can I see much paperwork being done.

Meanwhile my wife and her co-director have been outside in the cold and rain with our usual Wednesday group engaging in horticultural therapy and using the Green Gym. In everyday English that’s “gardening”.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a picture. It’s our guinea fowl doing what guinea fowl do best – loafing about in a big group, Just like teenagers with feathers. They’ve had a busy day so far, looking for bugs, taunting the sick turkeys in the hospital pen and dodging showers. In this picture they are sheltering under a table. Every other bird in the county is in a hedge, but ours are sheltering under a picnic table.

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However, they do eat a lot of pests and according to most websites they don’t damage plants. My experience is that they did shred a courgette by roosting on it as it grew at the top of a tyre stack. And they probably did pull a neighbour’s onion sets up. They were certainly in the area, though it could have been anyone. But as I say, they do eat a lot of pests, and they do deposit a fair amount of manure so I can live with that.

Or as Bill Mollison the permaculture man put it:

You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency!