Edible Curb Appeal?

Remodeling the front yard to be primarily a vegetable garden with curb appeal offers some unique challenges.

The most efficient approach seems to be to begin with the structure of the garden--the planters, the trellises, the fountain (?), the fences--with an eye to the crops and plants that will live around and in these structures.

Should we use a fountain as a feature in the front yard? Should that water feature be a central focal point or should it be tucked into a corner to be discovered by the visitor? Should this and all other elements of the garden be placed to please those who look out from the house or for those passersby who look in from the street, or for both? A little of each, perhaps?

A picket fence across the front seems to be the consensus at this point. Trellises will do the work of fences along the driveway. Raised beds will be common throughout, even for the perennial plantings, and walkways will be covered with either bark or gravel--no mowing, and little if any weed whacking.

The citrus will remain as foundation plants, while an olive and a macadamia will be added. Artichokes come to mind as an additional perennial.

In the summer months, nasturtiums, sunflowers, and cucumbers will add some color, as will the complementary yellow and purple flowers of okra and eggplant over the sea of squash and melon leaves.

In the fall, peas, favas, kales, cauliflowers, and cabbages will add their variety, as will lettuces and other "greens" like beets and chard.

We're learning as we go. There are several good books available to show you how. Our current favorite is Yvette Soler’s The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden.

Making Turkey Stock

Once you remove all the meat from your Thanksgiving turkey, put the bones on to simmer right away to make stock to use in soups and sauces for the rest of the holidays and after. It may help keep you and your family from getting the winter colds and flu that always come around.

Homemade stock offers three nutritional benefits that are in readily digestible form:

1. Minerals calcium, magnesium, silicon, sulphur and phosporous and critical trace minerals.

2. Gelatin which is good for many tissues of the body -- cartilage, bones, joints, skin, digestive tract, and muscles including the heart. Gelatin also boosts immunity. The majority of our immune system is located in our gut, and gelatin soothes and heals the intestinal mucosa.

3. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphates, good for joint maintenance.

Making turkey stock is very easy. Put the carcass in a large pot (1-2 gallons) and cover with water. Add 1/4 cup of vinegar (this will help to release minerals from the bones and cartilage). Bring to a boil over medium to high heat. Reduce to medium to low heat and simmer for 24 hours. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface while simmering. After 24 hours strain out the bones. You'll have a gallon or two of yummy stock.

Easy, healthful, and tasty.

A Little Less Ambitious

As self-sufficiency expert John Seymour wrote, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.”

Many (or even most) writing about self-sufficiency make the assumption that all of us who want to be self-sufficient want to do so primarily because of environmental concerns, global environmental concerns, like sustainability of food production, reduction of pollution, and so forth.

Our thinking is a little less ambitious. We do want the best possible environment in and around our home to allow each member of our family to thrive, both physically and spiritually. We have found in the process of improving our immediate environment by avoiding unnecessary chemicals--cleansers, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, preservatives, and sedatives--that traditional ways (natural, homemade) are most often less expensive than purchasing the commercial, chemical products.

In other words, we’re not becoming more self-sufficient to save the planet, we are becoming more self-sufficient to save ourselves. We trust ourselves to take care of us, not the government--local, state, federal, or global. We have found that being self-sufficient, while in the short run is more costly in terms of time and labor (and sometimes money) than relying on others, in the long run is less so. Growing our own food veggies and fruits for the cost of some seeds and a little water is cheaper and cleaner than buying our food at the grocery store. That’s a short term savings. In the long term, we expect to save much more in terms of health and well-being in the future. Those are long term savings.

"Sustainable" for us means that very little, if any, input is required to keep a system going after the initial investment. For example, saving seeds from open pollinated vegetable varieties means that we don't have to purchase seeds or plants each year. Or, keeping a rooster will provide chicks for us whenever we need replacement layers, or meat birds.

The investment we make now in terms of time and money has an incalculable return on investment in the near and distant future, both for ourselves and future generations. For those that feel the planet is in need of saving: the solution is not in buying carbon credits, or driving an electric car, or eating lots of tofu. Just do what you can for your immediate environment. If everyone did the same, the global environment would improve substantially. Start by growing something that you like to eat--tomatoes? peppers? salad greens? Add a couple of chickens to your yard and they will eat your table scraps and bugs in your yard, and give you eggs to eat and manure to put on your garden. Less packaging goes to the landfill, less diesel for food transport is burned, and you will be producing a good bit of your own food.

Dreams and Goals

It has been our dream to have an efficient, "sustainable" means of food production. For us, it started with the garden and has expanded steadily over the past few years.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals.

On our mini-farm we have the animals we need to provide manure--chickens, ducks, geese, fish, and goats--so there is no shortage in this department. We have at least three or four compost bins and piles going at any given time, as well as some worm bins to turn the manure, garden trimmings, and kitchen wastes into usable compost. We plan to add a bin for black soldier fly larvae next year to help deal more quickly with the kitchen waste and to provide grubs for the chickens and fish.

The snag for us in becoming self-sufficient or completely sustainable is that we are having to bring in feed for the chickens and goats. While our poultry are as free-range as we can make them, there just isn't enough "range" to completely provide for them just yet. We need to find the balance between available forage and number of birds.

The ducks and geese forage for themselves with the occasional treats of leftover fruit and greens from the table, and an occasional sprinkle of grain.  Our chickens have free access to a couple of compost piles, so they get whatever leftovers from the kitchen they want along with all the grass, weeds, seeds, and bugs the can find, but they still need extra feed to maintain egg production. The goats are given grasses and hay from bales we purchase in addition to the garden and tree trimmings and other home-grown forage we provide. We grow sunflowers specifically for the purpose of feeding the seeds to the birds (and goats) and the rest of the plant to the goats. We  also have grown mangels specifically for goat feed.  Swiss Chard is a hit with just about everybody on the farm, except some of the people. Kale, too.

To be able to eat fish from our farm once a week throughout the year, we have to purchase fish food. The black soldier fly grubs will help here. We have also been experimenting with other available foods. Tilapia have been reported to eat raw scrambled eggs. We have not had success in getting ours to eat this, but will keep trying. We do grow duckweed to feed our tilapia, but not nearly enough. More pond to grow it in would be nice, but not practical at this point.

Now to the humans on the farm. We can grow for ourselves all of our fruit and vegetable needs. We have eggs, milk, meat and fish in enough quantity to meet our needs most of the time.  We can and do make our own yogurt, ice cream, and cheeses. But if we want beef, pork, or grains we have to buy them. Do we need them? No, at least not all of the time.  So it is entirely possible for us to eat well with only animal feed coming into our farm. This is one of our goals. We'll start with a week or two and go from there.

At this point, we don't make many trips to the grocery store. We buy our staple goods in bulk.With these we make our own bread, soaps, and soft drinks. We can make our own pasta, toothpaste, shampoo, cleaners, and deodorants. Does all this save money? It sure doesn't save time, and time is money, right? Well let's see.

We spend about $300 per month on animal feed, and about twice that much on staple goods (organic if possible). We have a family of eight. That works out to less than $1.50 per person per meal. Our food is real food, no additives or sedatives. No chemicals you can't pronounce. No GMO. Our homemade cleaning and personal care products are the same way. We spend less than two hours per person per day working the farm and the kitchen.

We have a way to go, but we're getting there. Some say that the journey is more enjoyable than the destination. We're having a lot of fun getting to where we want to be. If we can do it, so can you. Start small as we did, working your way up. Start now.

Say Cheese

We have just finished up another a batch of feta cheese.

Feta is a traditional Greek cheese. It is a brined, crumbly, curd cheese, commonly produced in blocks, and has a slightly grainy texture. After it has aged (two weeks to a month, if we're patient) in its brine, we usually crumble it onto salads or into scrambled eggs. Sometimes we put it on pizza, or in/on other dishes. Others use it as a table cheese, in pastries, and in baking--spanakopita ("spinach pie") and tyropita ("cheese pie").

The first record of what is probably feta cheese, is from the Byzantine Empire. It was called "fresh" or "recent" cheese (prósphatos), and was described as brined and was associated with Crete. (Andrew Dalby, Siren feasts: A history of food and gastronomy in Greece, Routledge, 1996)

The current name "feta" comes from the Italian word fetta ("slice"), which was introduced into the Greek language in the 1600's.

Whatever it is called in other places, the Greeks claim feta as their own. They also lay claim to being the first cheese makers. Polyphemus,  son of Poseidon and one of the Cyclopes, is said to be the first cheese-maker. Homer describes Polyphemus' bowls and baskets full of cheeses in the Odyssey.

Traditionally, feta is made from sheep's or goat's milk or a mixture of the two. Today it is also commercially made with cow's milk. We, of course, use goat's milk. Here is a link to the basic recipe most like the one we use:


http://fiascofarm.com/dairy/feta.html

We also made ricotta from the whey. This will go into the lasagna planned for dinner next week.


As soon as we set up our cheese cave, we'll try making some Colby or other aged cheeses. What's a cheese cave, you ask? And how do you make one? A description of ours will soon follow--no digging or spelunking involved!

More Efficient Means More Self-Sufficient

We have several improvement projects currently in progress on our place. All these and almost all of the projects planned are to make our micro eco-systems more efficient or to make our work easier or more effective. Our goal is to work smarter, not harder. This will allow us to become a little more self-sufficient in the space and time we have available.

For example, we just finished making some portable fence sections so that we can keep the fowl away from some new crops we intend to plant this week. Most of the time a low visual barrier is sufficient to keep the water fowl out, but the chickens often require a bit more, especially in height. Prior to our getting some Marans chickens, our chickens rarely, if ever flew over our four-foot picket garden fence. The Marans, however, have taught everyone in the coop to fly up to the top of the fence and then to fly down on the other side. Time to either clip some wings or make the fences a little higher, or both. So we made some lightweight fence panels that hopefully will do the job.

A month or so ago, someone left the garden gate unlatched and the geese found their way into the garden and ate every single new transplant--cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli--down to the ground! So we replanted the garden rows. A week or so later, we had a day or two of gusty winds which blew the gate latch apart. The geese helped themselves again to every single new transplant, and some not-so-new plants. So we put a new, better latch on the gate and replanted the garden rows. So far, so good: humans are happy, geese not so much.

We also are putting fence around the patio (again to keep the fowl at bay) and new siding on the fish tanks that will be more aesthetically pleasing than the makeshift siding we have had (the siding keeps the sun off of the tank so that algae doesn't grow). Because the fish tanks and aquaponic grow beds are at the edge of the patio, this siding also will be incorporated into the fence around the patio. While we're at it, we will need to design and build a better solar water heating system for the fish--last winter the water stayed just a little too cool for them. They survived just fine, but they didn't thrive or grow much during the cooler months.

We'll be updating our worm bins from the plastic storage containers we started with years ago, to a single more permanent arrangement. The worms turn our kitchen scraps into compost in a very short time. They also become food for the chickens, ducks and fish (and when we go fishin’ they also make for good bait).

We also have plans to consolidate three compost bins into one larger bin over and around which we will put up wire and wood to house chickens. The idea is to let them turn the compost with their scratching, as they live mostly on the kitchen and garden trimmings we throw in for them. This seems to be a very efficient use of resources--time, space, and waste. We have also designed an automatic chicken waterer that we’ll be putting into service in the next few weeks--we have to do some plumbing first, but it will be worth it when we’re finished. Details will follow.

In addition to these projects we are putting in some raised beds in the front yard to increase our growing space. We're looking forward to the Spring when we'll be able to look out our dining room window over a sea of winter squash vines--green like a lawn, but with edible produce....

As soon as we have finished these projects, we’ll find some more. This is a great hobby. We encourage you to try it. Just as in any other hobby, start small and work up to the bigger projects.

Finding More Space

Last week we spent a few days cleaning out the garage and some corners and edges of the yard.

As far as the garage goes, the plan is to make plenty of room to set up an aquarium for a breeding colony of tilapia. We want to be able to raise our own on a continual and constant basis--more sustainability from home. If possible, we also want to have room to put in a fish tank to hold the rest of the tilapia during the cooler months where it is easier heat the tank, while we grow trout in the outside tanks. The trout need the cold water. We'll see what happens.

As for the yard, we cleared some brush and some wood piles and trimmed some trees so that we can have a little more planting space, or more space for our poultry. Between the new beds in the front yard and the space gained in the backyard, we'll be adding about four hundred square feet of growing beds. We'll also be adding some shelter for the ducks and geese for nest boxes and some pens for keeping them confined when we want or need them to be out from under foot.

Do you have a sunny lawn in your front yard? Why do you have a sunny lawn? You water, weed, fertilize, and mow. Why not put in edible landscape in that sunny spot in your front yard? With a strong hardscape (the structural elements: walkways, fences, planters, trellises, etc.) and the right choices of plants, you can water, weed, fertilize, just as you would with a lawn, but instead of mowing grass, you can harvest fruits and veggies that are good to eat.

Although we have had herbs and dwarf fruit trees in our front yard for several years, we are just now putting in raised beds and trellises for growing garden vegetables. We’ll be posting details along with photos of our experiment as it unfolds.

There are several good books available to show you how. Our current favorite is Yvette Soler’s The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden.