Use Your Coldframe All Year

coldframe filled with seedlings

Coldframes are great solar powered seed starters that you can use year round. If you’ve built one, used it in the spring, then left it to become overgrown with weeds for the rest of the year, now is the time to rethink that. This can be your go-to place for transplants all season, plus a place to harvest winter salads while waiting for the next round of seeds.

I generally start planting in my coldframe in early February with cabbage, collards, kale, chard, and other cool season things. If I am starting onion seeds, I might plant them in the coldframe in January. My next round of planting is for the warm weather crops, such as tomatoes and peppers. These are started about the last week in March, however this year it was April 5 when that happened. This year was a good year to not be in a hurry, since the weather was unseasonably cold and damp for longer than expected.

When I started seeds under lights in the house, I used to start tomatoes and peppers on March 1. They would require a lot of attention and watering. When it was getting close to time to plant them outside, I would have to harden off the plants—get them used to the outdoors—before they actually got planted in the garden. I’ve seen people having to do this with greenhouse plants. They would lug them in and out of the greenhouse each day. Whether you are taking them in and out of your house or a greenhouse, it’s a bother either way.

As I’ve gotten older, I like to think I’ve gotten smarter and not just lazier. I realized that I don’t have to start my tomatoes so early. The plants that come from my coldframe are acclimated to the cool soil and to the fluctuations of air temperature from day to night. I can keep the lid on, vent it, or remove it totally, as necessary. I do not put hinges on my coldframe lids for that reason. If they are light enough to be blown off in the wind, I use hooks and eyes to hold them in place. I can start more plants in less space than I ever could starting them under lights in the house.

tomato seedlings started in coldframe, moved to flat

Our last frost date here is about April 25. This year, however, frost hit in some places on May 14. It is good to have plants already tuned in to what nature is doing in times like this. A cold snap like that would be more damaging to tender plants raised under lights, than to hardy plants grown in a coldframe. Sometimes I pull plants out of the coldframe and put them in pots or wood flats to finish growing out so that I have room to start more seeds. I only do that if the weather conditions are such that the ones I pull out don’t need the protection of a coldframe anymore. I had done that this year with the tomatoes to make room for the sweet potatoes in the coldframe.

Peppers grow slower and need warmer conditions than tomatoes. When I turned to the coldframes for my transplants I wasn’t sure how it would be with peppers. I’ve since decided that this is a great opportunity to develop a pepper that will grow this way. Otherwise, why would I want to fool with it? If I save the seeds each year, I will have developed a strain that will grow well, no matter what nature brings. I like thick walled sweet peppers and Ruffled Hungarian is one that does well in the coldframe. I originally bought a few locally grown plants at a health food store in 2008 and have been saving the seeds ever since.

It is time to have the tomatoes out of the coldframe, so what’s next? I mentioned that the sweet potatoes went in after the tomatoes. I often don’t plant the sweet potato slips in the garden until about June 7. I’m always anxious, wondering if they will come up in the coldframe or if I should have started the sweet potatoes in jars of water in the house. Then the slips appear and take off. So, if you are anxious, also, have faith. When the weather is right, they will grow. Sweet potatoes like to be warm, so I keep the coldframe lids handy for longer than might be necessary. Learn more about growing your own sweet potato slips at http://homeplaceearth.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/grow-your-own-sweet-potato-slips/

corn seedlings in vole-proof tub

I use transplants for corn and peanuts and worry about voles getting them in the coldframe. Although I have taken measures in building my new coldframes to keep out the voles, I still worry about these seeds, so I start them in large plastic pots, the kind trees come in. I like the kind with a lip on the rim to keep climbing critters out.  These pots are scrounged, I didn’t buy them, and they are useful for many things. When the corn and peanuts are out, I can put other seeds for transplants in there or plant flowers and herbs to enjoy through the summer. Since I’m using them at a time when no protection is needed, I don’t have to worry about a cover. These extra containers are good to have when my coldframes are filled and I want more seed-starting space, once the danger of frost has passed.

Once all the warm weather plants are in the garden the coldframe is the place to start transplants for later squash plantings, more flowers and herbs, or for brassicas plants intended for fall and winter harvest. You no longer need the winter lids to keep things warm, but you might need some shade. If you don’t have shadecloth, you can use an old bed sheet to shelter the seedlings from the sun. The key to this kind of planting is having a plan that shows everything that will be in your garden for the year. For a refresher for that kind of planning, read my post on Making a Garden Map. You will know what you need ahead of time and can plan your coldframe plantings accordingly. My post on Succession Planting will also give you some ideas for using summer transplants.

potato plants to grow out in coldframe

If you really aren’t interested in having a continuous supply of transplants though the summer, plant a crop in your coldframe after the last spring transplants come out. I have built a new coldframe to replace an old one and have planted potatoes in it to see if I was successful in keeping out the voles—otherwise, the sweet potatoes would be in there and I wouldn’t have had to put the tomato plants in flats. You could shade your coldframe and plant lettuce or just throw in some buckwheat. In thirty days the buckwheat will be flowering, making the honeybees happy and keeping the weeds away. In early September I plant lettuce in one of my coldframes to provide salads through December. I want that space to be clear for the January/February plantings. I plant the winter greens-kale and collards—under low tunnels. If they were in the coldframes, they would still be there when I wanted to start seeds.

Think of your coldframe as a place to harvest transplants all through the summer, not just in the spring. Consider it an important part of your garden and keep it filled.

 

 

Chicken House Tips

chicken house interior with loft and access to nest boxes for egg collecting

Keeping chickens is a popular thing to do these days and there is a wealth of information for new keepers of the flocks. I have had chickens since 1989 and would like to offer some tips that have proven helpful to me.

If possible, have an area to store feed within the chicken house. That saves trips back and forth from another storage area each day. I store feed in galvanized metal garbage cans. I don’t use plastic garbage cans because I believe they contain pesticides—after all, they are intended for garbage—and animals can chew through them. This feed area needs to be “walled off” from the chicken-living area, which can be done with chicken wire or welded wire fencing. That brings me to my next tip.

In the chicken-living area, it would do you well to arrange to divide that space into two. I read that idea long ago in Gene Logsdon’s Practical Skills (1985, Rodale Press). In my chicken house the divider is made of welded wire fencing for the upper permanent part and wood for the lower removable part. A nail at each side of the bottom part holds it in place. When I want to allow the chickens into the whole area, I remove the bottom panel by pulling out the nails enough to remove the panel. In order to tend to both sections, you need to have a door to each one from your feed room. The doors can be made with a wood frame and wire fencing or you could scrounge old screen doors for this.

This division is most helpful when my chicks come out of the brooder. The outside pen area is divided, also, so that each inside area has its own run. One side, where the chicks are put, has smaller wire to contain the little ones. The rest of the chicken run has 2”x4” wire. Young chicks can slip right through that. The chickens, big and small, can see each other. When the time comes, I can take off the bottom panel in the chicken house and open the gates within the chicken run and they will all be together.

nest box on chicken side

My next tip is to be able to collect the eggs without walking through chicken poop. You might not mind it, but occasionally you might need to have someone else, who is not so much into earthy ways as you are, collect your eggs. Also, chickens can be intimidating to young children and a rooster can be an attack animal. It is best if children don’t have to watch out for that, besides making sure they don’t break any eggs. If you have a feed room, have the nest boxes protrude into that space, with the top opening up for egg collection. If your nest boxes extend to the outside of the chicken house, make sure they are weather-proof. You wouldn’t want rain dripping on your hens as they sit in the nest box. My nest boxes are accessible from the feed area. I made them from scrap wood and used the tongues of old tennis shoes for hinges.

chicken house loft with grass clippings

My last tip is to put a loft in your chicken house. That gives you space to store straw for bedding—maybe even straw from the grains that you’ve grown. The loft in my chicken house is only over the chicken-living area, allowing more headspace in the feed room. I have an old wooden five foot ladder there to access the loft. I add carbon material over the chicken droppings throughout the year and clean out the chicken house once in the summer. All of it goes to the compost pile. Having that bedding material right there in the loft is nice, especially if it is something I’ve grown.

You can also store grass clippings there. If you have sown white clover in your grass, your “grass hay” will be rich in clover. You can feed that to your chickens, line the nest boxes with it, or use it as bedding. Let the grass dry for a day or two before storing it or spread it out in the loft if it is fresh. When it is dry, you can pile it up. Otherwise, you will have a hot, slimy mess. Look at all the resources you have and make sure they are part of your circle of living. What is left from one thing becomes a resource for another. As much as you can, bring your chickens into your circle.

Including Animals In Your Diet

If all your food was coming from plant sources, as it is in a vegan diet, you would still be missing vitamin B12, which is only available in significant quantities in animal products. You could consume B12 supplements, but in a sustainable diet, you need to get all your nutrients from natural sources. Our bodies can store B12, so if you had plenty of it in your diet for years, you would have extra that would carry over for quite some time if you stopped ingesting it. Eventually, though, you would run out. According to Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency include “pernicious anemia, impaired eyesight, panic attacks, schizophrenia, hallucinations and nervous disorders, such as weakness, loss of balance and numbness in the hands and feet.” To quote from the Nutrition Almanac by John Kirschmann, “the brain and nervous system are first affected by vitamin B12 deficiency, which results in faulty formation of nerve cells.” This book also suggests that burning of the mouth could be a sign of deficiency and in the elderly, “symptoms of impaired mental function can mimic Alzheimer’s disease.” I’ve heard that irrational anger is an early symptom of B12 deficiency. In order for B12 to be used efficiently by your body, you need to eat foods that contain folic acid in balanced proportions and you need calcium, so make sure leafy greens, such as kale and collards are a part of your diet.

I wondered just what it would take to get a day’s supply of B12, so I consulted the Estimated Average Requirements (EAR) which meet the requirements of 50% of the healthy individuals in the population and found that the EAR for B12 is 2 mcg. The Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), the amount sufficient to meet the need of 97-98% of the healthy population, is 2.4 mcg. These figures were updated in 1997 and are part of USDA’s Dietary Reference Intakes. I’ve used 2 mcg as the target amount for B12 in the following considerations. You would have to eat 2.6 large chicken eggs to get 2 mcg of B12. Surprisingly, if you were eating duck eggs, one duck egg supplies 190% of the B12 requirement. Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs, but comparing the same weight of duck to chicken eggs, duck eggs contain 3.7 times the B12 as chicken eggs. These figures are assuming that you are eating eggs from chickens that get out to scratch in the grass. I have reason to believe that the eggs from confined hens would contain considerably less B12. I have heard of people avoiding eggs because of the cholesterol content. In 1971, before cholesterol was an issue, I learned in a nutrition class at Ohio State University that the egg yolk contains cholesterol, a nutrient that is necessary for our body to function properly, and the egg white contains lecithin, which helps the body use cholesterol the way it is meant to be used. Nature provides food for us in complete packages. When we separate those packages, thinking we know better, is when we get into trouble.

You could meet your B12 requirement with 1 large chicken egg and 1½ cups whole cows milk. Ideally the cow would get most, if not all, her food from pasture. I found that goats milk doesn’t have as much B12 as cows milk. It would take 2 eggs and 2.8 cups of goats milk to get a day’s requirement. A vegetarian diet generally includes eggs and milk. However, if eggs and milk are part of your diet, you also have to recognize that the young males and old females need to be part of your diet as well, if you are really going for sustainability. If not, what would become of them? You could keep feeding them and let them live out their days, but that would really increase your ecological footprint to bring you eggs and milk. We need to raise these animals with the least environmental impact and in a way that brings them into the circle of our food system. Rather than being the steward who manages things from outside that circle, we need to become part of the circle. We are nourished by the energy of the plants and animals in the circle. Reverence for all of it is part of this sustainable diet.

It might be that pigs are part of your food system. They would love the whey and buttermilk from cheese and butter making. A 3 oz. serving of pork is 40% of your daily B12 requirement. You could raise rabbits, including alfalfa and other crops in your garden to feed them. A 3 oz. serving of rabbit meat contains three times the daily need for B12. Rabbit manure can feed redworms that become feed for your chickens. The resulting compost would feed the garden. The Integral Urban House suggests a system for raising rabbits and chickens in your backyard. Maybe you could work out a way to let your rabbits graze in your yard.

When all your food comes from local and homegrown sources, you need to find a balance that nourishes both body and soul. When you eat a varied diet of whole foods, you can avoid deficiencies. Including animals in this way is much different than including animals raised in conventional systems. In a perfect world, considering sustainability, you wouldn’t need broiler or beef cattle production to meet your nutritional needs. You would be eating smaller amounts of meat cooked in different ways. If you are buying eggs, ask the farmer what happens to the old hens and offer to buy some. Chopped chicken and gravy over mashed potatoes would be on the menu, rather than large pieces of fried chicken. The broth from stewing those old hens becomes chicken soup, known by both tradition and research to  have health benefits. A sustainable diet sustains both you and the earth, with no deficiencies. Becoming a part of your food system is an adventure that I hope you enjoy.

Seed Libraries

In case you haven’t heard, seed libraries are fast becoming a way for you to get involved in the seed saving movement. A seed library may be located in a book library that you are already familiar with.  You can “borrow” seeds with the promise to return them at the end of the season. Actually, you will be growing out the seeds you received from the seed library, saving the seed, and returning at least as much seed from your seed saving as you “borrowed” and maybe more. Just by participating, you can help to develop strains of things unique to your area, keep little known varieties from becoming extinct, increase your seed saving knowledge, and get free seeds.

A seed library has just been established at J.Sargeant Reynolds Community College (JSRCC) in Goochland, Virginia, thanks to the efforts of my daughter Betsy Trice. Betsy began teaching the sustainable agriculture classes there in 2010 after I left for other adventures–starting this blog being one of them. The seed library comes at a great time, not only for the seed saving revolution, but for the sustainable program at JSRCC. A Career Studies Certificate in Sustainable Agriculture at JSRCC is now a reality. First proposed in 2003, it has only taken ten years to roll through all the red tape. Meanwhile, through those years, the library at the Goochland Campus recognized the interest in the program because the students frequented the library and requested materials. As a result, that library has the best collection of sustainable agriculture and permaculture books of anywhere I know. You don’t have to be a student to take books out—and now seeds! Although it took ten years to get the certificate approved, it took Betsy only one year to go from “Wouldn’t this be great?” to “The first orientation meeting for the JSRCC Seed Library is March 5, 2013.” She had the backing of the library from the beginning.

Betsy got the idea for the seed library from reading the article “Sowing Revolution” in the January 2012 issue of Acres USA magazine. She followed up on resources listed in the article, especially the materials available from www.richmondgrowsseeds.org, the website for the seed library in Richmond, CA. If you are interested in starting a seed library in your area, I encourage you to spend some time on their website. You can even register for a free webinar scheduled for April 11, 2013 to help you get started. I imagine each library will develop in its own way. In order to be eligible to take seeds from the JSRCC program you need to attend an orientation that lasts about an hour. Orientations will be planned regularly, but the next one is scheduled for Monday, April 15, 2013 at 6pm. Seed libraries have even caught the attention of NBC Nightly News on March 22, 2013. That newscast showcased the Richmond, CA program. If you haven’t saved seeds before–not to worry. This is a learning experience. Besides, a library is bound to have books and resources for you to learn from, not to mention the great people you will become involved with in the process.

Seed libraries mean much more for communities than free seeds for the participants. They mean keeping the seeds in the hands of the people. Whoever Owns The Seeds Controls Your Food Supply. It is increasingly important to become actively involved in the seed part of your food. In early 2000 I learned that Monsanto had been buying seed companies since the 1970’s. I won’t go into all the negative connotations about that, since you can find that information in lots of other places. You would be most familiar with their chemicals and genetically modified crops. I want you to know that they are still buying seed companies and intend to be actively involved in the garden seed arena.

In 2005 Monsanto bought Seminis, a major seed supplier for many catalogs. Fedco took a major stand and stopped doing business with Seminis. You can read about that here. More information about the Seminis buy-out is available from the Organic Seed Alliance here. It explains the dilemma the seed companies were in when that occurred. Once it acquired Seminis, is it any surprise that it has been making changes in vegetable seeds? On October 20, 2011 the Los Angeles Times ran an article about that with this quote–“This isn’t a hobby…. We’re serious about it,” said Monsanto Chief Executive Hugh Grant, who expects the company’s vegetable seed revenue to rival its $1.5-billion soybean business in the coming decade.

I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but there it is. This doesn’t have to be bad news, actually. It might be just the push we need to get more actively involved. The most basic act of defense against Monsanto is to save seeds and distribute them to others, and seed libraries are just the venue to make that possible. If there is a seed library in your area, become a participant. If not, start one. Who owns your seeds?

Homegrown Fridays 2013

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  sweet potatoes with peanuts, cowpeas, and collards

This is the fourth year, of the past five, that I’ve eaten only what I’ve grown on the Fridays in Lent. I call these days Homegrown Fridays. I find that it deepens my understanding of what it takes to feed ourselves when I limit myself to only what I’ve grown. By this time of year stored food supplies are diminished and the garden is not quite awake. Our garden and food preservation program has evolved to depend on staple crops that can be stored, rather than canned or frozen. Although I did do a little canning this year, most of the things that couldn’t be stored properly to keep were dried in our solar food dryers.

In the photo you will see one of our Homegrown Friday dinners. It consisted of cowpeas, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and collards fresh from the garden. I often try new things on these days and that day I boiled peanuts. We (my husband and I) decided that eating them raw or roasted was our preference. I depended a lot on peanuts at lunchtime this year. Maybe it was because I seemed to be extra busy on these days. I’d grab some peanuts while sweet potatoes were cooking for lunch. My peanut harvest had picked up in 2012 when I planted some after Austrian winter peas in the rotation. The previous year I had peanuts in a bed following onions and garlic. At harvest time there was a definite difference in the yield in the onion half of the bed compared to the garlic half. Winter peas were the winter cover crop preceding the onion sets that had been planted in the spring. I was pretty sure that the increased peanut yield was due to the winter pea cover crop and not the onions. In 2012 I planted one bed of peanuts after winter peas and one in a bed that had had garlic, onions, and kale. The onions were multipliers and had been there with the garlic and kale since the previous fall. The yield following the Austrian winter peas was three times the one following the alliums and kale.

roasted carrots and beets with black walnut oil

I had a great carrot harvest this winter. You can read about it in my post on Winter Carrots. I also had beets in the garden through the winter. The black walnuts yielded in 2012 so I shelled some and made some oil to put on the carrots and beets when I roasted them. Shelling the walnuts and pressing oil took a long time. I wouldn’t want to depend on that for my cooking oil. Frying locally grown bacon and saving the fat for cooking is a lot easier, but that wasn’t an option for these Fridays, since I hadn’t raised the pig. The roasted carrots and beets were delicious.

Soup made from dried ingredients is always on the menu during this time. One soup I made had no dried ingredients. It was made from carrots, butternut squash, and garlic. I cut them up and roasted them—no oil that day. Then I added water and simmered the cut up, roasted vegetables for about 20 minutes. It all went in the blender and resulted in what you see in this third picture. It was good, but a little bit of dairy added—sour cream, yogurt, or milk—would have been nice. Onions would have been a good addition, but I was down to my dried onions and they were in short supply.

butternut squash, carrot, and garlic soup

Dried onions went into bean burgers using the same recipe as I did in 2012. Our staples for these meals from stored crops were sweet potatoes, peanuts, cowpeas, garlic, sorghum (for flour) and corn (for cornmeal). Fresh from the garden came collards, kale, carrots, and beets. I ground Bloody Butcher corn to make cornmeal mush for breakfast. We have chickens, so we have eggs. I use an egg or two occasionally on Homegrown Fridays, but not much because I don’t grow all the feed for the chickens. Since some of their nutrition comes from our property, an occasional egg is included. Dried tomatoes were important for sauce and other dried vegetables and herbs provided variety in our meals. I’ve already written about our new tea ingredient—Red Thai Roselle Hibiscus. With such a great honey harvest last year we could sweeten our cornmeal mush. Unfortunately, our two beehives didn’t make it through the winter, so I’ll be looking for new bees this year. We had mead made from our honey and grapes, and popcorn cooked without oil.

Observing Homegrown Fridays at this time of year makes me more determined to work out my vole problem with the potatoes to make sure I have enough to last through the winter. I’m also acutely aware that I need to up my wheat harvest. I had an interesting conversation with Eli Rogosa of the Heritage Wheat Conservancy in January while I was preparing an article for Mother Earth News that will appear in the June/July 2013 issue. Eli filled me in on heritage wheat and how to grow it. A chart with her recommended varieties for each region of the U.S. will appear in the article. A chart with crops I’ve mentioned here and varieties recommended for each region will also be included in the article. You will be interested in that article if you want to grow staple crops for your meals.

If you have done any of this, even in a small way, I welcome your comments. It is in sharing, both information and food, that we will move forward on this journey.  

Homestead Fencing

1″x2″ welded wire garden fence

Wherever you live, fencing is necessary to keep predators out and children, pets, and livestock in. It is important to consider which of those functions you want to accomplish. If it is to keep predators out, which predators would that be? That’s the general aim of a garden fence. If it is the neighbor’s (or your) dog, livestock panels will do to keep large dogs out. The spaces in those panels are 6”x8”. They are easy to install and to take with you if you should move. It will not keep rabbits, chickens, and other small critters out. Livestock panels might be your choice to keep livestock in. In All Flesh Is Grass Gene Logsdon suggests using livestock panels as a perimeter fence. You can read more about livestock panels in my blog post In Praise of Livestock Panels. One of the great things they have going for them is that they are rigid. However, that means that they don’t conform to the landscape well, making it look not so good if your ground is not level. 

Welded wire fencing with 2”x4” spaces is probably the most popular option for a garden and for fencing a backyard to keep your dog or children in. It is readily available at building supply stores. I like a 4’ high fence around a garden, unless you have problems with deer. I won’t address dealing with deer in this post. The spaces in that fence will keep most things out, but not baby rabbits. For that reason, I’ve gone to using 1”x2” welded wire fencing for my garden. If you have a dog or cat that takes care of the baby rabbits, that might not be a problem for you. When installing the fence, dig a trench along the fenceline so the bottom few inches can be buried. If you have trouble with groundhogs you might want to bury it deeper. Rocks along the edge of the fence will help to keep animals from digging in. Raccoons can climb over a 4’ high fence, and even a 6’ high wire fence. If they are a problem for you, maybe a border of something prickly on the outside of the fence would help. Welded wire fencing with 2”x4” spaces and 6’ high is a good choice for chicken pens. When attaching it to the posts, if you leave the top foot unattached, it might help to keep raccoons out. They can climb over it, but if the top edge bends out with their weight, it might discourage them. Besides keeping the critters out of your garden during the growing and harvesting season, a good fence will also keep them from grazing your cover crops. If you planted your cover crops at the right time and thought they were off to a good start, only to find they never got any bigger or even disappeared, it could be that the wildlife had considered your garden their personal salad bar during the fall and winter.

4″x4″ woven wire fence in the snow

Welded wire, like the livestock panels, can’t be stretched and doesn’t conform to changes in elevation. For that, you need woven wire fencing, which I’ve always referred to as field fencing. You would have seen that in pastures. It usually has 6”x6” spaces, but there are more size options available now. You might find woven wire fencing designated as Class 1, but keep looking until you find Class 3 galvanized. Class 3 will last longer. You are going to be putting in the same amount of labor to install it and you don’t want to do it again anytime soon– by that I mean anytime in the next 25 years or more. We installed a Class 3 woven wire fence 27 years ago. Just now some of it needs to be replaced, not because the wire is failing, but because our son pastured oxen in there for awhile when the pasture was inadequate and they leaned over the fence to get that greener grass on the other side. Otherwise, it would be fine and shows no sign of rust. A strand or two of barbed wire along the top or a strand of electrified wire, which we didn’t have, might have helped with those oxen. Moving those animals out sooner is what should have happened. That fence was originally designed to keep in goats and also worked well when we had a milk cow.

One of the size options available now for woven wire fence is 4”x4” and is called sheep and goat fence. If they have horns, sheep and goats can get their heads stuck in the 6” fence and in the livestock panels. We’ve had to take a hacksaw to a livestock panel a couple times to free a goat. (Heavy-duty bolt cutters would have been better, but we didn’t have any on hand at the time.)  When we decided to permanently fence an area in 2006 we went with the 4”x4” sheep and goat Class 3 fencing. One farm supply store only had Class 1, but thanks to the internet, I knew Class 3 was available. Ashland Feed Store went to the effort to get it for us—thank you Danny Adams. It helped that our order was almost a full pallet. If you have a large project coming up, do your planning carefully so that you can get your supplies all at one time. Often farm supply stores have seasonal sales on fence supplies and spring is a good time for that. While we were in the fencing mood, we decided to fence our barnyard. I discovered that full grown hens can’t get through the 4” spacing! They hop through livestock panels and can get through the 6” field fence, but stay put behind the sheep and goat fence. Fencing the barnyard gave us extra grazing if needed for livestock and allowed us to open the gate to the chicken pen during the day, giving the hens access to our whole property except the yard and garden.

woven wire fence corner

If your property is the least bit rolling you will appreciate the fact that woven wire fence can be stretched and will fit to the contours of your land—provided it has the proper support. There needs to be posts in the low spots to hold it there. At the corners you need strong wooden corner posts with another post about 6’ away and a third post connecting the two. About every 100’ there needs to be another set of wooden posts. The rest of the posts (line posts) can be metal t-posts. It might be that you have a lot of cedars on your property and you can cut your own posts. We’ve been growing black locust trees for future fence posts. Some of the other options for woven wire fencing have 2”x4” spacing and one has a wire V within that. That fence is called diamond mesh or V-mesh. I’m considering that for the part of the garden that may have livestock pastured on the outside occasionally and it will also keep out those little rabbits I have trouble with. The woven wire with the smaller spacing was developed for horses, who apparently can’t keep their hooves out of regular fence.   

wooden fence with oak boards

Chicken wire is a short-lived fence that might keep chickens in, but doesn’t keep dogs and other critters out. Furthermore, in a few years, it will begin to rust. That said, a 2’ high chicken wire fence would do for a couple years around a garden and it is comparatively inexpensive. After that the rabbits just jump over it, the grass grows up into it, and it will soon begin to rust anyway. Whatever fence you buy, notice the size of the wire. The higher the number (gauge), the smaller the diameter of the wire. A 9 gauge wire is thicker than a 12 gauge wire. Sometimes you don’t have a choice. I’ve noticed the welded wire fencing we got to replace some old fence around the chicken pen is a smaller gauge than what we bought 20+ years ago. A good source for fencing information and supplies is Kencove.com

Of course, you could go with a board fence. In that case, check a lumber yard for oak fence boards. They are generally available in 16’ lengths and are a full 1” thick, and 6” wide. Oak fence boards will last much longer than pressure treated boards. There’s lots more to know, so talk to people, travel around and take pictures, read all you can—then just do it. You can’t make mistakes-just learning experiences.

Grow and Spin Cotton

I usually write about food crops and soil building, but today I’m talking about fiber. I have begun to grow cotton and have learned to spin it using a spindle. Growing and using cotton is more than just a new craft for me. It adds diversity to my garden, which is important in a permaculture garden, and it helps me connect with factors beyond the garden. Plants are grown around the world for more things than food. If our gardens are to provide for us and if we are ever going to be free from corporate domination, we need to consider everything. From our plants we can get food, fuel, medicine, fiber, dyes, and so on. The movement to make available food grown in a sustainable manner to everyone is gaining momentum. What about obtaining our other needs from sustainable sources?       

When India was a colony of Britain, Indian cotton was shipped to Britain and the Indians had to buy it back as fabric. Gandhi promoted spinning as an act of independence. If the Indians spun and used their own cotton, they would be free of British control of that resource. In fact, Gandhi had a contest to develop a small spinning wheel that was portable enough that people could easily spin in public and the box charka was born. What better act of nonviolent protest but to spin cotton into thread and yarn in public! Unfortunately, today Indian cotton farmers face another peril with the introduction of GMO cotton seeds. In 2000 I heard Vandana Shiva speak about the number of suicides among cotton farmers in India. They had been convinced to grow GMO cotton by Monsanto and things were not going well. The problems continue to this day. Please take the time to listen to her tell you about it here. Shiva’s organization Navdanya goes into these areas with open pollinated seeds to help the farm families recover.

In doing some research for this post I was heartened to find that there are projects underway to promote the sustainable growing of cotton around the world and in the U.S. You can find more about that at http://www.sustainablecottons.com/. Where is the fabric coming from for your cotton clothes? Begin looking for a Fairtrade label for cotton. Also, consider how the cotton you buy gets its color. Cotton grows naturally in more colors than white. Pakucho is the brand name of cotton from a project developed in Peru to revive the growing of colored cotton on small farms.

1 ounce green cotton fiber/seeds

In 2004 I came across an article in Spin-Off magazine about a woman who had grown the cotton that she then spun (with a spindle) and wove into fabric for a shirt. You can read “My Cotton Shirt” here. At least I knew that my idea of growing cotton and making a shirt out of it wasn’t totally crazy. I did grow some cotton around that time, but I didn’t know anyone who was spinning cotton and I was busy with other things, so the harvest was stored away. The only spinners I knew worked with wool and said that, since cotton had such a short fiber, it was really hard to spin. I figured that if spinning cotton was all I knew, spinning cotton would be my normal and that wouldn’t be a problem. After all, people have spun cotton down through the ages so I should be able to learn this. For the past two summers I grew both Erlene’s Green and Nankeen Brown cotton. The seeds came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange the first year and I saved them after that. There are a lot of seeds in cotton. In one ounce of green cotton that I weighed, 75% of that ounce was 185 seeds and 25% of that ounce was fiber.   

I turned to Joan Ruane to learn to spin the fiber into yarn, once I found her video Cotton Spinning With the Takli. A takli spindle is what is recommended for cotton and that’s what I’ve been using. My husband gave me her kit with fiber, spindle, and DVD as a gift and it was a great way to get started. It was very slow going at first, though. I had to remind myself of how it was when I taught myself to knit—only this seemed harder. Clothos Handspinners, a group of wonderful folks into handspinning, came to my rescue. At the first meeting I attended in November, 2011, Judith spent time teaching me some basics and I will be forever grateful. Most of the members show up with their spinning wheels, but there are some, like me, who are using a spindle. Most work in wool, but not exclusively. I am not interested in getting a wheel right now because I want to master the spindle. Besides, I want to see how much skill and knowledge I can gain with the least money spent. Another DVD that has helped me is Spinning Cotton by Stephanie Gaustad. If my garden DVDs have helped people as much as these cotton DVDs have helped me, I will be happy. My goal is to make a vest out of my homegrown, homespun cotton, so I’ll be learning to weave next. After that comes the shirt.

seeds and green spun cotton from 1 ounce fiber/seeds–plus spindle

Cotton needs hot weather and a lot of sun. The varieties I grow take 130 days to mature, but it differs by variety. Sea Island White  requires 160 days. Start the seeds and set out transplants as you would tomatoes. I’ve heard of growing cotton in containers and bringing it inside when the weather turns cold if you live in a marginal climate. In my 2012 garden I harvested 2.5 pounds of green fiber and seed in an 80 ft.² bed. That works out to about .75 lb. fiber per 100 ft.² (and lots of seeds). The brown cotton harvest was equivalent to one pound fiber per 100 ft². I had 7-12 bolls on each plant. Now that I’m paying attention, I believe that I can better that harvest. The U.S. average is 1.7 pounds fiber per 100 ft². You could begin with just a few plants among your flowers.

Growing colored cotton has been really interesting. After cotton has been spun, it needs to be boiled to set the twist. When you do that, the color deepens. The green spun cotton shown with the spindle and seeds is the same cotton that is shown as fiber in the other photo with the seeds. In the sample that I’ve knitted, the deep green and brown colors are the natural colors after boiling the spun fiber. The white is what I grew years ago with only an inkling of an idea that I might want to do this sometime.

In 2007 a new charka was introduced in India. This e-charka allows the spinner to produce electricity while he/she spins. A battery stores the electricity to operate an LED light and a transistor radio. Spinning cotton by hand is still important in rural areas of India and elsewhere and this new charka will increase the quality of life for these spinners. Gandhi would be proud. For now, at least, I’ll stick with my spindle. Growing cotton and learning to spin it is a wonderful project. Doing it with children gives them a great glimpse into history. There are so many things you could talk about with them when you are working with the plants and fiber. As you spin your own homegrown fiber, keep in mind all those farmers who are keeping the old skills and seeds alive. Every good thought we have goes out as a ripple that eventually connects us all.

For more thoughts on growing and spinning cotton see http://www.motherearthnews.com/permaculture/grow-spin-cotton.aspx#axzz2LRWabZ00