Ron Kulas

3 years ago, I met the home inspector as we prepared to close on our new place.

I took a drone photo that day.

Today, (3 years to the day) I retook that drone photo. Lots has changed. The house and garage used to sit in the shadows. Its been non stop projects since then.

We did logging land clearing

Remodeled the inside of the house

Added the Garden of Eat'n

added the chicken coop and run

Added a couple out buildings

Added a maple sap cooking shack

Built the headquarters for our home business

Built an entrance/security gate

Planted apple and nut trees

Added a Generac whole home backup generator

Replaced the roof on the house with a steel roof

Replaced the 500 gal, LP tank with a 1000 gal.

Moved the 500 gal LP tank to heat the new headquarters building

Bought a tractor/backhoe to make the projects possible

There will be ongoing projects but the best part is, Its all paid off.

After making tomato juice we switched gears a little and today made spaghetti (marinara) sauce with our garden abundance. We grew over 125 pounds of tomatoes and are putting them into storage in canning jars. Yesterday we picked up a used (Stackable) water bath canning kettle to speed up our canning.

The only thing we have left in the Garden of Eat'n are brussle sprouts and parsnips. All the rest of the beds have been stripped and a cover crop planted.

May Lotito wrote:I tried grains for cover crops before with mixed results. It doesn't produce much biomass if I terminate too early, but if I do it at the right timing, I miss the window for most annuals. I am interested in more details of your system. What cereals are you using? Will they survive winter and what is your schedule for termination? Is there a reason not to include legume or other broad leaf species?

Its barley, wheat and oats.Its what I have a lot of on hand as it what I grow for fodder for our chickens. It will grow until its time to cover with leaves. Some are already over a foot tall.

I smoked pork shoulder and served it with stuff from our garden.

Malek Beitinjan wrote:That looks amazing. Well done! How did you build the smoker?

Here is a link to my build.

https://ronkulas.proboards.com/thread/183/meat-smoker

Hard frost coming on Tuesday Night (we are in zone 3) so we have been pulling everything except parsnips and Brussel sprouts.

We seed, cereal grains for a cover crop as soon as we empty a bed.
Garlic goes in a raised bed in 2 weeks so I am already planning for next year's crop rotation.

We will add 1 more 4 x 8 raised bed in spring and then I think we have used up the available space.

The rest of the open space is filled with large grow pots/containers and 20 gal. grow bags.

I built a tall smoking cabinet back in 2011 for both hot and cold smoking. This time Im using it for 30 pounds of pork shoulder.

If the goal is to increase the longevity of the (slowing rot and UV degradation) then you would have added many years by charring them. I dont use tile but I do heavily char all my untreated wood.

As we empty the raised beds in prep for winter, I seed then with a cover crop of wheat, barley and oats. This will be allowed to grow quite tall and then I will crush it all flat and cover it with leaves, then snow.

In the spring, this is all tilled back into the soil to put some nutrition back.

The firsts 2 beds were looking great until 3 rabbits found their way into the  "Garden of Eat'n".  They will soon have many many beds to choose from as they are slowly fattened up this fall. 😉