D. Logan

I picked up a hatchet since a lot of small projects need it. It was beyond dull and actually had a blunt edge. It was as effective at cutting as a hammer. After some work, I have been able to cut points on stakes and similar tasks.

I needed to borrow a 10ft ladder from work. It didn't shift at all for the trip. The method I used to secure it was with straps and since my van was long enough, no flag was needed.

Watching a video recently got me revisiting this. I did a whole post before realizing I'd already started down this same path over 8 years ago. Funny how life keeps bringing us back to the same places over and over. anyway, the WAPF dietary guidelines are excellent, but I also feel like they're going to be something that the average person will flatly refuse to deal with. Maybe there's a way to integrate their clear guidelines into a setup that offers more flexibility. I could see different foods getting different scoring maybe. Anyway, my most recent thoughts were as follows:

I don't think servings is a good measurement since what is a reasonable meal to one person is way too much for another. I somewhat like percentages, but think that might throw a lot of people off. How do others feel about ratios? Like 1 part this, 2 parts that, etc?

Another thing that I was thinking about was something where it is all about getting the vital nutrition rather than any specific 'eat this generic group'. So for example:
- Vitamin A Group - Orange vegetables like Pumpkin, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes
- Calcium Group - Dairy Products, Collards, Broccoli
- Potassium Group - Bananas, Spinach, Grapes, Blackberries

I could see having these groups for Proteins, Fiber, Omega-3 Fats, Vitamins, Minerals, Phytochemicals, etc. Something where it offers ways to overlap the parts of the total ratio so things like how some of the Vitamin A group tends to overlap some with carotenoids. Possibly a section where it is an optional 1 part allowance for purely personal things so it isn't painfully strict about processed foods for those who feel a desire for them, but also isn't counting them as valuable.

It might also need some tweeking to note that things like 'Whole grains' need to be at a certain percentage. Right now, anything with 51% whole grain gets counted for purposes of grocery labeling. That means eating those whole grains is giving you almost 50/50 for heavily refined carbohydrates. Anyway, these are my initial thoughts on how such a Permaculture Pyramid/Plate would work. This could tie into the point idea. The value gets higher the more whole grain percentages are present? Anyway, it was worth looking at things again for me at least.

The berry bushes are all in place and about 1/3 are going strong. The rest are still anyone's guess. The last of this year's trees go in tonight and those that are already in have been doing amazingly well. Much to our surprise, the peach tree has 3 little fruit setting on it despite being little more than a stick. I haven't decided how to handle that yet. As to the garden beds, we will have the last of those filled and ready by our last frost date in a few days and planting can begin in earnest.

I also had the chance to take stock of some of the plants in our wooded area. The diversity of trees is higher than I would have expected. We knew about the walnut, the hickory, the maple, etc. There's also elder, elm, black locust, redbud, cherry, and many more back there. I can't wait to keep developing this property over time!

I made butter and ricotta cheese. The recipe for the butter is just to shake heavy cream in a jar until the milkfats separate. Then press out the liquids in changes of fresh water. Lastly, salt if desired.

The ricotta recipe combines 1 cup whole milk and 1/4 cup of lemon  juice over medium heat to 190 degrees F. Stir for 30 minutes, then allow to cool for 10 minutes, then drain through cheesecloth and salt. It called for 2 tsp, bu since it was being used right away in something with salt already, I went with 1/2 tsp.

Thanks to some issues, the asparagus ended up dying. Sucks, but we'll try again next year after we have other things going. Our raspberry/blackberry living fence is well on its way and as the trees and guild plants arrive, we've been putting the orchard into place. Today we got the major vegetable raised bed laid out, but need to do some digging to level out the beds before we start adding the huge pile of soil that was delivered. Progress is slow since my day job keeps me away most of the daylight hours, but as the days get longer, we're getting more and more accomplished. Woo Hoo.

I finally had the free time to install it. I ran into an issue with the seat bolts, but managed to overcome it.

William Bronson wrote:You mentioned foot traffic.
These cane fruits will sprawl, how much space are you allowing for?
I have rasberries out front along our sidewalk, but I have to tie them up, otherwise they will invade the public space.
The hardy orange and Siberian pea shrub nearest to the street both have thorns but also a naturally upright growth pattern.

Despite the high amount of foot traffic, there is no sidewalk. Due to the incline on our side of the road, no one steps off of the road on our side. Based on the varieties we purchased, none of them is supposed to sprawl more than 5 feet. Most are leaning towards 3 and 4 feet instead. Our intention is to use the canes that would move towards the road as the ones to turn to the sides and pin down. Even so, to be safe, we allowed 4 feet from the road so that only the most extreme canes are able to try reaching it. It means less work trying to wrangle every cane and only needing to focus on ones that try going longer.

C. Letellier wrote:Remember you will have to re weave this fence every year.

William Bronson wrote:The hardy orange and Siberian pea shrub nearest to the street both have thorns but also a naturally upright growth pattern.

Indeed. That was something we had discussed. It wasn't ideal, but right now money is still not flowing like water and it was important to us to get something in place for the foreseeable future. I would personally love having some hardy orange, but that was for down the road. The funding limit meant getting most of the huge number of plants needed from an inexpensive box store. Once funds are a bit less strained from so many projects, we may end up digging out the berry bushes to relocate elsewhere and replace them with something lower maintenance plants. I will have to look into the Siberian pea shrub though. I don't have experience with that one at all. Thanks for the suggestions.

One of the projects on the new property is that we decided to create a living fence along one of the edges. After discussing the options and what we could afford, we decided on a blend of blackberry and raspberry bushes. We've made a point to get 3 of each variety so that we can have a good chance of at least 1 plant living even if they are all poor quality (which is a given since we were getting most from box stores). We also decided to only pick varieties with thorns and to alternate 3 reds and 3 blacks at a time so that it shifts along the length of the 'wall'. Lastly, we decided to use golden raspberries as the end caps just to change it up.

In theory the berry canes can be trained to crisscross along the length of the yard and root down so that there's no spaces between them. Right now, we've gotten about 1/3 of the berries in by doing a few every day after work.  Another element is that we are treating these bushes as a fence in terms of our calculations. Since there is a lot of foot traffic past the house on that edge of the yard, it is likely that a lot of random people will be grabbing berries from the outer edge. Anything we get from these bushes in terms of food is going to be a bonus. Since we've kept track of which berries are planted were, we can easily decide to plant more if there's one we like and choose to buy them or gift cuttings to others.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else here has already done this and if so, do you have any advice having already walked the path?