Tim is a big dreamer working at a piddler's pace.
On a third of an acre in a village, living alongside his wife and trusty hound, Tim works towards living life within nature instead of at odds with it. Chickens, gardening, mushrooms and much more occupies Tim's mind as new projects appear and old projects complete. Tim is currently working towards renovating his 1850's home while turning lawn into edible space.
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When my hens are in full swing, I tend to have more eggs than I can handle! We will eat eggs in a wide variety of forms such as fried, poached, boiled, scrambled and more. I'm a sucker for pickled eggs but I am still refining my recipe to make them especially delicious. Excess eggs tend to signal that it may be time to consider baking a variety of things in order to use them up. Even with selling or gifting cartons of eggs, we tend to be up to our gills!
If we are attending a gathering, you best bet your bottom dollar that we are bringing a platter of deviled eggs.
I am the kind of person who has a zillion ideas but only can get a few put into action. I have started to narrow my list but I will highlight a few that I'm excited about!
The 2026 Garden on Corliss Plan
1. Plant at least two fruit trees on the property. I have been planting successive fruit trees for the last three years and believe I can squeak in at least two more. The squirrels love to decimate my peaches before they can ripen so my answer right now is to plant more peaches! I'm hoping to see another two already planted trees flour this year if I am lucky.
2. Re-woodchip existing chipped areas and cover existing grass in my fruit tree orchard. I'm hoping to get maybe two or three tandem loads?
3. For once in my life, successfully succession plant my garden beds. I've been planting once and then that is it. I want to keep a living root in the ground and keep up the momentum. I've struggled with it before as I would get distracted with other projects but I want to really obtain a yield this year.
Ryan Burkitt wrote: I considered that, but I figured that would be too much at once. Plus I’d rather commit fully to one business. Appliance repair takes a good deal of investment and equipment. I could turn a profit quicker, but it would take a good 3-5 years to establish a full time business.
I can't fault you for that one bit. I tend to be quite risk averse when it comes to financials but that does not mean that it wouldn't work. You know the specific details of your lifestyle the best! Outside of the business side of a nursery, how do you imagine you want to stock your nursery? Seed starts and/or propagation? Have you thought about the infrastructure you may want such as greenhouses or air pruning beds? What ideas do you have currently for a vision?
Could you possible do both to start? Your main business to start (or keep doing) would be your appliance repair business and you could dip your toes into the nursery business? This would at least keep income flowing for you as you figure out the ropes with plants. Then you can eventually transition fulltime into the nursery IF you find that you are having success.
I personally would have a hard time taking a risk when I have an almost guaranteed cash flow from something that I already am familiar with.
I also believe that you can successfully flesh out a nursery business on the side without too much overhead especially if you specialize in something such as fruit trees, bushes, or even something like native plants. I know of a local who only works with fig tree varieties and does well on Etsy.
I prefer to use a thick layer of old junky straw. I have found that if it isn't super fluffed up that the wind doesn't carry it off. If I have enough material on hand I might leave the straw in flakes from the bale and just place them. Once it is all wet down and some microbes move in, it seems to glue everything together.
Anytime I am working with compost or mulch piles, regardless of what might be inside of them, I try and protect my breathing from the get-go. I consider breathing in ANYTHING that is not fresh clean air could be bad for my health. I can see where folks may be concerned with breathing in actinobacteria but I don't think that discredits their contribution to breaking down organic materials. While I do not know this for sure, I believe drier composts are more likely to create airborne contaminants compares to moist piles so it may be beneficial to spray down materials as you work with them.
The reason I appreciate actinobacteria being in my piles is that they specialize in breaking down tough materials like cellulose into simpler compounds. This then allows other microorganisms to do their work and succession breakdown materials until it is something that plants can utilize. Actinobacteria fill a decomposer role that is similar to fungi but can exist with a hot compost process where fungi do not thrive.
I suspect that folks that perceive having issues with actinobacteria with their plants may actually be utilizing compost that has not matured enough which could be detrimental to plants. I am only spitballing but I have not run into issues with actinobacteria and growies myself.
It seems that this winter, my local crows have discovered my various compost piles and will routinely visit them. It seems every day there is at least one or two poking around looking for a tasty morsel.
If I recall correctly, Paul gives some solid examples in his book Mycelium Running with examples involving utilizing bunker spawn. I'm not sure how much detail he gets into with his TED talk but that might be of interest to you.
I have tried the pear of the bradford pear tree once and found it to be too mealy for my liking. Perhaps it could be made into some kind of jam to help correct the texture issue?
I find the trees to disaster prone and eventually will start breaking here and there. Then you get the smell which is quite the scent! Not in a good way either if you ask me.
In populated areas, I regularly encourage folks that have them in areas where they can cause damage from large falling limbs to remove them and replace with something more stout. They are more of a liability to me than a boon.
