R West

I planted a bunch of mixed heirloom squash and pumpkin seeds this year into some mostly-not-decomposed wood chip piles. The things took over that part of the garden! Absolute monster plants! They climbed all over a chain link fence we have, too.

I missed one of the squash until it got huge—this thing almost the size of my toddler was hanging!

It made a very good soup, baked and then puréed along with an onion and some parsnips. I had just grabbed the parsnips from the garden and figured, why not toss them in? Well, the parsnips made it a little weird (for my tastes), so I probably won’t add them next time.

I still have some pumpkins and… well, I can’t tell whether it’s squash or pumpkin. But it will get eaten!

We’ve got a nice sunny spot southwest of the garden, where I piled up some rocks so there’s space underneath and a nice sunning surface on top.

Last year, my in laws had an overabundance of fresh peaches, and my friends on their farm had a bunch of meat birds, so they traded a couple boxes of peaches for a few processed chickens for the freezer. Worked out pretty well... but the hard thing is finding two people who both have an abundance of something that the other person wants, at the same time. Which is why money was invented, of course. But then there's that pesky thing you mentioned without mentioning.

A regional bartering meetup kinda thing would be cool. For free stuff, I often watch Freecycle near my area (but all the best stuff is usually over the mountain 40 minutes away, and only worth it for large, expensive items). The most common "trade" that happens around me, however, is just sharing extra, as Riona mentioned.

My husband helped some friends of ours out with their excavator, helping to fix it. They gave us some honey. But it wasn't exactly at the same time, and nobody talked about payment or demanded an exchange of some kind.

People bring extra veggies to church in season when a surplus comes pouring out of their garden. Once a month the men get together early on a Saturday to discuss a book and then go to someone's house and help them out with what needs done. (Felling trees, splitting wood for a widow, putting a new roof on somebody's house, mulching.) When a couple has a new baby, there's a queue for making them dinner for a few weeks--and you'd better jump on the list fast, otherwise there will be no more spots.

I was talking to the lady who takes care of the plants around the church about gardens and flowerbeds, and she said that she's having to downsize her gardens and flowerbeds as she gets older, and could come by sometime with some plants if I wanted them and help me put them in. And I was talking to an older man about his apricot, which flowers too early and loses buds to frost, and he offered me plants as well. Another woman has an elderberry bush and offered me a cutting. At the moment, I don't have much to offer in return, but they're willing to give generously, and I'm very thankful for that. Hopefully I'll be able to bless them as well in the future, or to serve in some other way, but it's not a transactional relationship. No one's keeping count. We're all trying to give when we can.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, when you have a built-in community already like that, often the most wonderful things happen just from talking to people and from freely giving. These people have known me for over a decade, some of them since I was born (!), so that helps.

But... some people don't have a community like that at the ready. A sort of organized bartering/exchange system would be wonderful there. I'm imagining something like Freecycle, but for bartering...

My husband's bad experience with bartering came when he built something for a friend and was offered a motorcycle in exchange. The motorcycle wasn't what he expected--it needed a lot more work than advertised, and my husband felt a bit cheated, as the work he had offered was of much greater value. It's that difficult thing where working for friends and family can drive a wedge between people. For bartering there would need to be clear expectations up front. And perhaps not bartering with friends and family. I prefer freely giving and receiving with no accounting, anyway...

My good experience with bartering was when I traded help processing some meat ducks for a five gallon bucket of earthworms (and some cash). I had already been helping with chicken processing, and when asked to help with ducks, I proposed the earthworm trade. It was clear up front, and honestly I was prepared to be happy with whatever I received. I wasn't even expecting to be paid, too, so that was just a bonus.

My mother, a teacher, barters her help weeding and working at our friend's farm (same friend with the chickens) for part of a CSA share each week during the summer. She loves it. But again, we know these people from church, so that's where the connection started.

Dusty Malone wrote:Thanks for such thoughtful replies everyone.  It made my heart smile to know that children are still playing outside in the woods 💓

In our front yard, we have a big old Norway maple. It's rotting slowly--the end is nigh, and once it's close enough, it'll become food for the next round of trees there. The special thing about this tree, however, is that it has a huge root at the surface with a large knot on it that rotted out at some point, making a little bowl in the ground. It's a "pond" that fills with rainwater but it's only a few inches in diameter and a few inches deep.

My toddler and I fill a watering can and fill that "pond," and then he plays in the water with sticks and leaves and hands and feet for hours.

We're blessed to live nearby family that own a farm, so when he gets older he'll graduate to playing in the woods like that.

Jay Dev wrote:Hello - never posted here before.
Reading everything I can about eradicating comfrey.

I saw the comment about covering with plywood and wondered how long it takes for it to kill the comfrey and, given there is a substantial and strong root underneath, if there is any chance it could come back once the ply is removed? Sadly, we are talking about a substantial area so I need big solutions - we have some scrap metal sheets and silage tarp that we are hoping to use for this endeavour.

I dug up some comfrey in a spot I didn’t want it this last month. (Only a small amount, not what you’d want to do!) HOWEVER, what is relevant for you—I did notice that some of the comfrey roots had rotted. Comfrey above ground also rots very fast and the roots had broken down into black mush. If I had my guess, comfrey roots would not take too long to die and disintegrate once the leafy part could not photosynthesize.

But as someone else said, it would need a thick impermeable barrier like a piece of wood. I have comfrey coming up in my yard through a foot of mulch, two feet of dirt. I was digging a foot or so down and found a blanched comfrey leaf punching its way up through the soil.

The NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (love it, reference it all the time) says that New York Fern grows below a Ph of 6 and outcompetes other plants in acid soil conditions.

What’s the soil acidity like? What kind of plants are you hoping to grow? Is there a way to amend the soil to be more alkaline? (In our area, our bedrocks have lots of limestone and rock dust from quarries, for example, is almost always limestone.) Would the ferns die or be weakened if the area was made alkaline?

I’d be interested to hear if an experiment with changing Ph to disfavor the New York Fern succeeded. But, I have no personal experience with this yet. (I am using my acidic areas to plant acidic loving plants and mostly just using extreme mulching.)

That said, another thought—disturbance IS a useful tool in shaping landscape. It has its place. So—tilling, burning, extreme goat overgrazing—done once to establish the spot and immediately plant your plants after—could be helpful as well.

Again, ideas. I’d love to hear how it goes if you try something and update us.

P.S. I feel your pain. When we moved and had another baby soon after, two of my bins got neglected and went wrong and most of the worms died. :(

I’ve successfully raised worms for over a decade in bins that were plastic and had no drains at the bottom. Some even had tops on and only air holes in the sides (the ones I started in my father’s garage). They are harder to keep aerobic—but not super hard.

You are right, paper does not work very well to dry the bedding.

What to do with a small plastic worm bin to keep it dry enough and keep anaerobic bacteria from taking over?

Make sure your ratio of greens/browns, food/bedding, wet/dry, carbon/nitrogen is good.

In my most favorite worm book, The Worm Farmer’s Handbook by Rhonda Sherman, she advises that the optimal C:N ratio is somewhere between 25:1 to 35:1. She gives wood chips at above 200:1, mixed paper around 150:1, food scraps 15:1 to 25:1. Coffee grounds are very close to perfect at 20:1, needing just a bit more carbon.

For vermicomposting kitchen scraps, at any one time I have several bins with a total surface area of about at least 12 sq ft between them. (Worm population maximum is about 2 lb per sq ft of surface area with enough food, before they get overcrowded.) One general rule is to feed about 1 lb per lb of worms per week. Another is to not feed again until the first feeding has disappeared.

The bin may also be too deep. At depth, not enough air may be getting down to the worms. I have switched to shallower bins than I used to have. One professional worm farmer I know of uses masonry/concrete mixing tubs. You can also just keep the level pretty low in the bin—more than a foot is too deep in a non breathable plastic bin, in my experience.

Shredded paper gets soggy and settles, so it doesn’t work super well as way to aerate the bin. I use it to cover my food scraps. (I used to bury each set of scraps instead like a worm version of Ruth Stout composting, and that worked out pretty well.)

Hope this helps a bit—worm bins can seem finicky at times. Try a few things and hopefully it helps.

One last thought—if anaerobic bacteria have taken over, it might be good to clean them out and prime the next bin with some aerobic bacteria and organisms from a handful of good garden soil or compost.

Here in semi-rural Virginia, even a completely raw piece of land is selling for not less than $10K an acre, and sometimes much more.

(It got me wistfully looking at land being sold out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming the other day, but all our family is here, and living on a big piece of land would be pretty empty without family to share it with.)

Is there a maximum amount you all are pruning at one time? Has there been a time you wished you had pruned less, or the outcome was not what you hoped? Our neglected apple is in sore need of pruning. We trimmed off quite a few branches a couple of weeks or so ago, and it could use a lot more, as it’s probably been a decade since last pruning, but I’m guessing it’ll take a few years to get where we want it to be without shocking the tree too much.