Mac Johnson

One of the things that would have helped me with beginning gardening would be a plan.  For most of my life I grew tomatoes, because that's what my parents did and I knew how to can/process/cook with them.  I often planted without a plan for the reaping and would be caught with too many melon or a bunch of onion I couldn't store more than a couple weeks.  

As for the residual income question, I'd think so.  Hoping to write some myself.  I'd love to hear about your process and experiences if you do.

My food forest is finally getting big enough to produce more than we can eat reasonably.  I've been playing with the idea of using fruit scraps (apricot, peach, apple, pear, berries) mixed with fodder for final fattening of livestock before butchering.  I run chickens, ducks, geese, and goats.  I'd gone back and forth on the morality of fattening but I feel like it is fine as long as the welfare of the animal is respected and confinement is not used.  The animals sure like it.  The calories should be there.  I've even heard of successful foie gras without force feeding.

Any one tried anything like that?  How would you store scraps for later use?  Fermenting/silage?

Avid reader myself and have read a few of these mentioned.  To be a little contrarian, my favorite book that helped me is the one that inspired me onto the path where I eventually found permaculture and it's gardening mania.  I've now read Walden Pond a dozen or so times and it inspires me every time.  I needed the why before I went down my path of how to achieve it.  Not a lot of gardening know how in this one.  It's a philosophy around naturalism and the Transcendental movement.  

One-Straw Revolution helped me bring Thoreau's words to the world of Permaculture and Sepp Holzer's Permaculture fully indoctrinated me.

Exciting times!  It sounds like you have a good idea of where to start and some good knowledge on the systems.

One thing I would caution you on will be space. That's a large lot for having neighbors, but once you start planting trees and their required pollinators you'll start eating into your space.  You can grow under trees, but the majority of production garden foods won't do well.  I have shy of 7 acres and am having to plan my space out to make sure I don't mess up with plans for the future.  I recommend drawing out a map of your property and where you want to plant/build what over the next 5 years.  Think about where the shadows will fall once the trees are full grown.  This process helped me winnow away at the things I wanted to do to make a feasible plan that I'm still following some 6 years later (with adjustments).

Get to tapping those maple trees sooner rather than later.  There's a learning curve, but your property is already producing delicious calories and great sweetener alternative.

Start looking for Food Grade IBC totes.  You'll probably be able to find a farm, manufacturing plant, or food processing plant that throws there's away.  20 minutes with a sprayer and soap and you can have a good tote for free.

Carla Burke wrote:You can also make yogurt cheese....

Definitely giving this a try! Muffins too!

Thanks, everyone! Going to give some of these a try. I made a half gallon, but it's just me and 2 kids at the house this week. Going to freeze some. I love cheesecake and naan!

I tried making yogurt in the instant pot yesterday. I was excessively successful. Just because the instant pot can hold that much milk doesn't mean it should. Anybody got some good baking, dressing, or other uses for all this yogurt.

Rich Rayburn wrote:


1. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF WOODWORKING, by Charles h Hayward.
2. EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE YOU CAN BUILD,
By  Fawcett books.

Just a small correction, Rich. The book by Hayward is The Complete Book of Woodwork.

I wouldn't have said anything but I wanted to add it to my library after you mentioned it. Adding the "-ING" got me another book published much more recently. Even when including Hayward in the search terms. The Lost Art Press has a collection of Hayward's writing compiled and published in a series of books.

I've done paddock rotations starting last year with my goat/goose pen and my chicken/duck pen.  My plan this year is to overseed pasture forbs and grasses once the melting is done and to overseed lightly again when I close off a paddock.  The overseed mix I got is species specific for goats and one for chickens.  Come fall this year, I should know how well this plan worked.

To add to this thread, my local area is known for high winds and tornadoes.  I live inside one of the largest wind farms inland US.  The first hills after the Great Plains give us some wild weather at times.  120 mph (180-190 kph) derecho several years ago destroyed most of my kid's play equipment.  Whole cedar playground turned to matchsticks.  I then built them a trampoline staked into the ground with 6 heavy fencing t-posts.  That ripped out and wrapped itself around an Ash tree in the next "normal" wind storm.  My house is a large stick frame 2 story house broadside to the prevailing westerlies that was originally built around 1900 but expanded upon since 2005.  The cedar shingles have held well, with just a couple needing replaced during these storms.  The house is not ideal and I wish I had the money time to start over.  I built the 7 acres in the permaculture style and am not ready to give up my years of work on the land.  The house is big and wasteful especially trying to keep it heated in routine 25 mph winds all winter and gusts that regularly break 60 mph.  

The real savior for us is the blue spruce, silver maple, and poplar wind breaks on all sides.  Adding to this, I've used hügelkultur berms, Juneberry, and winterberry to control snow drifting as well as add natural habitat.  These things make it easier to function throughout the winter.  Still, a couple of inches of snow can drift and completely cover our compact john Deere 3 series.  It's not easy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  The way extreme weather is prevailing I'd recommend more people plant property protection (try saying that 5 times fast).  

Living here reminds me often of the time King Leonidas kidnapped the cook from Xerxes and had him prepare a meal for the Greeks.  The food that was cooked was so much better than anything the King of the Spartans had ever had.  He said their "soft" way of life must have made them weak as the food made for the Spartans was dry, tough, and tasteless by comparison.  I tell my kids we live here to keep us tough in a world of soft (processed) foods.