Drivel - Custom Cookie Cottage Industry

These cookies I'm featuring have nothing to do with a homesteading project, nothing to do with my farm, BUT..... they're a pretty cool idea. Many homesteaders hope to develop a viable home based business of some sort. So something on this order might work for someone. Whoa, don't look at me! I'm definitely not the Betty Crocker type. Besides, I can't allow a cookie in my house, because I'd eat it. I have a hard enough time keeping my weight down without putting such temptation in front of myself. 

Fun, no? The above cat was my cookie and it seemed a shame to eat it. But as happens to all cookies in my home, it got eaten. Sigh. 

There are quite a few big companies that make specialty cookies, but custom cookies could be something that would be a local success for the right person. 

Screen House Update

"G" emailed me, concerned that there were no corner braces in my screen house. Truthfully, I hadn't considered it. The structure seems rather tight and stable, but because it doesn't have solid sides, I can see why bracing may be an excellent idea. So I've taken action....

At each corner I've run braces from the roof 2"x6"s to the upright corner 4"x4"s. 

Here's an inside view...

The base of the screen house is lag bolted to the deck, so I can't see heavy wind lifting it up. But perhaps it could torque, so I will be adding corners braces to the bottom too. 

If anything would happen during a heavy wind, I figure it would be the plastic roof coming off. After all, it's just plastic. But I don't foresee that happening for a number of years because the plastic is new. Once it gets old and brittle, all bets are off. 

A Daily Egg

At this time of year, the only chickens that I have laying eggs is usually the young pullets just starting out their egg laying careers. The older hens have stopped for the year, taking a break to grow fresh feathers, put weight back on, and rebuild their body's mineral reserves. 

This is normal for my region because I don't provide artificial light to extend the "daylight period" for my birds. I let the girls live naturally. 

The main reason for going the natural route is that I'm not aiming for top egg production. My goal is nutrient enhanced mulching material for the gardens. That pen litter is more valuable to me than the eggs. I consider the eggs a free bonus. 

So here I sit, getting one egg a day. This one-egg-a-day thing has been going on for a full month now. The young pullet is really pumping out the eggs. Good girl! She hasn't missed a day yet. 

So what if I wanted eggs year around in order to go back to selling lots of eggs again? I would need to add fresh chicks every year in January in order to have layers when the older hens stopped. To tell you the truth, I'm thinking about it. Selling eggs would bring some income in. If I do it, then I'd build another pen .....one for young birds that lay, and one for old birds past laying. Reason? To funnel the higher nutrition to the layers and the lesser nutrient dense foods to the manure producing flock. So now I have to consider if it's worth the expense to build another pen. Yes, I could have all the birds mixed up together, but then I'll be hard pressed to come up with that much high quality feed without buying it all....which negates the idea of making some income selling eggs. Feed cost an arm and a leg here. 

So for right now, I have one egg layer and about 50 older hens taking a break. Of this 50, I'm guessing that only half were laying last year. Thus I have a lot of old hens. Time to make some decisions. 

Opening New Ground

For the past couple of weeks I've been gradually opening up a new area and getting ready to plant. You see, my neighbor plans to grow turmeric to sell down at the farmers market, but he hasn't been around in order to get his future garden going. Currently he's working a job out of town and plans to return home shortly. So I've been working on a little surprise for him, something to say "Welcome Home". 

Step 1- Stake Bucky, the goat, out in the future garden area in order to eat and trample the grass down. Over to course of two months, he got most of the area down to 6" high, down from 3 foot of tall tangled mess. 

Step 2- Mow or weedwack (depending upon how much surface rocks there were) the areas that Bucky was done eating. Scalp everything right down to the dirt. 

Step 3- Spray any returning vegetation with 20% vinegar. Respray anything that has the nerve to show green. Repeat until I have the time for the next step.

Step 4- Rototill rows for planting. 

Step 5- Plant

Step 6- Heavily mulch. 

Above, rows starting to show in the grass stubble. Crusty-the-farm-dog was helping me. 

Note, I didn't talk about digging out rocks. The tiller kicked out plenty of rocks but rock removal wasn't one of my goals. The rows I made weren't exactly straight.....they went around the big rocks. Luckily this area had been used to growth something in the past, because about 1/2 had almost all the rock already removed. So the rototillering went smoothly half the time. 

Above, I lightly ran the tiller over the grass stubble in order to cut the grass just below the soil surface. That should help kill what the vinegar didn't. When done, I could still make out my deeper tilled rows. 

In the rows I created I planted potatoes and sweet potatoes, only because I had plenty of them to spare. I didn't really care what crops got planted, as long as something did. The idea is to have something growing and to tend it. This alone will help get the soil ready for planting turmeric In the future. 

Above, almost finished. Still need to put in the rest of the yellow plant markers and apply mulch atop everything. But that's a job for the coming week. 

I also planted a few dozen pineapple crowns. There are areas that won't be suited to turmeric, but pineapples should do ok. These areas are close to trees and crisscrossed with big tree roots. I have dozens of pineapple tops from my recent harvest, so I had plenty to share. 

My neighbor now has a jumpstart on his garden project. If he's not interested in the potatoes and sweets, no problem. He can rip them out as he gradually derocks and fertilizes the area. But at least his garden is getting a headstart. With something growing other than tropical grasses, plus all that mulch, soil health should improve. By the way, I only saw one worm when I tilled. Egads, only one! I bet that by this time next year, there will be scads and scads of wigglers here. My neighbor is a big believer in digging in compost, chicken litter, and rabbit manure.....all good food sources for the worms. 

The Rainbow State

There's a reason for Hawaii being nicknamed the rainbow state, we got rainbows...LOTS of rainbows. That's because we have island weather, meaning that rain often comes in cells or squalls so that the sun shines at your back while you're watching rain approaching from the opposite direction. 

I was driving the other day and came upon this complete rainbow, which ended up being a full double bow before it faded. 

Besides sunsets, I love photographing rainbows. Looking at the photos afterward simply makes me happy all over again. 

No Till Discussion

Once again I'm being pummeled by email exhorting me to switch to no till gardening. I routinely email people back, asking for their own experiences that they've had by switching to no till. Of the dozen or so replies, not one person is a gardener. ......oooookkkkkk, I see a problem here. Advice, even demands, coming from non food growers telling me how to produce my own food. 

I've looked into no till recently once again. Rodale institute has some nice information, as do some of the ag oriented universities, but I'm not too sure how well it applies to regions other than their own. They report that they are seeing more carbon sequestering in no till gardens, more beneficial soil organisms and thus better plant nutrient availability, better soil moisture retention, increased water penetration, all when no till is done in conjunction with organic methods. Sounds good if I were living in their climate and soil type. But I'm in the tropics with some funky soil that has low fertility when left to Mother Nature. 

I have some areas on the farm that have had a natural, deep (over 6 inches) organic layer covering the soil for well over 20 years duration. I've dug down into that soil and found it to be dry, light colored, no worms or insect life, hydrophobic. This soil supports trees, ferns, grasses, and certain forbs. I've tried planting food producing plants into this soil without removing the duff layer, and it's been failure after failure. I've also tried tilling the duff into the soil and gardening. Very poor results but better than no till. 

Honestly folks, a lazy low work no till method would be welcomed by this old person, but it isn't going to feed me on this farm anytime in the near future. Perhaps it's my tropical soil or my tropical climate, or maybe the fact that soil fertility was so dismal to begin with. But no till just doesn't support vegetable plants very well here. Even many perennial food plants gradually decline if organic material isn't scratched into the soil around them occasionally. 

Now I do have to agree that no till can work with some food plants as long as the soil was initially improved, then maintained via the use of nutrient mulching. Examples on my farm include bananas, fruit trees, rosemary, parsley, pipinolas, sugar cane, chaya, and papayas. I'm also seeing gourds and pumpkins lasting a couple of years between tilling. 

Yes, I till. I use a rototiller to incorporate organic material and other soil amendments into the top few inches. Few inches...yes. That's because I only have a few inches. My soil is shallow in most places though I do have a few deeper beds reserved for daikon, carrots, parsnips, and other deep rooted crops. Incredibly, some of the beds have only 3" of "soil"! That makes for some interesting tilling experiences. 

So what really happens to my enhanced garden beds if I stop tilling? This year I've found out because the weather forced me to stop maintaining some of the garden area. 

1- tropical grasses heavily invade

2- soil becomes dense as opposed to the light, fluffiness it had attained

3- some beds became waterlogged with poor drainage because the water laid atop or only penetrated 2-3 inches whereupon it pooled. 

4- some beds returned to being hydrophobic

5- worms disappeared 

Yes, the worms left or died. When I was lightly tilling between crops, I saw plenty of worms. I suspect that the tilling did indeed disturbed them, but they still could be found anytime I forked over the soil (think, harvesting potatoes). While reconditioning the fallow garden beds, I saw virtually no worms. 

What veggie plants that were abandoned in the garden, did very poorly. Basically they stopped growing. No new growth. Tough & woody. Kale, turnips, onions. They surely weren't robust and happy. In the tilled soil they were actively growing and lush. 

Perhaps in the future my soil will be fertile and organic enough to use no till methods. But I'm not sure because after all, this is the tropics. So for now I will do what works. I will till in soil additives between each crop. 

One more line of thoughts.........

I have a friend who over the years has brought in truckload after truckload of county mulch and dumped it onto his rocky land. He lives on an old lava flow, so his ground is predominately lava chunks. In places, his "mulch soil" is 1-2 foot deep in his garden area. Now folks, he can truly grow via no till methods. He digs in garbage and other waste into spots around his garden, but he doesn't conventionally till or plow. For him, the no till approach works. But I have decades to go before I achieve such soil........unless someone volunteers to come here and spends weeks....no, make that months.... transporting county mulch and spreading it on my acres. 

Soil Moisture Retention

I was out doing a bit of rototillering today, getting an area ready for planting. Much of the space had been used for gardening last year, and thus various soil amendments had been tilled in several times during that year. But this past spring was so wet that I had let this area become overgrown in grass and weeds rather than get a crop planted. The soil was simply too wet to dig back then. But now the weather is improving for gardening, so I'm back to tilling, to getting things ready once more for food production.

In this particular area, I noticed that a section had lighter colored soil and it was actually DRY. I had to think about it for a second, then recalled that I had not used this light colored spot for gardening last year. Instead, I stored the buckets and trash cans there instead. 

The dry area is in the upper right of the photo. I know it's not easy for you to see, but it is a shade lighter in color. 

Without the benefit of tilled in compost, mulch, and manures, the soil isn't retaining moisture like the rest of the soil around it. Wow, it's quite a good example of the benefits of adding organic material to garden soil. 

After I finished the initial tilling, I retrieved a wheelbarrowful of compost to add to that dry area.