uBuilder Plans

A Day in the Life - Adventures of an Urban Homesteader
An occasional view into the life of Farmfresh, urban homesteader, spouse, mom, and generally strange person.

Farmfresh farms a tiny suburban lot, a 1/4 acre vacant lot near her home, and raises broilers for her family on her daughters acreage, bartering the space for filling her daughter's freezer too. Her produce includes: fruits - peaches, apricots, nectarines, plumbs, apples from dwarf trees used in landscaping her home. Grapes from privacy screening plants. Cherries from ornamental and productive cherry bushes. Tomatoes, peppers and herbs fill her small lot and City Biddy Hens provide her with fresh eggs, eliminate pests, and fertilize her gardens. Berries and other garden produce are grown on an un-used lot behind an apartment building, which she has use of for simply maintaining it! Broilers are raised in an mobile ark.

February 09....

Pruning - As winter FINALLY begins to breathe its last, I find my self ready to do some pruning. Even the mere mention of that word - “pruning”- often sends shivers up the spine of the beginning homesteader, but it is a job that once done reaps great benefits. Around this homestead there are several pruning jobs to be done, and February is a great time to do them.

I have three grapevines on my urban homestead. My grapes are as much landscape features on my city lot as they are food sources. For example, my Niagra was originally planted as a privacy screen to keep my neighbor from sitting on her front porch and watching me sit on mine. When my uncle first suggested planting a grape vine I had never even considered that, but the grape makes a great plant for the purpose!

The problem with most books on pruning grapes is that all of the illustrations usually show grapes trained along a couple of wires in a vineyard. Those pictures wouldn’t work to train my grape vine as a privacy screen, so I had to figure out what the grape wanted to help it to grow well and still provide me with fruit. First, don’t prune at all the first year. Just leave the baby plant alone to get some roots under itself. After that, all a grape basically wants is a good haircut each year.

I have my grape vine trained, with two main branches near the base, to a trellis attached the side of my front porch and each year it gets a hard pruning. I leave the main branches strictly alone, unless a sucker vine decides to grow there. Those main branches get larger and stronger every year. The rest of the wild tangle of branches pretty much gets lopped off, except for a few of the newest vines. Those special vines, now a year old are the ones that will produce this years grape crop. I carefully select these vines to keep based on their position on the main branches. I want these vines spaced out well and positioned so that they can fully cover my trellis with leaves without crowding each other. These yearling vines are also trimmed, but several new buds are left on each one. I try to always leave plenty, as these buds will be forming the new vines for the following year and the fruit for this year as well. Remember that all fruit needs to be able to get good airflow and some sun to ripen properly. By paying attention to the position of the last bud on each branch, you can ensure a healthy plant in years to come as well, because these buds will eventually become next year’s new vines.

Really that is about all there is to it. You cut off most of the old stuff and leave some of the new stuff. If you hack off too much - no grapes. If you don’t hack off enough – little grapes, too many grapes that end up getting moldy or a pitiful tangled mess of vines that just hardly produce at all. A little practice and you will get the hang of it. As pitiful as this sounds you would think it would never work, but this is what I have been doing for about 20 years now with some darned good success. Grapes are hard working and beautiful plants, and they provide my family with many pounds of delicious fruit each year. All it asks of me is a little care each year starting with the pruning in February.

In addition to pruning my grapes, there are also several dwarf fruit trees to prune. So how do you properly prune a fruit tree? Just remember a few easy rules: nothing dead, nothing crossing or touching, tools sharp and blades clean, and leave the bud on the outside.

Sharp tools insure that each cut is smooth and does not crush or damage the tree. Using clean tools prevent diseases being spread from tree to tree. The rule about leaving nothing dead on a tree looks easy, but really can be a hard rule to follow. In late winter all of the branches look dead. To make sure the branch you remove is really a dead branch, I usually mark those branches in some way before the leaves all fall in the autumn.

When removing a branch always use three cuts. First make an under cut, about half way through the branch to be removed and some distance out from the trunk. Follow that first cut with an over cut, which is positioned a couple of inches further out from the trunk. Use these two cuts to remove the bulk of the branch without tearing the tree trunk. The final little stub is removed with a smooth cut near the trunk, leaving the thickened area called the branch collar intact. Too close and you scar the tree leaving a place for rot to start – too far away and the remaining stub will eventually rot its way back into the tree as well. If the branch collar is left the whole thing will smoothly heal over.

Nothing crossing or touching rule is next. If branches cross each other or touch each other they will begin to rub sores on the bark. When this happens the rot begins and the weak branches begin to brake. If you have a couple of intertwined branches like this to deal with take a step back and look at them. Is one branch crossing to the center of the tree? Is one of the branches obviously injured or weaker? Then this is the branch to remove first. Fruit trees in particular need strong branches. When they are loaded with fruit the weight can really stress a weak branch, possibly to the point of breakage. By removing all of the touching, crossing branches you are opening up the center of the tree to more sunlight and airflow. Remember… more of these things mean more fruit.

Finally, leave a bud on the outside. While you are pruning any plant, remember that each bud will someday become a new branch. If you clip a branch leaving a bud that faces the center of the tree (or plant) it will eventually grow to become a troublesome crossed up branch in the middle of your tree. If you leave a bud that faces the outside of the plant it will grow into a nice healthy new branch. It is much easier to clip correctly now than to have a lot of big branches to sort out in the future.

When you are finished pruning your fruit tree step back and take a good look. Does it look open and airy? The old timers used to say a fruit tree was trimmed right if you could throw a ball through it without hitting any branches. If you could imagine yourself doing just that with your tree should be able to get the good airflow and sunlight that a productive tree needs. Rake all of the prunings up and take them away and always remember to keep any fallen fruit raked up during the year as well. This will help keep the tree disease free.

***
My final February pruning chores do not involve any saws or loppers; my final pruning occurs inside my house. I like to take this time before the busy spring gardening season begins to “prune” my life. They used to call it “spring cleaning”, but there should be more than a little cleaning going on.

Sort through those closets and clean out that garage, prune out that excess clutter that spends the rest of the year getting moved around from place to place. If you don’t really need it – out it goes. If you might need it – then it deserves a proper home.

Think about your daily routines. What could you prune there to make each day more productive? Any crossing branches in your day? Are there any places that tend to tangle up your time and rub you raw? Take a few steps away from the situation and take a good look. Removing a few snags and problems can make everything run more smoothly.

Remember good pruning always leaves plenty of open space for that “airflow and sunlight” that are the calm and joy in life. With a little practice pruning is really not hard and the rewards are great. Taking a little time to prune now can really make your life much more fruitful.

August 08....

On Being Green - When I was a little kid people used to ask me my favorite color. I knew that some kids in my class liked blue and others liked red. There were several who professed that purple was their favorite shade and one girl in my class especially loved yellow. I however, could never make up my mind. I mean really. All the colors were nice in their place. A nice yellow school bus or a pretty red apple would just not be the same if they were pink or purple. Then one day it hit me. I love the color GREEN! Green … like the tiny leaves budding in Spring, or the strong scented needles on our twinkling tree at Christmas. Green … like sweet smelling clover and a pasture full of deep grass. Green … like the moist, springy moss growing between the rocks around the lake. Green like money.

I am a grown up now and green is still my favorite color for all the reasons above. Now green seems to mean even more. People talk about “being green” – recycling, saving the planet, and protecting the environment. I guess you could say I am green. I became green quite by accident. I started as being cheap.

As an urban homesteader. I try to be as self sufficient as possible in the middle of a big city. I grow my own fruit and vegetables, I freeze and can and dehydrate to preserve our food, and I raise my own chickens for meat and eggs. If I can’t raise it myself I buy local from farmers in my area. I recycle my unused items on Freecycle. I shop at thrift stores and primarily wear used clothes. I make some of my own clothes and repair them when they tear; I wear them until they are threadbare. I go to garage sales and the Salvation Army if I need things. I drive older vehicles and sell them to scrap when they are done. I have all energy efficient appliances and heat primarily with wood. All my light bulbs are compact fluorescents. I even make my own soap.

Do I do this to save the world? I wish I could say yes, but the sad answer is no - I do all this because I am CHEAP! I invest in energy efficient appliances not to save green house emissions, but to save a buck on my electric bill. I wear thrift store clothes or make my own, because I get an evil streak of excitement when others talk about spending $40.00 on a pair of jeans and I bought my equally nice ones for a buck! I drive those old beater vehicles not to lessen the energy impact of industry on the environment, but because I can buy them cheap, run them cheap and easily make a little money when they finally die. I buy meat from local farmers because the meat is better, the meat is safer AND the meat is CHEAPER! I can and preserve so I don’t have to go into a grocery store to be robbed by paying the line of people between the farmer who grows it and my family that eats it.

So does this make me bad? Is my motivation any less noble than the person who sacrifices to save the planet? One thing is for sure – the results are the same.

So next time someone asks me about why I choose to live the lifestyle that I do … what should I tell them? Should I tell them I am a cheap frugal old skinflint? I think I’ll just say I’m green!

June 08....

Today I am feeling fruity! I realize that is an unusual statement, but I mean it quite literally. My fingers and hands, my elbows and knees... AND the back deck are covered with sticky fruit juice! It is apricot harvest time at the homestead and also nectarines. I have a dwarf tree in my front yard that I call my "Peacharinacot" tree. The seed catalog that I ordered it from calls it a "Fruit Cocktail" tree. What it is actually is is a botanical wonder. A single tree with branches grafted on to it from several different fruits in the same family. My tree bears apricots (by the pounds), nectarines (plenty), peaches (quite a few), and red plums (a small but wonderful crop). All of these different fruits are in the same genus Prunus. I bought my little wonder as an unimpressive stick. I think I paid $20.00 for it. Three years of watering and care later I got my first small crop. This year I have harvested 62 pounds of apricots and nectarines alone so far!

My tree is approximately 12 feet tall and probably about that wide. A lovely asset to the eatable landscape and my front lawn. It provides beautiful flowers in the early spring. A fact that can also be a problem in my area because those flowers are SO early they sometimes freeze off and I lose that years crop entirely! When it does miss the freezes there is abundance: apricot jelly, peach jam, nectarine butter, fruit for pies, fruit to dry, fruit to freeze and fruit to can! So now I have the pleasant, but sticky, task of processing all of that fruit. If you have never spent a day on the porch sitting in the shade, carefully cutting out the bruises and pits from 50 or 60 pounds of sweet smelling, delicious tasting food for your family you should really try it sometime. I cut up the fruit and freeze much of it as soon as possible. This way I can go back later and make all of the tasty delights when there is a little more time. Not only does my family like my jams and jellies, but others seem to also. I won first place at our state fair with a jar of my peach jelly a few years ago!

Apricots and nectarines are ready now, but the peaches (I have an additional dwarf Red Haven peach tree in my front yard as well!) and the plums have a little more maturing to do. I am also harvesting black raspberries now. I can NEVER seem to have enough black raspberries. I am going to try to increase the number of plants again this year. Maybe part of the problem is the old "one for the bucket and two for me" motto I use when I harvest them. Last year the first flush of black raspberries occurred on my birthday! It was also a day off! I went to the garden to look things over and made the wonderful discovery of bushes full of berries ready to pick. I made the decision then and there that God had just given me another wonderful birthday present and ate them till I was stuffed! What a birthday breakfast!

I had better stop writing for now, I just heard the thump of another dead ripe apricot falling from the tree. . Time to get fruity!

March 08....

I live in a neighborhood. This means it is very important to be a neighbor. Sometimes it is easy to feel that the people around us don't understand us, or what we are trying to do in our lives, and so become isolated from them. While it is true that we are an odd breed, it is very important to try to maintain the friendly connections with those that live near us. Offering a neighbor some extra fresh green beans, a few eggs, or making them a jar of homemade jam for Christmas is an easy way to spread a little good will. Sometimes that little extra friendliness may even pay off!

I have had neighbors catch my dog that accidentally got out of the yard. They used to collect egg cartons for me, and bring then unsolicited to my front door until I had a mountain of them because "you have chickens", until I finally got them all to understand that the few cartons I need I prefer to buy new. (see poultry links).

Sometimes a problem for your neighbor can be a blessing to you. New landfill rules in most places leave your neighbors with large piles of leaves and grass clippings. A problem for them but a great resource for your garden. What a wonderful person you are... offering to haul away all of those leaves! This winter in my neighborhood a large tree decided it was time to "make a break" and crack itself in half! My neighbor was trying to figure out how to haul the refuse away. He has a chain saw to cut it up, but no way to use it. I offered to haul it away and remove the brush for him with my truck, it he would cut it up. Hurrah! We are both happy. I have some more wood to feed my wood stove and he has a problem solved.

It IS a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Farmfresh

February 08....

The winter will just not end! Or at least that is how I feel this time of the year. The wood pile is terribly low. The variety of frozen veggies in the freezer is just not what it once was, with many items (like peas) all used up until spring and there is ice pelting down outside our window. I am tired of ice and the bleak landscape. What is a poor farmer to do?

Let there be soap! Making homemade soap is a fun way to pass the dreary winter days. I am fairly new to soap making so I am still learning... but then again I am always learning. Soap making does use some hazardous chemicals, sodium hydroxide or lye can cause chemical burns and is poisonous. With care and caution soap making is really not hard to do. There are lots of great books available to teach you how to do it. Also you might check around and find someone who is an experienced soap maker to teach you. I have taught several people how already.

We buy our beef from a local farmer who delivers it to a custom processor for us. This is a great economical way to buy grass fed organic beef! We pick it up wrapped to our specifications, frozen and table ready. One of the bonuses to all of this is we can also keep the beef tallow. Beef tallow is the hard fat found in the loin area of a cow surrounding the animals kidneys. Beef tallow can be rendered, buy boiling it and straining it, into a nice white hard fat that smells nice and is one of the main ingredients in soap. We also get lard from the hog we buy, and the lard from it comes ready to use from our processor.

I use these two ingredients to make a Homesteaders soap that eventually goes, with the addition of borax and washing soda, into my laundry soap recipe. Buy using these two basically "free" fats as a part of my soap recipes, I can afford to add some exotics to the soap I make for my family to use. Almond oil, avocado oil, olive oil, cocoa butter, and shea butter are some of my favorite soap making oils. Trying out different recipes is exciting and fun. My whole extended family uses my soap on a daily basis. Now many of them are so spoiled they refuse to buy store"soaps". Many of these store "soaps" are really a detergent bars made from petroleum products. Adding flowers and herbs like mint and sage from the garden makes the soap smell great and even work better. Sage is a natural antibacterial! Even things that might otherwise just go to the compost pile, like orange peels, can be grated into a soap recipe to add a great scent.

Making soap at this time of the year I also free up my schedule for when things start to "spring" up around here. Soaping in February I make enough soap and laundry soap base to last all year. I was really suprised by the amount of money I save each year by soaping. A box of borax and a box of washing soda can be had for under $4.00 each (usually even less). Added to my soap base which is free except for the cost of lye, those two boxes make enough laundry soap for a year! Figure out how much your laundry soap costs and you will realize the savings. Even bar soaps are pricey, especially the bars that have ingredients added for skin care. I usually spend about $30.00 for all my special oils and make many many bars of soap! While this soap costs more than the laundry soap it is well worth the price and still cheaper than store bought.

So next time you are cold, board and cabin crazy .... Let there be soap!

Farmfresh

December 07....

With the holidays fast approaching me, it is a time to reflect over the successes of the last year, as well as worry and pout about all of the little things that I still have not finished.

Living in an old house in the city there is always a new challenge a foot. The recent visit from my plumber has assured me that new drain pipes (at least for the kitchen sink) are sure to be part of our future. New storm windows have yet to be installed, and I still have two bushels of frozen tomatoes (most of which were ripened in a window after being harvested just before our first hard freeze) that remain to be canned.

Looking on the past year I have had some garden failures, and some great successes. This years potato crop was in a word sad. I think late freezes, and erratic rain this summer contributed. The same late freezes eliminated my fruit harvest as well. Normally I raise enough peaches, apricots, grapes, and berries, (including blackberries, strawberries, and black raspberries) to freeze, can, make pies and jellies, and even to sell at our local farm market. This year I harvested our fruit in just a few small handfuls. Green beans also struggled this year and I never got my okra planted at all.

The year also had successes! Tomatoes went crazy! I have canned more than enough for next year, marinara sauce, salsa. I picked the last of them and filled several broiler pans. I placed the pans on a table under a roof window in my cool second story family room. Watching carefully I removed any as they began to show color. These I place in a plastic basket on a platter in my warm kitchen window until they are dead ripe. I then immediately freeze them. Freezing is a wonderful way to preserve cooking tomatoes, but they take up a lot of space. I usually can mine eventually, when I have time. Freezing the tomatoes makes it easy to peel them for canning as well. Simply run warm water over them and rub. Presto, skins are off! If I am making a sauce or ketchup, the next step is to place them in my big crock pot. I find this cooks and reduces them to a thick consistency most easily, and using a crock pot liner helps with my clean up.

Peppers were also crazy this year. I raised the largest California Bell Peppers I have ever seen. Hot peppers were also a success. I contribute the bell pepper success to my City Biddy Hens. The hens winter in my backyard garden space. I toss in straw, some hay for them to eat and scratch in, leftovers, and what ever. All winter they eat, scratch, poop, dig, and fluff. By the time I was ready to plant my tomato and pepper plants, the garden space looked like it had been rototilled. I simply moved the hens out, and planted the plants. I then added soaker hose, and some straw for mulch, and done.

City Biddy Hens have been producing fairly well, however I believe this is their last year. I will replace them as soon as I am able, as they are old now. I do harvest my old hens for eating, by pressure cooking them. I know this is very difficult for some people. For me it is just part of the cycle of things. I also raised about 50 broilers for my family, including my daughters as well. I take the best care of my chickens I can, feed them the best foods, provide them with fresh air, sunlight, and green grass. I believe caring for them in this way, and then butchering them quickly and humanly, I can feed my family and respect them as living creatures at the same time. The broilers did well this year. We had a lot of extreme heat when I was raising the first batch, however, and that was hard on everything including me. The second batch (I raise them 25 at a time) did much better. However, I got sick when it was time to butcher, so instead of butchering them at 4 pounds they were nearing 5 pounds or more.

Raising your own meat has lots of advantages. First the quality of meat is amazing. For one breast from one chicken averages were 1 1/2 to 2 pounds! Just for the breast. I gave a friend one of my birds, and she called me while it was frying. "Something is wrong with the chicken!" she said. I asked her what. She said that it wasn't "bleeding when it cooked, and it smelled different somehow". I explained that a well bled bird, one cleaned properly shouldn't bleed in the pan, and it would be ok, the smell (or lack of it) was that it was fresh. After she tasted it, she couldn't believe the great taste. Now she is always begging for more, but I just don't have space or time to raise birds for other people. Raising your own you also get to package the meat as your family eats it. For us all backs and necks are packaged for soup stock, breast meat is skinned and packaged with one breast in each bag, wings, thighs and legs are packaged for frying and we also have 3/4 chicken bags for certain recipes.

As winter sets in hard there are several things I do to occupy my time. (Keep in mind I DO work Full time). Winter is a time for making soap. I make enough for our family, near and extended. I also give my soaps as gifts. Winter is the time for woodworking. I have a shop in the basement. I am slowly building the cabinets for my kitchen. Winter is the time for quilting and sewing. Quilting is a new hobby for me. I have a lot to learn. Winter is a time for jams and jellies. It is much better to can jelly, meats, and even tomatoes in the winter. Humidity and heat from boiling water are great in the dryness of winter, but horrible in hot humid summertime.

Winter is also the time for planning. So sit in front of that fireplace, and read those books, thumb through those seed catalogues, and enjoy! Recharge your batteries. Next year will hold challenges and you need to be ready.

Farmfresh