Future House Farm

Hello

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Never in our lives have we been this busy. It's a good busy, but a time-suck nonetheless. We love ya guys and we will get back to it all at sometime. Until then, take care.

Fix this effing mess

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:57:00 +0000

This is our little patch of earth off the the front porch. I believe the dimensions are 4x5 and it faces east. As you can see, it's a mess. The reason for the mess is that we don't quite know what to do with it yet. We want to fill it with perennials. We're looking for flowers, something edible, and some height in the back. Our problem is that we are dealing with some serious partial sun. In the summer, the plot gets shaded by the house around 12:30-1:00. We really don't have the experience with perennials to even know where to start. Do you have any suggestions? Give us a list, and we'll give it a try.

We're sure you've seen enough

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Even the littlest gardens are susceptible to blight. We could post the photos, but most of you have had it yourself, and need not see more.

Our Squash have also fallen victim to vine borers. We were on top of them for a good part of the season, but we over planted the beds and they eventually became so tight that we couldn't keep track of what was and was not done. By the end, none were done, and they all went to shit.

Last week Meg tore out all the summer squash and planted some late greens in their place. Today I removed the winter squash and all of the tomatoes. The garden is looking a little naked.

We did learn a lot from our first quick season. Our goal for next year is to go more vertical. The tomato trellis was a huge success (while the plants were living) and we believe that next year's squash should receive similar treatment. It should be pretty bad ass. But in the mean time, the beans are still doing well, our herb garden is bangin' it out, and the root veggies are looking quite strong.

Building Ingredients

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:03:00 +0000

Turnips are a great ingredient for broths. We planted this little batch with one thing in mind, soup for the winter. We're still waiting on a few more ingredients before the soup making begins; so our plan, while we wait, is to cube, blanch, and freeze these suckers until the time is right for cooking.

A bit more candid than usual

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:33:00 +0000

In the Spring of 2002 I had just finished my undergraduate work and to celebrate I took every penny I owned and my little brother for a summer tour of some of our National Parks. This is a photo of Derrek and I at Crater Lake. I was 26 and he was 16.

When he was an infant I took him out late at night to see Halley's Comet (he barfed on my shoulder). I changed his diapers, took him sled riding, bought him beer, and helped him bury his father. He was still pretty young when I left home, so our trip was actually the first time we really had a chance to hang out. I believe I can speak for us both in saying that, even though we had been close, this trip changed our relationship forever.

All I've ever wanted was for him to be happy and safe.

This past May I found out that he had decided to join the Marines. I believe in peace, but I also believe that unless we can address some major global issues, there will always be a need for a military. Every morning when I go for a run I see a car's bumper sticker with a quote from Einstein that says something like, "It is impossible to simultaneously prepare for and prevent war." Actually I think Billy Bragg said it best that "the only way to disarm is to disarm." Admittedly, when I first found out about his decision I was angry and terrified. I was angry because I was afraid for him, and I was terrified because I was afraid for me. No one wants to run the risk of losing someone as close as he is to me.

On Friday Meg and I took a trip to Parris Island for his graduation. It was pretty damn emotional and never I have I been so proud to be his brother.

Will work for food

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:02:00 +0000

Yesterday Meg and I spent the good part of the day picking green beans at Blue Blaze Farm. We met the grower, Eric, at the farmer's market and bartered our labor for some of his excess produce. Eric and his wife Melody's farm is certified naturally grown and is about 5 1/2 acres. Meg and I don't have any intentions of becoming market farmers, but we do want to grow food on a large scale. We figure that a couple years head start would eliminate some of the growing pains new farmers experience when they start with little to no knowledge of sustainable food production.

For those of you who are interested in this kind of cooperative farming, we should provide this little side note. Farmers obviously need to make money to keep their operation going, so I'm not too sure how open they would be to people flooding their stands and asking for food in exchange for labor. Rob from One Straw had a great post that kind of hits on this little dilemma. I think our case with Eric and Melody might be a little unique. They have a new baby and this is their first year growing full-time (this is their only source of income); their production needs have increased, but their ability to input labor has not. Perhaps when their baby becomes a little less time consuming (is that even possible?) they both can be out there together more often. Until that time comes, hopefully we can help them out on occasion.

From Born to be Nervous

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:10:00 +0000

Crazy. In our last post, which we just put up moments ago, we had talked about a community garden in our area. Shortly after I saw this little gem on Born to be Nervous. It's pretty cool; check it out.

Swing Bees

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:16:00 +0000

On our way back from a day at Musikfest we walked by a little community garden. Their space is along the fence of a neighborhood playground. The garden is about four feet deep and half a city block long. We hung out and talked with one of the volunteers and she said that the garden runs on a pretty lax policy of plant what you want, pick what you want. The whole set up is simple and kept up well, but what really got our attention were the number of honey bees and the incredible sound of a neighbor practicing the sax.

Roof's up

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:51:00 +0000

We finished the roof over the back deck today.

The panel material we chose lets in the light, but blocks UV rays and keeps things cool.

Next on the agenda will be to put up the railing. After that we will make the call for the final inspection and then it will be time for the rain harvester.

Musikfest

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:45:00 +0000

It's Musikfest here in Bethlehem. This is actually my first time experiencing the week long shindig and I must say that it is pretty damn awesome. In attendance at the festival they have some pretty big names playing at their larger venues, but the real gems are the not so big names with incredible talent who sometimes don't get a stage at all. The video below is a guy who's shtick is called Cast in Bronze. He made this four-ton contraption and I believe it's the only one of it's kind. Needles to say, I was impressed.

The real surprise of the performance came at the end of his gig and unfortunately we didn't get it on video. So this guy has this whole quite medieval thing going, like he's a monk or from Cirque du Soleil, but then he dropped the bomb and spoke. I kid you not, the cat sounds just like Comic Book Guy. The contradiction was so intense I almost started to drool from laughter.

Buy Local

chapstickmeg@gmail.com (Meg) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:36:00 +0000

We have a great little book shop in our city—it's actually the oldest continually-operating book store in the world. Yesterday, when we walked into town to order a few books, we realized that we ought to be blogging about some of the locally-owned businesses nearby.

The ease and convenience of shopping at independent businesses is kind of new to us here, as our previous abode was in the middle of a strip-mall wasteland (except for our favorite brewery and book store). Now, we've got a completely opposite situation—the chain stores are actually more out of the way and annoying to get to, which is no loss for us. Stay tuned for more posts about cool places in our neighborhood.

The Magical Fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:57:00 +0000

We've got beans! And they're on target to be the first thing, other than herbs, that we'll get to eat from our new garden. Bushing beans take up very little space and produce like crazy, so they are a great choice for a small garden. We kind of went a little nuts with the number of seeds we planted, but we didn't have any spring crops and thought beans would make up for the deficiency. So far they are working out wonderfully.

Raise the Roof

chapstickmeg@gmail.com (Meg) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:14:00 +0000

It that title too obvious? In any case, most of the framing is done for the roofs over the deck and basement door. There are a few more pieces to add tomorrow, and then we'll add the actual roof panels and the railings. Can't wait to sit out there, drinking coffee and checking out the garden.

From Meg's Camera

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:17:00 +0000

While looking for photos on Meg's camera I came across this beauty. I think the shutter speed was ten seconds and she had the camera mounted on a tripod. The photo was taken on the Fourth of July at her brother John's house, which is at the other end of our street.

Build on

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:22:00 +0000

So these are some old photos of the back deck...

It's nothing too special. What sucks about this deck is that it faces west and has no roof. At one point it did have a roof that went across both sides, but when a storm knocked it down, the previous owner chose to take the insurance money and dismiss the rebuild.

Today a family friend, Rick, came over with his sweet set of tools to begin what we figure will be the most bitchin' deck roof in Bethlehem.

The roof will not only cover the deck, but will also serve as the main collection area for our rain harvester, which will go in the space between the deck and the dirt. A platform for the harvester's barrels will be in the works shortly.

We had to tear down the railing to install the posts which will support the cross beam. Something I failed to mention earlier was that the previous owner built the deck himself, which is cool, but he obviously knew very little about construction—neither do we (yet) and that's why we called Rick. I'm guessing the previous owner burnt through several screw bits to sink all the screws we got out of this thing; it was comical.

A garden on the rebound

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:54:00 +0000

The past two weeks have seen more sun than rain. The balance has actually been quite beneficial for our plants. The first week after all the rain was a serious drying out period for the plants. There were a lot of yellow leaves out there and very little action. Since that first week, though, things have really been looking up. These first three shots are of our paste tomatoes on the new trellis. We are very pleased with how this thing has turned out. We are also very excited that we can reuse it without much prep for a number of seasons to come.

Since we got everything in so late (as you have heard/read me complain about often) there isn't much else to report; we have been using some of the herbs, lightly, and we should be able to dip into the chard any day now. Our summer squash is looking very healthy, but no signs of flowers just yet. Aside from the chard, our first real harvest looks like it will be green beans. Our bushing variety (jade, I believe) just started to flower two days ago.

Something I will begin to share shortly will be my newest adventure in bicycle commuting. Meg and I live just five miles from where I teach, as opposed to the 85 mile hike from last year. My intentions are to bike the five miles as often as I can, but that's another post for another day. The reason I bring it up is because I saw the coolest clip on Rob's blog, One Straw Revolution, and it got me to thinking about my bike and what I have to do to get it ready for the fall semester. The bike in the clip is far more sophisticated than what I have, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

We have huge jugs

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:21:00 +0000

I wonder how many non-garden seeking hits this title will produce.

We made the first major step towards a new rain harvester. About a mile or so out of town is a Coca Cola bottling plant whose syrup comes in these beautiful 55-gallon plastic drums. They charge $10 a barrel to compensate the amount they lose from not having them recycled. We bought five.

The plan is to install the five barrels under the back deck which is just a few feet from the garden. To get the water from the harvester we'll have to rely on a small pump instead of gravity, but already we are devising a way to make the pump run on solar energy. I don't know, we'll see what happens when it happens. We're pretty stoked and we'll be sure to keep you posted.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July. Cheers.

New Lines

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Our clothesline is up. This was the last major item we needed to address. Later in the season we will be constructing cold frames, but that can be put on hold for a little while. As you can also see in the photo, our plants are off to a very slow start. It really didn't help that our move prevented any planting until late May and the massive rains we've had have also brought things to a crawl. Last year the heat stuck around late in the season, so hopefully we will see a repeat of that and get a respectable amount of veggies in before winter.

We have been touring our local farmer's markets. We have gone without any grocery store produce for about a month now, which isn't all that impressive, but we are beginning to network and will hopefully be putting food by soon. We'll post some bits about this experience soon.

RIP Michael Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:35:00 +0000

Another Year, Another Trellis

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Meg and I are always looking to improve our tomato trellises. Last year we did a string suspension system, which worked very well, and we will certainly try again, but at our new digs we are really aiming for space saving practices. The idea for this trellis came from some photos of the trellises over at Path to Freedom. At the moment I can't find any specific photos of their engineering, but if you hang around their site long enough, you're bound to see them.

We used some inexpensive plastic garden fence for the plants to climb. We'll have to make some of the holes bigger, but it should last us a long time.

Unfortunately the only part of the project that was made from reused material was a ten-foot piece of metal pipe we found in the basement. We'll get better with this as we learn what's available around us.

The trellis is about six and a half feet tall and each panel is four feet wide. We have a second set of panels to erect next to the ones in the photo, but we ran out of staples for the plastic fencing. We'll hit the hardware store tomorrow and call the project done.

And we're back

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:56:00 +0000

We have internet access and garden info.

As you all might recall, this was our back yard when we bought our new home. I didn't think to lift the screen before I snapped this photo, but we can still get the general idea (actually the idea is not exactly general; it's a flippin' yard and the photo is fine).

This little tidbit is what's available at the bottom of the first photo...

...and this is where we are now. Four of the five beds are complete. All that's left is to box in the dug up swath at the left of the photo. We have all the wood, but it hasn't stopped raining long enough to get them all done. The four beds that are complete are also planted as well. Since we missed the early part of the season, we did miss out on some greens and peas and whatnot. What we do have in are tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, summer squash, winter squash, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, parsnips, turnips, chard, flowers, and a boat load of herbs. Most of what is in has been direct seeded, so we won't really see the patchwork for another week or so.

I don't believe it would be right if we didn't give a grateful nod to the Bethlehem compost heap. As residents of the City of Bethlehem we have free access to a mountain of organic compost provided by the borough. The materials for this beautiful resource are supplied by the leaves from Fall clean up.

The rest of these photos were taken during random stages of the dig.

Unbelievable

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:41:00 +0000

'Sup

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:11:00 +0000

I'm sitting in our fairly empty apartment. The move is almost over. Meg placed an order with the internet folks in our new area and they said we will be up and running by Friday the fifth (is the fifth on a Friday?). I guess that means we won't be in touch for another week and a half. Then again, we haven't been the best of blog hosts lately; have we? Our sporadic posts have not been without due cause. There has been a lot of cool shit going on around here and we can't wait to get it caught up on the ol' blog.

What's to come:
The semester has come to a successful close (it's sad, but exciting), I was in another ceramics wood firing, which I must say the results were absolutely amazing, my little brother made an extraordinary life changing decision, and yeah, for the first time ever, Meg and I are FUCKING HOMEOWNERS. So, hold on to your "oh shit" bars, because this summer ought to be interesting.

I had a run in, run around and run down

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:30:00 +0000

Bertha has joined her sisters in that great coop in the sky. She hadn't been feeling well so Meg took her to the vet where we learned the little girl had cancer. Apparently cancer is common with egg laying chickens. You gotta figure they're reproducing cells on a large scale, daily, and I guess all it takes is that one freak cell to ruin the whole works.

The vet said that she had about a week to live; so a decision was made to stop the suffering and at around 11:30 today Bertha was put to sleep.

For those of you who have been hangin' out with us, you know that our chickens were all named after Grateful Dead tunes. This is the last of our three little tributes.

We're retiring the chicken tag for a while. Where we're moving (holy shit, I almost forgot, we closed on our house last Friday) chickens are on the city's "not cool" list. We still plan to build our own farm someday and when that time comes the tag will be dug out and dusted off.

Our semesters are coming to a close soon, so be prepared for a fresh new season of FHF. Cheers all.

Chicken a la Tupperware

chapstickmeg@gmail.com (Meg) — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:24:00 +0000

Bertha has been acting under the weather, so we (I) let her camp out in our bathroom for the past few days. Mostly she's been sprawled on a towel in her box, looking pathetic, but this morning I found her kicking around in her food dish. Looks like Bertha is on the mend.