Happy Farming . com

Photo by Irene2005.

Last year I decided to sell my property. I never really thought about how much space we would like to have when raising two kids, so the house was suddenly a bit small (92 sq m) when they finally arrived. After that I received notice, that I was going to be fired in the summer of 2010, but it felt like I was one step ahead already, because the main reason I moved to this town was because there was a job for me, and now that it’s gone I might as well move. At least there’s not much holding me back and the same its true for my girlfriend.

I would really like to do more experiments in my garden, like for instance building a giant biodynamic compost heap, or try to store potatoes in the ground covered with straw, or maybe try out new ways of improving the soil with manure from animals, but I’m pretty sure that this would not always be a pretty sight. It would be messy. And that’s okay when you play, but it’s not okay when you live in a pretty neighborhood.

I don’t know how people play, when they live in a pretty neighbourhood. Maybe they play games on the computer, but I like going outside and play and get some fresh air and dirt on my clothes. And as the saying goes, the only difference between boys and men are the size of their toys. I would love to have at least 10,000 sq m (108,000 sq ft) to play on – man I would get myself some toys.

It’s like the chicken-egg problem – if I had this size property I could grow lots of fruits and vegetables for sale, and the money earned would pay for the property. So at the moment I have to rent a smaller place and at least get something going. As the majority of people live in cities and urban areas today this is maybe what is needed; more creative ways and examples of growing food in these crowded places. I can’t figure out if it’s only me who think cities and urban areas are crowded or people feel they are forced to live here. As I see it the more crowded it gets the more diversity is lost. At least this is true for the plant and animal kingdom. You’ll never find a goat or a cow strolling down a busy street in a modern western city, you’ll have to live in India to see that. In my small family we’re so disconnected from the plant and animal kingdom, that we’ll have to turn to books to find out what it’s about. An hour ago I read a bedtime story to my 2 year old daughter about a girl and her brother spending their vacation on a self-sufficient farm in the countryside. Why would anyone want to print this kind of books, if there wasn’t some kind of need to connect with the animals or the plant kingdom? She plays with plastic animals, for Christ’s sake. I feel poor in a rich country.

Exciting times ahead for happyfarming.com! I’ve been told that I’ll be fired from my cosy engineering job in the summer 2010. A part of me is freaking out because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to support myself and my family due to this change, but another part of me is excited, because I’ve often dreamed about moving on during the last three years. Apparently it has been tougher to do than I thought it would be, so I choose to see it as a blessing that I have been kicked in the butt from above.

The problem I’m facing now is, that the bank won’t let me borrow money to buy the farm of my dreams, since I won’t have a job for long. A smaller place would also do, but it seems it’s not going to happen. So I’ll probably end up renting a property to have a place to grow stuff. I have looked into buying what people in the UK or USA refer to as an allotment or plot, but last time I checked the price was 34,000 USD for a 400 m2 plot, which means: it ain’t gonna happen! I’m under the impression that around here it’s more about socializing and banging each other on the head with rules and regulations than it is about growing something eatable.

Photo by Arthur Chapman.

I’m not growing sea buckthorn in my garden (yet?…), but it grows along the coast of Denmark, so it’s available for free around this time of the year, if you bother to go out and harvest the berries.

A thank you goes to Dorte for the juice recipe below!

“Sea buckthorn juice is able to keep fresh for about 1 year when it is stored in a cold place, without a preservative, because it exists naturally in the berries. When the juice has been extracted from the berries, you can drink it as “schnapps”, since it is very “strong”. Or you can mix 600 g (21 ounces) of cane sugar per 1 l (4 cups) raw juice. The raw juice and sugar is stirred without heating up.

Juice for drinking: Mix about 1½ dl (½ cup) of the sugar mixture and 8½ dl (3½ cups) water (depending on the taste). The sugar mixture will separate, so you will have to give it a shake before mixing with water. If you don’t drink the final mixture right away you will have to stir again, since it will also separate.”

I have 6 runner bean plants in my garden this year, climbing up bamboo sticks. I’ve checked all 6 six of them to be sure, but pictures of the three of them is enough for what I want to show you:

Notice which direction they all turn around the bamboo stick? Counter-clockwise. This is good to know if you want to help them get a good start up the trellis. Supposedly they’re going to untie themselves until they are allowed to go the preferred way around. I believe they’re going the other way around on the southern hemisphere, but I haven’t verified that Please leave a comment if you have checked it out.

I have five old apple trees in my backyard which are quite old. I would estimate the oldest to be about 25 years old, and it has a trunk diameter of 30 cm (12 inch):

The problem I have with these old trees is that they grow like crazy. They have really dug in through the years. I was told that the former owners of the property would cut away any shoots each year, but I had hoped that I could avoid this work, since I don’t like cutting trees.

Last year they just got too big for my backyard garden, so I cut the trees back to where they were used to be before I moved in. That left me with a lot of twigs but the garden looked nice again.

Then the trees start growing like crazy this spring, putting up 50 cm (20 inch) shoots (see the first picture) and worst of all – not a single flower or apple So no apples on this years shoots.

They have used all their energy for growth and nothing for reproduction (apples). So I guess I’ll select about 10 shoots on each tree and cut away the rest to see if they’ll produce apples next year. Last year I picked 19 kg (42 pounds) for eating, and the birds got much more out of it.

Birds like strawberries just as much as we do so some kind of protection is necessary for the fruits to survive. I made a wire mesh cage out of chicken wire with small hatches in the sides and on top. Then it’s possible to stick your hand in and grab some of the strawberries as they mature. I used a bunch of plastic ties to keep it all together and 6 sticks hammered into the ground. I’ve put some long grass cuttings between the soil and the fruits to keep the fruit clean and healthy.

It must be a depressing view for a bird :

It takes a while to build the cage but it’s definitely worth it:

Yum!

The conditions at my south facing wall are perfect for food production just like last year. I’ve added 3 new self-watering boxes and supported each plant with a couple of bamboo sticks held together with plastic ties and then again mounted under the roof of the garage. The tomato plants are doing well with lots of sun and water and protected from the wind:

Small grapes are starting to form:

I was excited when I managed to grow tomatoes last year without a greenhouse. Temperatures in this area are normally in the range -3 to 20 deg. C (27 to 68 deg. F) so I didn’t expect it to be easy. This year I bought a couple of cucumber plants from a nursery just for fun and one of the plants is actually putting out small fruits now

I’m looking forward to see if they’ll mature. I’m probably too lazy to put up a greenhouse, at least in this heat. It’s 32 deg. C (90 deg. F) outside as I write this. Kinda unusual around here but good for the plants.

A couple of weeks ago I thinned the fruits on my small peach tree according to my garden “bible”. This is done when the fruits are about the size of walnuts. The fruits are thinned to about 25 cm (10 inch) spacing or else the tree will have a hard time maturing all of them. I removed more than half of the fruits (which was not popular with my girlfriend ):

I also find thinning a bit sad but it’s often necessary in order to have normal size vegetables or fruits.

This is how the tree looks after the thinning:

Luckily there are still no signs of peach leaf curl. Now I’m just waiting for the rain to come. The soil below the peach tree is not well-drained, so when it’s dry for longer periods the soil is compact and any water applied on top just escapes on the surface.

I did a small experiment with my potatoes this year as I wanted to know more about chitting. I left several potatoes in an egg tray in the kitchen and as expected they put out several shoots each after a couple of weeks. Generally I find 1 cm (half inch) shoots to be the easiest to handle:

On half of them I removed all the shoots except one, and put those in one half of my “raised bed” (the soil was apparently very loose when I prepared the bed and later it sunk under its own weight. Guess I have to throw in more compost to justify the name ). In the other half of the bed I put the rest of the chitted potatoes, which had several shoots each:

It turns out that the difference is not that big. Sure the ones with several shoots immediately puts up several stems (lower half of the picture), but the other half with only shoot is not limited to having only one stem. So both kinds are growing at the same speed and are equally robust:

(Notice my experiment with a soaker hose; it’s not working that well in my particular set up )

These are the ones that had single shoots:

And these had several shoots before planting:

As time goes by it’s getting even more difficult to distinguish between the two. It will be interesting to see the difference in yield when time comes to harvest.

Okay, maybe it’s not essential or life threatening if you can’t grow peaches in Scandinavia, but boy do freshly picked peaches taste good. And it seems like my little peach tree have survived with all its leaves still on the tree. Earlier I’ve had problems with peach leaf curl but I put up a plastic shield to protect the tree against the rain:

There was certainly a greenhouse effect due to the shield and the tree is now full of small fruits in development:

Some of the leaves that were close to the plastic on the inside of the plastic cover look like they are affected a bit still but overall it seems like I have fended off the peach leaf curl:

Time will tell if the fruits will mature properly. I sure hope so. I took care of the pollination by hand with a small piece of cotton wool at the end of a bamboo stick:

Oh, and I found this little fellow sleeping behind the plastic at the foot of the tree:

Maybe it’s not warm enough for cockchafers yet…