It’s always a bad sign when a blog starts titling all their posts “Updates”. We have been extremely busy as life tends to get with teenagers so there has been little time for much except daydreaming of what you want to do. Some of the changes we have been able to accomplish recently include completely ..read more

Fought through some lower back pain and managed to get the cover crop seed in for the area that will be the grocery row gardens. Since the tiller quit I had to clear some of the remaining area by hand. Didn’t get to clear as much as I wanted but I can always expand later ..read more

Just a quick update before I sign in for the rat race. I have decided to slow the timeline on the grocery row gardens in a way. I know for certain the soil there has a drastic lack of biological life in it and the nutrients are pitiful. Rather than jump right in to planting ..read more

Every time I say that it reminds of the scene in Band of Brothers where they are preparing to jump into Normandy. Fog settles in on the Channel and kills visibility. The 101st is on the tarmac and the jump master reads out a note on the conditions and ends with “No Jump Tonight!”. I ..read more

At some point today I intend to go out and till up the area that will become the grocery row bed. Normally I’m not a tiller but I need to kill some grass and get it ready for a cover crop and grocery rows. When I’m done I will have only tilled the area twice ..read more

Was a long couple of days but I finally got the demo finished The two raised beds have been filled with the soil from the 6 that existed before, and you’ll notice the Vetiver grass in one. I figured it was a good time since I was digging it up to go ahead and divide ..read more

I began the demo process on a part of the garden. After much thought I’m moving ahead with trying the Grocery Row Garden idea. In doing so I am violating the idea of making small changes and observing, this thought occurred to me yesterday. However, this big change has more to do with me than ..read more

I have started looking at the site in anticipation of what some of the next moves will be, either overwinter or come Spring. I absolutely need to work on some sort of a greenhouse, not a PVC hoophouse, not an online bought, plastic jointed, flimsy greenhouse. A legit greenhouse. I have gone through several greenhouses since I started this garden and those greenhouses just don’t work well for me or my site. Over time the weather just does a beat down on those plastic joints and they collapse, quite inconvenient when it’s full of starts or cuttings. I’m thinking over the winter of trying to buil ..read more

In 2018 I finally received my Permaculture Design Certificate. I had very high hopes for this in many different ways. This post is an evaluation of everything that has happened since then. Your experience may vary. Debt This may seem odd to list in a permaculture experience evaluation but honestly it’s not. Debt will make you a slave. Whatever money you owe has to be repaid, whether it’s car loans, credit cards, mortgages, you name it. You are a slave in that you have to go out and make a sufficient amount of money to pay back that debt in full or in chunks. Add in that you have to also make e ..read more

It has been quite some time since our last update. With kids in sports and school and changes in jobs the time just hasn’t been there. Add in a full plate of my own and the time isn’t always there to do it. Hurricane Ian has just finished passing through our area. We were quite fortunate in that by the time it got to us it was just a Category 1 hurricane. Besides the loss of an ice cream banana tree, a Kokopoh banana tree, a row of Mexican Sunflower, and some leaning stuff that had to be corrected the losses were minimal. Hurricanes tend to clear a lot of “chaff” out of the trees as well so a ..read more